Rethinking Strategy
The World Series is just barely over (congrats Rangers), but I’ve already shifted to planning and buying for next season. Perhaps now more than any time in the last five years, it is critical to have a plan or strategy in building your collection. On the bright side, it is a buyer’s market and you can get some serious bang for your bucks, on the other hand, if you use the prevailing strategies from just two years ago, you’d quickly go broke as you grade base rookie cards for $15 and flip them for $10. What once worked is now a recipe for disaster.
That means it is time to take a look at my strategies and see which ones still work and which ones need to be tossed out of a window. As always, this is just a thought exercise and not actual financial advice. It’s also worth noting that these are the strategies I use to get a collection I like and not one set to maximize value. With that out of the way, let’s check a few of my normal strategies out and see if I can update my thinking for the 2024 baseball season.
Strategy One: Buy less wax/buy more singles. This is one that is getting stronger in my own habits. I’ve made sort of a hobby resolution to only buy wax that I am sure I’ll enjoy. It doesn’t mean that these products will be profitable, but it means I’ll have fun ripping them and not feel like I got mugged afterwards as is sadly becoming the norm for many products.
It is irritating to see all the “buy singles” comments after anyone posts a question online about what box to buy, but the advice is getting harder to ignore as the gap between the average singles prices for what one can get out of a box and the price of wax has widened. Hitting the big prospect auto in a Bowman product for years has meant that you made a profit off that box if you sold. Now, you can currently get a Sapphire auto of both the big prospects from 2023 Sapphire for less than the price of a box. With economics like that, my wax shopping list has shrunk greatly. I do still plan on buying wax, but I’m much more discriminating than I used to be. This is a strategy I’ll be keeping and expanding.
Strategy Two: Wait. There is a peaky first-to-market premium that can be avoided by waiting three to four weeks after a product’s release before buying cards. This still works, but I’m rethinking this for lower print run cards and smaller releases. Take Topps T206 for example, most rare parallels only showed up once or twice and then in the first week of the release. Waiting three weeks would have meant getting zero cards that I wanted.
This has always been a problem with smaller print run sets, but the availability problem is also creeping into larger releases that aren’t popular in the breaking community. While others denigrate breakers, I love them as they are critical to getting singles into the market. For sets that breakers ignore, cards with print runs under 100 might only pop up on eBay three or four times. I’m keeping this strategy for 2024 but ignoring for things like T206 and also for things like the rarer parallels in Flagship Topps.
Strategy Three: Grade a bunch of stuff. This is the one that has shifted the most. I still like grading cards over $25 that are from popular sets, but even expensive cards from less desirable sets are seeing low er premiums. 9s for many newer cards are now also getting less than raw cards. Where 9s used to mean a small profit or breaking even, they now mean a loss of at least the grading costs and selling fees. As grading prices drop, this is the strategy that will be in flux throughout the year. As it stands, I’ll probably send out a couple of small grading orders throughout the year and any major cards I happen to hit during the year.
The other part of the grading strategy that has changed for me is in using SGC to get those first-to-market premiums. Their $9-a-card specials for many newer releases paired with stupid-fast turnaround times offer collectors a way to profit from grading with lower risk and inflated premiums. I expect I’ll grade fewer cards in 2024 than in 2023 and my grading had already slowed in 2023.
Strategy Four: Pick a few undervalued players to focus on. One thing that hasn’t changed is people are still trying to find those players that are undervalued or about to take off. I’m still doing that, but with card prices dropping, my stable of players is much broader and also more top-heavy than in the past.
There is no need to look for deep sleepers when stars are in the bargain bin. For this offseason, I’ve chosen Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Luis Robert, Bo Bichette, Anthony Volpe, and Triston Casas (a future article will look at these choices). Casas is probably the least-known of these players, but he’s not what I would call a sleeper. I also normally have a young pitcher I’m after, but this year the only pitcher under 30 I like is Spencer Strider who is already priced a bit too high so I’m focusing on Kershaw, Scherzer, and Verlander with a little Gerrit Cole thrown in for good measure. This strategy is one I’m keeping, but I’m not looking as deeply as I used to as the star players are more affordable.
Strategy Five: Buy Rookies. Rookies are still the easiest cards to move and the main focus of most collections. It makes sense. Everyone wants rookies. Not everyone wants inserts and later-year cards. Still, the insert landscape has changed in the last five years though. Panini and Topps are issuing rarer inserts in every product and they have also upped their game in terms of creativity. I’m enjoying the insert renaissance and am mixing it up this year with more non-rookies.
Wrap Up
I’ve rethought a few of my guidelines which I think is a good thing. Keeping abreast of the card market and adjusting strategies according to the circumstances is key in developing a collection one can be proud of. Let me know what strategies you have in the comments.