7 Day Trading Card Challenge: Day Seven

Today’s challenge: Best hobby trend to emerge this year

As much as I’ve enjoyed showing off many of my favorite cards, I’m equally excited to get into a philosophical discussion that I imagine will vary greatly from blog to blog. I feel like my selection might be very polarizing and I’m hoping it sparks some conversation. 

My favorite hobby trend to emerge in the past 12 months is the re-emergence of the valuable rookie base card.

I have been collecting as an adult since 2013. In the 6+ years of collecting, I have not seen nearly the demand for base rookie cards that I have witnessed in 2019-2020.  The two easy examples that come to mind are the Zion Williamson base card in 2019-20 Panini Prizm, and the Jasson Dominguez base cards in 2020 Bowman. 

What this craze has created, in my opinion, is an added value when purchasing retail products. It’s also made them much harder to find, which is a negative side effect, and I think the reason that some may disagree with my choice. To me, it’s worth it. For years, I was buying retail products with the hope of pulling some Pirates, some cards to trade, and in a perfect world, a nice hit or some young rookies that have promise and could develop into stars.  

Keep in mind that I’m not a set-builder. I think many of us buy packs in order to get a nice start on building a set. I am devoid of that motivation, but I still love ripping packs, and having the chance to pull some instant value out of a blaster box is pretty damn appealing to me. And the best part is, we’re talking about base cards here! These cards are no more rare or difficult to find than other card in the set. 

I know the love for the rookie card has always been there, but I think it’s near an all-time high. I also think this is a sign of the beginning of the decline of a trend that was huge over the past ten years – the trend of “hit” based products. i.e. products that offered autographs and memorabilia cards with few base cards.  I’m as guily as anyone of having fell victim to the trend. I purchased many of those products and chased many autographs. I still do, to a degree, but not like I used to.

Anyhow, I’m hoping I’m onto something here. I hope hit-based collecting trends decline in favor of more traditional products. It seems like many of the most valuable cards being put out there recently are rookie base cards, not “hits,” and that's pretty cool to me. 

I’m really curious to hear others and I’m hoping to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you enjoyed seeing the rebound is rookie base card value? Do you love it like me? Do you hate it? Have you not noticed? Let’s hear it!

Ripping Some 2020 Bowman

I like to get a taste of most new baseball product releases. For the products I really like - Topps Chrome and Bowman Chrome - I usually pick up a hobby box. When it comes to the next tier of products, I usually stop by my LCS and grab a few hobby packs. That's been my approach with Bowman for the last few years. Of course, things are a bit different this year. I hit a few Targets last week and was unable to find any Bowman on the shelves. I checked eBay and the 200% or greater markups were just too much for me. 

Browsing the Twitter universe the next day, I came across a user who buys and sells through Twitter who was selling some unopened Bowman for a very fair price. Since I was making a small bulk purchase, I was able to negotiate with him and got the price down a bit more. When it was said and done, I ended up paying $25 over MSRP for a lot of three value packs and four "fat packs." It was far better than what I would have paid on eBay.

Each value pack will give you 24 cards plus 5 camo parallels and the fat packs have 19 cards, so I was looking at 163 cards total. 

Starting out with the Buccos: I pulled six Pirates cards total with only one dupe. Lots of familiar faces here. I didn't realize Oneil cruz had an insert in this set until I pulled it out of the pack which was a neat little surprise.

Here's my "probably headed to eBay" group:

The prize of Bowman 2020 is Jasson Dominguez, the 17-year-old outfield prospect that signed with the Yankees in 2018 out of the international prospect pool and earned himself a cool $5 mil. He's the top prospect in the Yankees system and one of the top prospects in all of baseball... but, ya know... he's 17... and the odds are better that he'll flame out than be a star. That's true of all MLB prospects, but the hype around this kid's baseball card is pretty wild. It's going for $25 on eBay and the price is too juicy not to take in order to recoup some cost.

Curiously, I pulled exactly two copies of each of the top rookies in the set. The hype is real around all four of these guys. The one that jumps out to me the most is Gavin Lux because his name was floated for a week last June as a trade candidate for Felipe Vasquez. At the time Vasquez was one of the most dominant closers in baseball and would have made sense for any contender. The rumor was that Pirates were asking for Lux but he was the one player that was untouchable, per the Dodgers. The deal fell apart from there (so did Vasquez's career and probably the rest of his life as he's currently in jail facing 24 felonies. Ah, the Pirates).

These cards will be stashed away until one of them becomes the 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout Rookie. That's how it works, right?