Given the recent release of Bowman 2012, there is a lot to talk about. Let me get one thing out of the way before I begin– a sincere apology for no posts in such a long time. I’ve had my hands full with our first child, a boy, and life is just now starting to get into a routine. Other than the lack of sleep, I must say, life is great!
So on the morning of May 9th, my co-author RyanW and I headed over to the card shop to bust open 4 jumbo boxes of the new Bowman Baseball. He pulled a Rendon Refractor (now selling around $60-$80), a Matt Purke Refractor, and a Darvish base (non-auto) along with several other mid-tier autos in the mix. I pulled a Matt Moore black auto, Tommy Joseph Refractor auto, a Josh Bell auto, and an Aroldis Chapman Red Ice (cool card but not worth all that much). While I won’t be making my money back anytime soon, it was awesome. Meanwhile, another guy in the store was busting open case of Jumbo’s and pulled a Purple Refractor (#/10) Rendon auto . This same card sold last Friday for $480, which I have to believe is undervalued. If you haven’t busted a Jumbo box yet, go try it out – it’s a rush!
Although the new chrome release was May 9th, the good news is that you are still very early in the “prospectors cycle” in terms of buying cheap and selling for a profit. See our post last January on “Card Shows, a Prospectors Dream!” covering the Buy, Grade, Sell methodology for an intro how to turn prospects into profits. Many of ya’ll know about the Group A through Group D releases (with Group D being the cards with the lowest odds of hitting). We’re going to try to shed some light on this and how it should influence your purchasing in the months following a release. Also, over the coming months, we will be covering “tips” that we have learned about the grading process in an effort to inform our readers on how to better “pre-grade” cards before submission. This will include how much weight is put on the various grading criteria as well as other subjective considerations that graders must make, in light of specific circumstances.
I’m sure many of our readers want to know who we recommend buying and those recommendations will be coming out over the coming weeks and months. Clearly, Darvish is the fan favorite and why not. We recommended months ago to wait until this release before buying Darvish Auto’s and now it appears that his card prices are that of Harper, if not more. Is he a buy? Well, maybe. Everyone knows how nasty his stuff is but does it justify somewhere between $700 and $1,000 for a blue? You’ve got to have nerves of steel before making that sizeable offer. We’ll be covering that issue in more detail soon.
Other players that are sure to be creating a stir include Gerrit Cole, Oscar Taveras, Anthony Rendon, Dante Bichette Jr., Josh Bell, Matt Purke, Brandon Jacobs and Danny Hultzen. This list is nowhere near complete but it gets some of the novices to the hobby some names to be thinking about.
If you have a second, write us with your questions about players you’re thinking about and I’ll try to get you some answers. We’re ramping up our posts in the coming weeks and months and will try our best to share our tips. Please share our page with friends and join us on Twitter and Facebook. As always, happy prospecting.
3 comments
Adam
May 16, 2012 at 5:05 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I try to stay away from new releases until prices normalize, but I couldn’t help myself and ended up winning an auction for a red ref auto of Tyler Collins for what I thought was a nice price. From the little I’ve found on the kid, it seems like he’s a real sleeper prospect in 2012 Bowman… I can’t find a negative write-up on him anywhere. Curious what your thoughts are on Collins. Keep up the good work, as always.
Dave
November 23, 2012 at 6:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
i’m looking for pricing on a 2012 bowman chrome Alen Hanson 1/1 Superfractor…non auto. Corners look good. very good condition. I’m looking to sell on ebay.
RyanW
November 27, 2012 at 4:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
http://www.pulledsuperfractorslist.com/