What to Do Next Time the Hobby Goes BANANAS Over a Player

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This is not buying or investment advice. I’m simply reporting the data I’m seeing. Please do your own research and make your own decisions. Just because cards have increased in value up to this point, it doesn’t mean they will continue to do so.

Tyler Tolbert, Mason McGwire, Carlos Lagrange, Hyun-Seok Jang.

These players aren’t Joshua Baez, but they have more in common than you might immediately think.

Each gave collectors a sudden reason to care, and when that happens, card prices can move before you have much time to figure out what to do about it.

Baez just gave us the most extreme example yet.

He had perhaps the greatest debut in MLB history.

Think about that.

As a result, his cards strapped into a rocket ship and blasted vertically to the moon.

But here’s the important part: you didn’t need to already own Joshua Baez cards to have a chance to make money off what happened.

So, if you were looking to make money off the event, what could you have done?

Sell What You Already Had

Most obviously, sell the cards you already own. Easy right? List the cards you already have in your possession. There’s a good chance whatever you listed yesterday sold.

What to do next time? Don’t list them all at once. Again, we each have our own goals and circumstances. This is not blanket info, but if you listed all of your Baez cards after the first homer yesterday, you probably left some money on the table. Next time, say you have three copies, list one for the sure return and hold the others in case something crazy happens (which it did).

Ride the Current Wave on COMC

But what if you didn’t have any Baez in your inventory and you wanted to take advantage of the situation?

My first stop is always COMC, and here’s why:

Instant ownership. Instant sellability.

Now, to first recap my position on Baez, I had already sold my Bowman inventory leading up to the debut.

This was a player I was relatively “late to the party” with. I usually like to keep my 1st Bowman Chrome base auto buys less than $30, but I broke that rule with Baez, realizing I made a mistake in not buying sooner.

I had 8 copies on COMC and because I spent more than I usually do, I was fine with cashing those in as Baez crushed in the minors. These led to about $250 in profit over some months. Fine. Cool. Whatever.

So anyway, I was keeping close tabs on his COMC inventory. I was pretty surprised that the prices the cards started the day at were still sitting untouched two homers in.

I was at Chick-Fil-A with my family and muttering/contemplating out loud whether or not I should grab them.

Internally, I knew I had just built up my bankroll to an amount I wanted and frankly, I didn’t want it to dip back down $300.

Plus, my Spicy Chicken - extra pickles - arrived, so I put the phone down.

We all know where things went from there.

I think yesterday in the chat I blamed my wife for not giving me the green light/encouragement, but that was just me blaming others instead of myself.

Someone grabbed Baez at $159 and resold it at one of the prices below. Someone else then probably resold their copy. And then again. I say “probably” because I don’t know if the chart below reflects the same card being sold or someone listing a new one, etc.

Point being, COMC is the place to take advantage of this situation because we all know what could happen when you buy elsewhere and need to wait for the card to ship:

• Seller could cancel the sale. Happens all the time.

• Card can drop hundreds by the time you receive. Happens all the time.

Joshua Baez is already a much different player than Rece Hinds, but I’m just saying, never forget.

I did end up remembering I grabbed this Prizm /23 auto for $5 not too long ago, so I did have one more tiny COMC win squirreled away:

Buy at Yesterday’s Prices

Anyway, when I finally got home and at a place where I could look at some cards, the hunt was on.

Meaning, while I missed on on the COMC opportunities, I wasn’t going to let the opportunity just float on by without turning over every rock possible to find more deals.

I went through all of the other instant ownerships platforms, just in case:

• Arena Club

• Courtyard

• Alt

• Veriswap

• Fanatics

Not every card listed on these platforms is “instant” transfer of ownership, so be sure you’re utilizing the proper filtering and settings.

I wasn’t surprised to not find any deals.

From there, my Online Card Shop Finder. Again, this is available for all paid members. Simply plug-in the player’s name, the sheet populates search URLs for a number of online sports card shops, open 50 tabs at once, and get to clicking.

I wasn’t expecting to find a ton here. Baez was already a top prospect and a home run leader in the minors. Not many places have stale inventory of such a player.

That said, I made a few purchases.

First up, Walmart. Yes, Walmart.

No idea if this ships and frankly, I’m not expecting it to because it was a “Mascot” listing meaning the seller was probably using Mascot to list the card to multiple platforms. Given I bought this long after history was made, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it sold somewhere else before I found it.

Again, think about the situation. I could have bought a copy on COMC for about $160 while not sure if that was a deal or not (yet) or I could pay around the same amount after the card already blew up to $350-$450.

The result remains to be seen, but worst case I get refunded or I get the card in hand and it has already dropped back down to $150, which I’m not really thinking is going to happen.

I also made a $97 purchase from the Fan Zone for a base chrome (non-auto) and this It Came to the League /25.

A little bit riskier given it’s not a 1st Bowman Chrome auto and if any of his cards are going to not sell as hot, it’s going to start with cards like this, but I still like the risk for a /25 card.

And that’s really the point of all of this.

You’re not going to be holding the right card every time something crazy happens. You’re going to miss buys. You’re going to hesitate. You’re going to watch someone else grab the card you were staring at and flip it for twice as much an hour later.

But that doesn’t mean the opportunity is over.

When something like Baez’s debut happens, there are multiple ways to play it. Sell what you already own. Look for instant inventory that hasn’t caught up yet. Search shops and marketplaces where yesterday’s prices might still be sitting there.

Just keep in mind that the further you get from the actual event, the more the risk changes. Buying a $159 card while the market is exploding is a much different decision than paying $400 after everyone has already seen what happened.

I missed the easiest opportunity yesterday.

So I went looking for the next one.

Now we’ll see if any of these cards actually show up.

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