Success with an Enormous Stash?

[All The Hype]

I always find it very impressive when someone posts scans of an enormous stash of a prospect. I define an "enormous stash" as about 40+ autos or 40+ parallels of the same guy. That's some serious dedication and faith to pour into a single guy.


I'm wondering what kind of success the prospectors of FCB have had with stashes like this.


So far, I have had a number of guys that have presented great sell points and made me a lot of money. But so far there have been either zero times when I wished I had more stuff of said prospect for the simple reason that it seemed like I would not be able to move the stuff at the same prices and would get stuck with a lot of it.


Anyone want to share their experience with a stash of this size?

 

[leatherman]

Anyone want to share their experience with a stash of this size?

Quite simply, you can't unload a large stash quick enough when a player gets hot, especially when you have to deal with delinquents.

I had a huge Cameron Maybin stash that I listed when he hit his first HR off Roger Clemens. I had over $3000 in unpaid auctions from new ebayers, i.e. people who opened new accounts to win auctions with no intent of paying (unless Maybin continued his hot streak). By the time I had dealt with ebay and filed all the NPBs, the iron was no longer hot and I lost a ton of money.

David

 

[baseballguy350]

FAILURE

And countless unscanned. Diversity is the way to go.


By the way, I have fully cursed a few other prospects as well, so expect a career ending injury soon for Michael Bowden.

 

[prospectorgems]

I had a HUGE stash of Brad Mills and Will Inman. Obviously these guys never got real hot or made a splash into the majors, but they were having really good minor league seasons at the time of the sales. I believe I made $300-400 profit off of Brad Mills and $200+ profit off of Inman. This is of course after deducting ebay fees. I had included all the shipping costs that were incurred when purchasing all of these cards. While these profits may not be what you are looking for, I always say a profit is a profit no matter how big or small.

In summary...I have noticed that having larger stashes and selling all at once has benefited me greatly. It can be a pain in the ass trying to find all of the rarer cards, but I have ALWAYS had it pay off for me in the end.

I know I would have lost big time if I had decided to sell these cards individually or broken into smaller lots. From what the previous poster said, there are going to be people that create new accounts and then just not pay if they don't see the player continue their tear on the ball. You only have to take a chance with one person and if you set it up with a BIN and BO, you can weed out who you think will and will not pay.

 

[prospectorgems]

Also something else to add. I found it more fun to research lesser known players, but still have good/great stats. It is so much cheaper to create a large stash and even though your profits won't be in the 1000's, it is still a profit nonetheless. Plus it is much easier to sell a lot of cards of a lesser known player for $500-$800 opposed to a top prospect which may incur costs upwards of a couple of grand.

 

[bradical]

500 count box full of 2007 Bowman Chrome / Base / Golds too.

:mrgreen:

I am planning on moving as a lot next season, based on his continued rate of success, so, stay tuned.

All-in-all, I have around $250-$300 invested in him so far. I think I could easily double that right now - but I have a feeling.

 

[gvsu96]

This is success with an enormous stash.

 

[mredsox89]

FAILURE

And countless unscanned. Diversity is the way to go.


By the way, I have fully cursed a few other prospects as well, so expect a career ending injury soon for Michael Bowden.

boo :lol:

 

[All In Cards]

I wont post the scans but can if someone wants to see them.

Wieters 07 elite extra edition auto

/799 - 45
/100 - 8
/50 - 6
/25 - 3

total - 62

I will post my numbers later when I hit my office.

 

[BowmanChromeAddict]

JA Happ did quite well for me, but he had a strong season that gave me a nice long time to sell. I'm sold out now, but I made a substantial amount of money. Big stashes are very very risky, but I tend to collect that way...I'm a hoarder.

 

[Pine Tar]

Mine was Nick Adenhart for obvious reasons.
I had this at one time but last season I sold a bunch of stuff
I had 15 golds of his Non-Auto's
About 500 base cards
and about 100 of refractor and X's, Blues too
20 Triple E Auto's
I invested like 300-400 in to him, then sold must of it before this season.
And then his life was cut short and there goes my wind fall.

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I had 10 Gold Refractors (Bgs 9 - 9.5; PSA 9 -10) approximately 10 xfractors /125, a few base refractors, and over 300 base chrome. I still have two gold refractors; 5 xfractors, and 30-40 base chrome. I also still have the Red Refractor 1/1.

28 2004 SP Autographs /600, 1 SP auto /10 BGS 9.5

Approximately 10 Elite /1195 autos, and approximately 10 autos /100 or less, including a /5 and 3 /25s.

JA Happ been berry berry good to me.

 

[wolfmanalfredo]

I've got about 1K into Jason Kubel, and I don't see anyone who is too interested in the guy even though he had a killer season:

.300
28 HR
103 RBI

Either way at this point, I'm hoping he gets real hot again and people start to notice that this guys for real so I can unload hopefully at 50% investment or better.

 

[All The Hype]

Thanks to everyone who has replied. Some interesting stories.


Seems kinda like the huge stashes are good if the player is truly a star (i.e., JA Happ had a great season) because there is plenty of time to unload. The huge stash is bad if the player only has a little hot streak but then turns out not to be a star for the same reason: there isn't enough time to successfully unload everything before the player cools off.


I have had a couple of pretty big stashes that I have moved most of. The two that I will use as examples are: about 200 chrome base plus some parallels of Gerardo Parra and about 15 Leaf Limited autos, 50ish Bowman chrome/base/gold plus some chrome parallels, 3 AFLAC Autos, Elite 1/1 Auto of Rick Porcello.

While these numbers aren't anything groundbreaking, I was able to make some great money off both players.

Parra's hot moment: homer in first career Major League AB.

Breaking Down My Stash: I bought the Parra chromes at about .60 each on average and was able to move most of them for $2 apiece. I still have 25 because I thought maybe he will stay hot and I'd be able to get a piece of the action at maybe $4 apiece. Needless to say, his cards have fallen quite a bit and it looks like I'll either be holding onto those or moving them for my buy-in or less.

Lesson Learned: Take the money when it's available for a player that you EXPECT to be an average Major Leaguer.

Porcello's Hot Moment: The 2009 season (specifically the month of May and the last month or so of the season)

Breaking Down My Stash: Selling the Elite 1/1 for about a $675 profit after fees was pretty nice for my stash. By far the most I've ever spent on one player, I still have about half of my stash in hand (and now a side collection of him going, completely aside from my 'investment cards') and I am already up about $400, or roughly 23% of my total investment (approximately $1800). I am holding some of the stuff for during the offseason and in anticipation of a possible ROY award. I am also going to hold a portion of it for next season, when I expect him to be even better than he was this year. It will be interesting to see what his card prices do moving forward if he is able to improve every season. I have moved chrome/base/gold lots and Limited autos here and there all season. It was easy because his success gave me a huge window during which to move the cards I had.

Lesson Learned: As a player I expected to eventually be an elite Major League pitcher, I wasn't sure how I felt about him making the team as a 20 year old out of spring training. But once he got a few wins under his belt and especially after the month of May (5-0, 1.50 ERA), I knew I had made a wise investment. If you truly believe a player is going to be a star, you have a lot more flexibility in when you move your stash.

 

[Old Kentucky Shark]

This is success with an enormous stash.

Fantastic. :lol:

 

[theplasticman]

I have like 15,000 Will Clark rookies. :lol:

 

[pujolsjunkie]

I miss my babies.

 

[Jays_Cards]

I have never really invested this way, but I have seen some major, major profits and major, major hits on the chin by doing this. I have always, and will always prefer to invest in higher end cards. ROI is obviously not as high on an individual basis, but overall retun is MUCH better when going this route if the player gets hot.

 

[Incline Investments]

The thing with hoarding tons and tons of cards, is unless you have the kind of cash to drop on a Heyward, Montero, Stanton, Moustakas type elite prospect, you're going to be buying a risky, semi-sleeper type guy.

I'll tell you one thing, there is no way I'll be putting a couple grand into a guy like Jon Gilmore again. No way.

I would much rather buy the elite guys, and put together solid stashes instead of flashy behemoths, because the chance to make money is much greater.

 

[bballcardkid]

The thing with hoarding tons and tons of cards, is unless you have the kind of cash to drop on a Heyward, Montero, Stanton, Moustakas type elite prospect, you're going to be buying a risky, semi-sleeper type guy.

I'll tell you one thing, there is no way I'll be putting a couple grand into a guy like Jon Gilmore again. No way.

I would much rather buy the elite guys, and put together solid stashes instead of flashy behemoths, because the chance to make money is much greater.

That's sort of how I feel. I never really hoarded any risky prospects, but I have diversified with a bunch of risky prospects. If I'm going to hoard, I'm going to hoard the elite guys, not only because they have the best chance at success, but because if they start to suck, you have a pretty large window to bailout. Once the risky guys start putting up bad numbers, you start to see there values fall almost instantaneously.