Boredom and "Investing" in Trading Cards

I’ve never been one to purchase trading cards with the intent of making an investment. That being said, it’s hard to not get caught up in the current hype surrounding the hobby. This is what collectors were dreaming of back in the 80s and 90s when they were squirreling away rookie cards.

Thanks to multiple posts on Twitter, I signed up for the lottery and was selected to purchase a box of Topps Chrome Ben Baller edition. He’s one of the best artists in Topps Project 2020 and his take on this year’s Chrome design looked great. The inserts looked even better than the base cards. Given that the cards looked great, the hobby was booming, and this release was most likely going to be limited, I figured that I would grab a box.

 

Mongomery Club members started getting their boxes… Boxes were selling for around $600 on eBay. Other people start posting that they had received their boxes on Twitter… Boxes were now selling for around $500 on Twitter. By the time that I finally received my box, they were selling for just over $400 on eBay and the larger online retailers were selling boxes for around $450. While a profit of $100+ after eBay fees for not doing much of anything isn’t something to sneeze at, it just didn’t appeal to me. So, I put the box away thinking that I might do something with it if the supply dried up and prices started to creep back up. Yeah, right...

 

Here’s where the boredom part of the post title comes into play. I was bored one night and looking for something to do, typical pandemic blues, and the unopened box caught my eye. Given the rookies that are available in the set, the inserts, the parallels, and the autographs, I figured that I should be able to easily pull $250 worth of cards out of the box. That was all of the justification that my weak will required and wrappers started flying.

 

 

The only rookie of note that I got was Luis Robert, but I got two of them. The collation on this stuff is terrible. Not 2020 Stadium Club terrible, but close.

 

I got ’85 inserts of Bo Bichette and Keston Hiura. Gavin Lux was my diamond insert. I pulled Andrew Heaney and Charlie Blackmon /99, Dylan Cease /75, Blake Snell /50, Nolan Arenado /25, oh and this...

 

 

While this isn’t super limited, the /75 blue Mookie Betts is easily his best looking parallel. The blue background makes this image of Mookie in his Dodgers uniform pop. Since looking at Mookie in anything other than a Red Sox uniform is too painful to bear, this card was on it’s way to eBay.

 

Opening a box of cards is always fun, but there was one card that made the box more than worth opening though.

 

 

Nico Hoerner Superfractor 1/1. I’ve pulled 1/1 cards before, but this was my first Superfractor. (Little did I know that my second one would come a little over a week later.) There was no doubt that this card was going to eBay. I’ve got a fairly focused collection and this card doesn’t fit into it. This card alone would definitely cover what I paid for the box and that’s good enough for me.