Topps released Bowman 2020 in the middle of the huge hobby bubble that has been going on this year and the prices for boxers have been staggering. I see hobby boxes going for close to $300 on Ebay regularly. I feel like the hype around Bowman is not so much for the product itself, but rather the hype that has been in the hobby all year and is spreading to any product that is remotely popular.
Most of the increase in box prices has been in basketball with the combination of this year's strong rookie class and renewed interest in basketball after The Last Dance aired. Because basketball wax has been virtually sold out everywhere and prices are through the roof, collectors are looking for other sports to buy. Hockey is no big deal and football releases haven't quite started yet, so you end up with baseball (soccer has caught on fire, too).
Bowman is all about prospecting, the concept of finding cards of guys that could be great players in a few years, at which time you flip their cards for a profit. The problem with Bowman being so expensive now is that it makes prospecting futile if you decide to grab your cards by purchasing wax. The whole idea with prospecting is that you buy low and sell high. You try to find a diamond in the rough that turns out to be a better player than what everyone anticipated and you sell his card for more than you paid.
The two big prospects in this year's Bowman with their 1st Bowman cards are Jasson Dominguez and Bobby Witt Jr. Dominguez cards are already creating a sensation, which frankly is ridiculous. He's only 17. At the prices his cards are going for on Ebay, he would have to turn into a future Hall of Famer in order to make money back on what you are paying for him now.
It's funny reading scouting reports about Dominguez, who was signed by the Yankees as an undrafted international player. Scouts gush over him, calling him the next Mickey Mantle or Mike Trout. But go back and look at the top ten prospects from each year of the last decade or two. Those lists are just littered with names of guys that never made an impact in the big leagues, and some of who never even made the show at all. Frankly, it's insane to pay this much money for a chance to own a card of a teenager who may never even make the majors.
The problem is that even if Dominguez turns out to be a pretty good player and have a long career, his cards are so expensive right now that being pretty good would not be enough to flip him for a profit. And if you're just someone that likes collecting Bowman prospects cards or whatever, you're better off waiting a few years when the hobby has forgotten about him.
That's why buying rookies when they are overpriced makes absolutely no sense. They almost always decline in price. Even if they don't decline and the prices stay stable for years, that just gives you years of opportunity to buy rookies at the same price.
The only way I can see making money here is to buy Dominguez cards raw and then send them to PSA for grading and hope they come back a 10. But that's another crapshoot as honestly I can barely tell the difference between a PSA 9 and a PSA 10, and I'm suspicious of people who claim they can.
Bowman in 2020 is another example of how big spending has come back into the hobby, and turned it from a pastime to something that speculators are trying to make money with. I don't think there are too many people willing to spend this much money on Bowman 2020 just to own the cards for fun. The only reason to buy into this is the belief that you can turn around and sell these cards for more money very quickly before the hype dies. That's not collecting. Also, that's not investing. At best, it's speculating. Really, though, it's gambling.
Honestly, I don't have a moral objection to gambling on baseball cards. It can be fun. We need to call a spade a spade, though, and use honest language when discussing the hobby. There is a difference between collecting cards of your favourite player and buying cards with the hopes of turning a profit on them. It's not investing. I hate it, really hate it, when people describe this as investing. It's speculation and it's gambling. It can be exciting, but you need to know what you are getting into, otherwise you can get taken advantage of.
What's your opinion of Bowman 2020?
Bowman 2020 is like a Ferrari. I can't afford it, so I'm not gonna spend anymore time thinking about it. I don't blame collectors, investors, gamblers, or whatever you wanna call them... for wanting this stuff and driving up the prices. If I had to blame anyone, I'd blame Topps for no producing enough of this stuff and for not allowing the average collector to get their hands on this product. It's Bowman. Topps knows it's a popular product year in and year out. Yet... 99.9% of your average collectors couldn't buy it from their site, because it sold out so fast.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe production materials or labour were scarce because of the pandemic. I work in retail management, and there is a lot of stuff we simply can't get into our store because there hasn't been enough manufactured.
DeleteI think it will either create a situation where cards from 2020 remain higher in value for many years because of scarcity. Or, once manufacturing output can increase to match demand, card companies simply run the printers day and night and people that bought cards from this year figuring they would stay high in value end up getting screwed. Think Upper Deck 1990-91 French Hockey.
I haven't looked at 2020 Bowman at all, as I don't keep up with many modern releases, but I'm not surprised to read about this. I agree with you, that's not investing, it's gambling.
ReplyDeleteI do think there is a way to "invest" in cards. For example, buying a mid-grade, graded Wayne Gretzky rookie now for $500-$600 with the intention of selling it in 10 years. I'd consider that an investment not all that different from buying a third of a share of Amazon or something like that. Sort of like a savings account that sits in a box in your closet.
Difference is Gretzky is already established as one of the greatest if not the greatest ever, and that's already an iconic card. There are a few other examples (Trout, Jordan, Brady RC), but I agree with you that what most people refer to as investing in the hobby truly amounts to not much more than speculation/gambling...
I think that's still more akin to speculation than investment.
DeleteTo me, an investment is when you put money into something with not only an expectation of an increase in value, but regular output. Like, a business generates profits regularly. A farm produces goods regularly. A sports card just sits there. It doesn't actually produce anything.
That's not to say that you always make money buying a business, or you always lose money buying a baseball card. That also isn't to say that just because you buy a business, it is investing. It could easily be speculation. The details matter.
But I think there is an actual literal, dictionary definition of investing that does not apply to sports cards. I think we need to be clear about our collective use of language with so much money at stake, because lack of clarity allows con artists and fraudsters to work around the edges and take advantage of people who don't know better and cannot seek better advice because the language is unclear.
I do definitely agree with your point about established stars. Honestly, for all the focus on flipping and making profit and such, it seems to me that the easiest way to make money is to just buy a bunch of high value Gretzky and Jordan cards and then go away for a few years. This is the same strategy Warren Buffett often espouses when it comes to blue chip stocks.
That's another reason why I think sports cards aren't investing, because so many of the strategies that so-called investors use seem to be based more on the thrill of the hunt than any sound investing decision. Why buy Bowman 2020 when you can just buy a bunch of Jordans and then ignore sports cards for a few years until you sell them? Because buying Bowman 2020 is fun. That's where the lack of credibility comes in.