Making Over $50 on One Fatima Card -- Same Exact Certification #

Just a little tidbit about how I sometimes make summer money with baseball cards. Here is a 1913 T200 Fatima baseball card I just bought. Notice the PSA certification number:

I bought this one via bid last night for $106.50, quite cheap for a 1913 Fatima, in PSA 1.5 Fair condition. The PSA certification number, if you don't want to click the pic--and you should; it's a nice card--is 19195087. So, last night, $106.50, Cert. #19195087.

Of course, before you agree to spend that much money, you research online how much that card has sold for recently on ebay, to make sure you don't overspend. Specific bids on ebay can inexplicably go crazy; I saw just last night some T206 PSA 2s go for almost $40 (you can get them typically between $23-$28) and I saw 3s go for over $50 (you can commonly get them for $35 to $45, max) and so on. Well, one of the ones I saw had sold via bid on May 9th of this year, just a few months ago. Here it is:

This one sold for $157.50. Same card, same condition, same grading company. (Same ebay company, too.) I thought this was rare, since 1913 T200 Fatima cards themselves are pretty rare, so I looked a little closer. You can, too, just click the pic. You might notice the same thing I did. This wasn't just the same card--a 1913 T200 Fatima Cincinnati Reds in PSA 1.5 condition--but it was literally the same exact specific card. Look at the certification number. Exactly the same: 19195087!

What're the odds of that? That means that someone on May 9th--just two months ago--bought this exact same card on a bid from this ebay company for $157.50 (plus $6 shipping). But something happened. Either he didn't actually pay for it, so the same company had to re-post it for bid, or he did pay for it, but either because of financial hardship or something else, sent it back to the same exact ebay company he bought it from to begin with, which re-posted it, and I bought it via bid for $51 less than the original buyer bought it for just two months ago. $150 or so is a decent, common price for a Fatima in this condition, so my $106 bid is a steal. In fact, the original buyer in May spent $157.50, plus $6 shipping, plus another $3.50 or so when he mailed it back to the company to sell for him. At 15%, this company made $23.62 off of him when he bought it, plus whatever profit it makes from the $6 shipping, since it definitely doesn't take $6 to ship this one card to the winner. Then it re-posted it for him and made another $15.97 from the sale to me. So this poor guy spent $157.50 to get it, and got just $106.50 - $15.97 back from it, so $90.53. So $157.50 - $90.53 is $66.97, plus another few bucks for shipping it back to be re-sold. So let's say $70. So this guy lost $70 on this same exact, same certification number, card. In less than 2 months. It takes about a month to mail it to an ebay company: let them itemize it, list it, let it be bid on for about a week, itemize the sale of it, wait a max of 5 days for the winner to pay for it, and then another few days for that to clear through PayPal for the guy to get his money. So that means the original guy owned it for less than a month before he decided to send it back to the ebay consignment company to re-sell for him, at a $70 loss. That sucks!

To maximize a profit, I won't sell this one anytime soon. (It's my only Fatima, so I hopefully won't sell it at all.) I'll wait until the end of the baseball season, and I sell via a different ebay company, anyway. A card in this condition normally sells for $150+. This one, and a Fatima PSA 2 that sold for a crazy-low $126, are the only two out of dozens in my research, in a 1.5 or 2 condition, that I saw sell for less than $150. Sometimes you make more by not selling, and waiting a little. And since I spent $50 less than usual, it won't have to re-sell for much more for me to see a profit from it. I'm confident that it'll sell for about $150+ when (or if) I'm ready to let it go.

Mike Trout 2011 Bowman Draft RC

Photos: from my own collection

Here's a Mike Trout Bowman Draft rookie card.

This is not to be confused with the 2011 Mike Trout Bowman Chrome rookie card, or the 2011 Mike Trout Bowman Chrome Draft rookie card.  Both cards with "draft" in the name are #101, while the Chrome is #175.  Go figure.  What I can tell you is that when I went to bid on these, and the many dozens of other options that showed up, I had to look at my Beckett Graded book to see which one was which time and time again, since the three different cards also have different values.  I had to stop a few times and adjust my eyes, and it doesn't help that the listings on Ebay are often misleading or flat-out incorrect.  The sellers didn't seem to know what they were selling, at times, since some said they were selling a Bowman Chrome when they were actually selling a Bowman Chrome Draft.  There were many other misleading tags as well.  Crazy. And, oh yeah, there are tons of bunched-together listings in the Beckett book, and they tended to blur together after awhile, too.

I also had to look at the established Mike Trout rookie cards from cardboardconnection.com, which lists the actual rookie cards of every important player.  This is now necessary, since there are so many cards that say "rookie" or "RC" on them, but they're not actual rookies, they just got released in the player's rookie year.  That makes it a rookie, right?  No, because there are so many subsets from the same card company that not each of them are considered rookies.  Plus, there are a lot of "prospect" cards, which used to mean rookie, but now doesn't.  And some players have a rookie card even before their rookie year or their prospect card--see: Mark McGwire's Olympics card, which is his rookie.

For those who're wondering, Mike Trout's only rookie cards are: 2011 Bowman Chrome #175; 2011 Bowman Chrome Draft #101; 2011 Bowman Draft #101; 2011 Bowman Sterling #22 (Good luck! That one's BV is $150 for a NmMt 8 and $500 for a Gem 9.5 / 10); 2011 Finest Baseball #94 and 2011 Topps Update #US175.  (See how the Chrome and Topps is #175?  That's because Topps owns Bowman, but all the Bowman Draft sets and subsets are #101.)  That's a lot to see, and blur through, while you're sorting out listings by condition, cost, reputation and listing accuracy--the last of which was terrible!

And thank you to Cardboard Connection for providing those separate rookie and prospect listings.

By the way, did you know that prospect cards are released before the rookie cards, so you'll see them before you see the rookie cards, which used to be the ones you'd see first?  And some prospect cards are traded and bought like they're rookies, and are often worth much more than the rookie cards!

Anyway, as I mentioned in the previous Bryce Harper entry, I don't usually buy recent rookie cards. Bryce Harper is an exception worth taking a chance on.  Mike Trout is an exception you have to take a chance on.  Trout is a no-brainer, like Pujols was, but more so, because Pujols was so obvious, and so alone in the field of new players at the time, that he didn't even have to be awesome to be the one to buy at that time.

Mike Trout is different because he is shoulders above some very impressive newer players in the past few years.  Bryce Harper also stands out almost as much.  But there's also Paul Goldschmidt, the most underrated player in baseball, who's finished second in the MVP voting the past two straight years, and who noticed?  Very quiet player who plays for a very bad team; had he played for the Yankees, we'd be talking about him like we do Trout and Harper.  (I've been trying to get a Goldschmidt rookie, too, though I have far surpassed my holiday spending.  But a Mint Condition Goldschmidt Topps Update RC is only $10--and that's Buy It Now, not even bidding.  (Bids tend to be a few bucks cheaper.)  Anyway, I feel Goldschmidt is a sleeper, and I'm going to get his rookie now while it's cheap.  I just did the same with Jose Altuve's, which is just plain cheap; I got 7 Altuve Bowman RCs for $7, including shipping.  Ungraded, sure, but I gave to a friend the one with a few corner dings, and I'll send the best of the others to get graded and take my chances.

And we haven't talked about Rizzo, or Correa, or Arrieta, or any of the other ones.  These last 3-4 years have been amongst the best three to four year stretch for rookies since the early 90s.

Anyway, Mike Trout stands way above all of these guys, and the collectors seem to know it, since his ungraded Bowman cards sell for about $20 when bidding, and over $30 for Buy It Now.  Lots of buyers are Buying It Now, too, which tells me they're in very high demand, since experienced Ebay shoppers would rather spend $10 more just to know they can get one.

I spent $19.38 for the one pictured above, and that includes shipping.

So I'm taking a chance, because once I send it away, it has to be graded an 8 or better for me to break even.  In fact, an 8 is just $20 BV, so I'll lose out a little bit because I have to pay for it to be graded (I wait for the $5 or $7 specials from SGC) and I have to pay about a buck combined for shipping and insurance.  (I send 10 cards at a time to SGC, because it costs the same to ship and insure 1 card as it does 10 cards, so you may as well do 10.)

Since I'm spending another $7 to $9 or so on the grading, shipping and insuring, I need this card to get graded at least an NmMt+ 8.5, worth $25, in order to break even.  I have no idea whether this card is that or not, as I have long ago decided that I'm not going to drive myself crazy predicting a grading company's grade for a card, since I have conclusive evidence that they're often wildly off their own grading scale, and so it's basically a crapshoot.  This is especially true of newer cards.  (I've been very good at grading T206s--but the grading companies have been much more consistent with their grades for those, too.)  Even cards from the mid-80s have been graded one or two grades different than I'd predicted.  Why's my 1980 Rickey Henderson RC an 8 rather than a 9--which is a difference of about $275 in Ebay bidding value?  Couldn't tell you.  What's the difference between my Rickey 8 and the previous Rickey 7 it just replaced?  I don't know.  The corners and the gloss and the centering are the same.

Will this one break even?  I don't know, but here's why it's worth the chance for me, and also why I bought a 2011 Mike Trout Bowman Chrome RC and a 2011 Mike Trout Bowman Chrome Draft RC:

--Trout's RC values have increased lately and, I believe, will continue to do so.  For a long time.

--My Trout Chrome RC is a 9 and the Chrome Draft RC is a 9.5, so I've got my Mint condition Mike Trout rookie card situation covered.  (Those deals will be blogged about when they come in.)

--If this one is a dud--say, a 6 or 7--I can give it as a gift to either a relative or a friend of mine.  Neither takes this anywhere near as seriously as I do, and would love to have a Trout rookie of any grade.

--Worst possible scenario: I can sell it at the occasional yard sale I have every other summer, and I can get $20 to $25 for it, no problem, especially from older folks who love baseball but hate the internet.  And there's lots of those!

And that's why I bought an ungraded Mike Trout rookie, and would do so again, for either the relative or the friend who doesn't get this one.

Sorry for the long entry!

Cult Baseball Players edited by Danny Peary

Interesting book that I'd hoped would be as good as The Glory of their Times.  It wasn't, through no fault of its own, exactly.
 
Glory was told to Lawrence Ritter by the ballplayers themselves (and then edited by Ritter). This book is written by professionals in other endeavors, like yours and mine, about their favorite ballplayers.  Because of this, and because the writers are usually writers themselves, this comes across as maybe better-written, but not as interesting, as it's not from the ballplayers' POV.

But there's a certain coolness in that as well.  It made you think of your own associations with ballplayers, if you've had any.  I have: Wade Boggs nonchalantly picked up and returned my baseball to me--without signing it; Matsuzaka ignored me so rudely that people around me openly wondered what his problem was; Jason Bay blanched and stammered in front of me at Fenway Park.  Not because of me, but...Well, you'll have to buy the thing that publishes it.  And that's what I mean about this book's coolness: It made me want to write about my own memorable experience with a ballplayer.  And then sell it to be published, of course, cuz that's what I try and do.

So here are pieces written by Elmore Leonard, without his iconic dialogue and violence; by Tim McCarver, who's as long-winded in print as he was on the Fox telecasts, and many others.

I recommend reading it in the winter, as I have, because it reminds you that there is in fact a summer, when games like baseball are played.  But also because the book is only sometimes about baseball; at times it is more about the players, the times they played in, and those who they played with.  It reminds you that there is more to life than what is currently going on in front of you, which in my case has been days and days of snow-blowing, followed by today's 40s, which will be followed by tonight's single-digits and Wednesday's 5"-8" of snow.

But that's okay.  Baseball is right around the corner.  Spring training is happening right now.  And the lives of those who play it go on and on, even off of the field.  It's important to remember this.

Having said that, my first game this season is April 14th, at Fenway.

About 53 days away.  And yes, I'm keeping track.  There's more to the ballplayers than what happens on the field, but the field is where we see them, and--right or wrong--is often all we care to know about them.

The Dolly Stark Situation

Photo: The Dolly Stark Southern League T206 card, from BMWcards.com.  This is not the exact card in the story below.  BMWcards, by the way, is a company that sells really high-end, really high-quality, great-conditioned and highly-graded cards.  In other words, I can look, but I can't buy.
 
I almost bid on a Dolly Stark, which is a tougher-to-find Southern League card, and worth more than other commons in the set.  I can't tell you how many times I've bid on a Dolly Stark card.  So often, it's become a bit of a thing with me.  I have to get one--but not go crazy to do so.  This one was an SGC 30 2, which means it was graded by SGC, and graded a 30, which is SGC's way of saying it's in Good condition.  A 2 also means Good condition.  Good, in this case, is an actual grade, not just someone saying it's in good condition, if you know what I mean.  I'm a bit stingy, because I'm a bit poor, so buying a T206 in Good condition is okay with me.  It's not for most serious collectors. 

So I looked it up in what I call The Book--Beckett's Graded Card Price Guide.  It says that this exact card, in this exact condition, has recently sold for, on average, $80.  (This is not the same as saying it's "worth" $80, but it's as close to an immediate, go-with-it value you can get on short, convenient notice.)  When I saw it, the bid was $27. 

(Side note: Do not ever buy an item like a baseball card as a BUY NOW on Ebay, because if there's something wrong with the item--and there usually will be, or it wouldn't be BUY NOW, it'd be auctioned--Ebay will not reimburse you, and neither will the seller.  Only static items, like baseball card plastic sleeves, for example, or anything else you'd buy off a shelf or a rack, should ever be bought as a Buy It Now.) 

Anyway, I knew the bid would go up, but I hoped not by much, and a common card usually won't escalate tremendously.  I had my bid all set after there was less than one minute to go.  (I place my bid when there's a specific number of seconds left; not tellin' ya what that is.)  My bid was for $41.51, because the shipping was $3.50, and I didn't want to spend more than $45 total, even though the value was $80.  I try not to pay more than half what a card is worth, including shipping.  But as this Dolly Stark situation has become personal at this point, I splurged by a few bucks.  With 5 seconds left, the bids went from $27 to over $30 to over $40, etc., finally settling on $63.00.  That's not bad, spending $66.50 total for a card "valued" at $80--a savings of $13.50, but that was more than I wanted to spend on one T206 card, even though it was a Southern Leaguer (which are more rare and more expensive) and a personal situation, too.  There were other cards I was looking at, and I needed to save my money. 

Plus, once you've settled on a dollar amount you're willing to spend, you absolutely cannot go over that amount.  If you do, you will again, and suddenly you've gone Ebay crazy and spent your mortgage.  Craziness.  So I never sent my bid for this card.  The Dolly Stark situation still remains a personal thing.

Opening Day 2013--Red Sox 8, Yankees 2

Photo: Jackie Bradley, Jr., from nbcsports.com

So I'm going to give this blog another shot.  Hope springs eternal, right?  Gone seems to be the bitterness of last year, in which we had a manager nobody liked (including his own players), players nobody liked (including the manager, and the other players) and a front office that seemed to be a bit distant from the action.  Then came the fire sale trades at the end of the season, and things looked up, except for the players themselves, because by then nobody cared.

In all of that, you have the fact that the players weren't trying at all, despite being paid millions (or, tens of millions, in a few cases), and then when the Jerry Sandusky thing came around, that was it for me, folks.  Maybe I'll see you, maybe I won't.

After that, I tried with some baseball cards--which I liked doing, by the way.  And I liked how I went into the players lives, and delved a bit deeper into their backgrounds, or their issues.  In the meantime, I learned a few things as well.  But then some personal changes happened, and my writing took off, and I didn't have the time anymore.

But now I'm back.  The smoke has cleared, and the dust has settled, and whatever other trite cliches you can think of have happened.  Spring is here.  There's hustle and bustle and excitement and exuberance on this Sox team again--for now, anyway.  But there does seem to be a new attitude, and that's not just the Sox ads on NESN talking there.

So, the game.  Opening game, opening series, and at Yankee Stadium, no less.  True, this Yankees team is essentially their Triple-A team right now, but the Sox still had to face Sabathia.  They've handled him well in the past, sure, but this game wasn't even about facing him, beating the Yankees, or even winning, per se.  It was about the new look, new attitude Sox.  The new face of the team.  That's what I mostly wanted to see.

And I did.  Specifically, here are the notes I took during the game (when I watched it on DVR after returning from an appt.):

--I'm glad I thought ahead enough to get two autographed baseballs from Jackie Bradley, Jr. when he was at Pawtucket Red Sox Hotstove League in January.  One to keep, and one to sell when the time is right.  Already his autograph has sold on ebay for about $50.  After one major league game.

--Lester is noticeably taking less time between pitches.  He needs to do that all year.  He was told to do so the last couple of years, but didn't.  This was a Becket influence, I think, since Josh has a cup of coffee and a sandwich between pitches.

--Lester's keeping the ball down and not feeling, also like Becket does, that he can just blow his fastball by people whenever he wants.  He has to set up his pitches better, which is what he's doing now.

--Seeing what I've just written, I'm noticing how glad I am that Becket's gone.

--Bradley's first AB was brilliant and memorable.  Down quickly 0-2 to Sabathia.  Takes some (very close) pitches for balls that you would expect a player with his limited experience to swing at.  Fouls off some good pitches.  Finally draws a walk after a seven or eight pitch at bat.  This pushes runners to second and third, which is more important than the fact that it loads the bases.  This PA proves John Farrell's point about how impressed he was with Bradley's approach every AB.

--I don't know why Sabathia didn't continue to give him off-speed stuff inside and low.  He was susceptible to those in this AB.

--Iglesias infield hit to short; Bradley safe at second by an eyelash, which extends the inning and scores the run.  Speed on both counts, Bradley safe at second and Iglesias fast enough to not even draw a throw to first.  I like it!

--Ellsbury hard hit to first, throw home for one out rather than to second and back to first for a possible double-play.  Youkillis knew that with Ellsbury running, the DP wouldn't happen.  Again, speed.  Iglesias now on second and Bradley at third.

--Victorino singles in both speedy runners with a hard hit single.  I was wrong to question batting him second.  I forgot about his solid production the last few years, and I forgot about his Gold Gloves.  My bad.

--Pedroia singles in speedy Ellsbury.  With Bradley batting eighth, Iglesias ninth, Ellsbury first and Victorino second (and maybe even Pedroia third), the Sox have five consecutive above-average to speedy runners.  That's very nice.

--Napoli, who'd looked silly in his first AB, just (and I mean just) gets under one and skies to deep center to end the second inning.

--Good show here in the second, with lots of walks, speedy running, and clutch-hitting.  You can do a lot of things with walks and singles.  This is how the Sox won titles in 2004 and 2007.  This needs to happen every game, all year, in order for them to have a chance.

--Bradley's great catch on Cano's (don'tcha know) drive in the 4th.  He took an odd-looking route to it, but it's a results-oriented business, as Orsillo says, and he made a great catch.

--Iglesias's push-bunt single in the fourth.  He needs to do that much more often.  Every time he hits it in the air, he owes me twenty push-ups.

--That's a line from Major League, by the way.  That one was for you, big guy.  (Because Bunky's already taken.)

--I love Jonny Gomes, the second straight Jonny the Sox got from the Oakland A's who's an under-rated table-setter, run-producer and all-around making-it-happen kind of guy.  You don't see a two-run infield single too often.  I won't be surprised if the players talk more about Gomes's hustle than they do Bradley's play in this game.

--Bullpen is doing a good job, but we knew heading into the season-opener that the bullpen was actually going to be a major plus for this team.  That, by itself, is unusual for Boston, even for the World Series winning teams.

--There's so much talk about Bradley right now, it seems like Sox fans have him already ticketed for the Hall of Fame.  And he doesn't even have a hit yet.

--Great start for what hopefully is a new-look, new-attitude team.  They should at least be fun to watch, on tv and at Fenway.  I go to my first Fenway game on April 12th.