Two Rookies in Search of a Card

Ben Rice mania is in full swing. The Yankees rookie hit three home runs in a game and collectors absolutely love that. David Fry is another rookie making a name for himself with his first All-Star selection. Great. Time to go hunting rookie cards. Normally, this would be the time I’d caution about hype and timing and I’ll do that later, but there’s something different about these two: they don’t have pack-issued rookies yet. In an era of overproduction, collectors are faced with scarcity for the first time in a while. How will they react? By losing their dang minds, that’s how.

Two Hot Rookies, Almost No Cards

Rice may not have any pack-issued cards yet but does have a single Topps Now card already out. The parallels for his Topps Now #313 have hit as high as $1500 (and looking to go even higher judging by current auctions) and the base version has settled down to $50. $50 is a ton for a Topps Now rookie. Only Ohtani cards and a few exceptions command that much from the Topps Now line.

$1500? Topps Now? 25-year-old rookie? Outside of some of the autographed relics, the idea of a Topps Now card hitting $1500 is a strange one. This is what happens when collectors can’t immediately get the cards they want though. When faced with scarcity, they throw as much money as they can at the next best thing. FOMO is working overtime here.

Fry is a little different. He’s got cards. Actually he’s got card. Fry has but only a single card featuring the rookie shield. Topps included Fry in last year’s RC Debut Patch Auto set. That means he has a single 2023 card that is his only rookie. Even crazier, his only rookie is a 1/1. He wasn’t included in other sets and his 2024 cards lack the rookie shield because he was in a 2023 set even though it was for just a single card. We harp about how this player has 3000 rookies and here we have an All-Star with a single solitary rookie card. Collectors will have to keep calm and just accept the 2024 cards as rookies despite the comforting presence of the rookie shield.

Hobby Prospects

Ok. It’s neat they don’t have rookies. Here’s where I tell you to pump the breaks and avoid the hype. The long-term prospects of these guys is just about as close to zero as you can get and that’s due to their age. Rice is 25 and Fry is 28. It's hardly time to put them out to pasture, but they are ancient in terms of rookies. Since 1960, only one hitter who debuted at 25 or older has made the HOF, Ichiro Suzuki and he was under 20 when he debuted in Japan. To have hobby appeal, these guys are going to have to do what no player has done in over sixty years.

MLB players not on a path to the HOF have little to no hobby value for the most part. Both can have productive baseball careers, but those betting on them having hobby value are likely to be disappointed. The only non-PED stars not in the HOF to have major hobby appeal (with apologies to players like Will Clark and mark Grace) are Dale Murphy and Bo Jackson. Jackson was the best athlete on the planet and Murphy belongs in the HOF and collectors know it. It’s basically HOF or bust for hobby value.

Simply put, for either of these guys to make a mark in the hobby they will have to do something unprecedented, make the HOF as a hitter with a late debut age. That’s a lot to ask from players not even at the top of their own team’s Minor League rankings. With the late start, these guys will have to put up multiple years like Pujols, Trout, Griffey, or Bonds. Even Jeff Bagwell levels of production won’t be enough for them.

Topps Now 

It's also worth discussing Topps Now cards as that is all Rice will have for a bit. I love the cards. They are secretly some of the best-quality cards on the market. They just don’t hold value. You can pick up a Topps Now rookie of any of the stars from 2016 onwards for far less than most of their other rookies. Even the parallels are staggeringly cheap for the most part. When Rice gets cards in Update and other sets, collectors will forget all about the Topps Now card and chase the more-established product lines.

But the Rice card is his first and thus special, right? Nope. The same thing happened last year with Seiya Suzuki. He got off to a hot start but only had a single Topps Now card available. The parallels went nuclear and the base cards jumped to $50. Those cards could be had a year later for $3 delivered. The fact they were his first has long been forgotten.

Topps has upped their game with Now this year including better parallels and variations. There is more excitement around the brand. It’s possible that Rice’s success will be the culmination of Topps Now having a moment in the hobby. I don’t buy it and think you’ll be able to find Rice’s Topps Now #313 for under $10 within a year.

As for Fry, he’s 28. That’s really enough analysis. His lack of rookies will be a neat bit of card trivia but that’s it. I could see his 1/1 rookie being the kind of thing deep pocked Topps completionists fight over though so I wouldn’t be shocked to see that card hit some lofty heights if it surfaces.

Wrap Up

Next week we’ll move from talking about a couple of guys with not enough cards to a few guys with way too many. As always, let me know what you think in the comments.