I’m not a huge proponent of buying prospect cards to sell at a later date. Some call this prospecting, some might call it short-term trading. In any case, it’s very hit or miss. You can spend a ton of time researching prospects, invest a bunch of money in their cards, and they still might not pan out.
There was a very interesting post on SportsCardForum recently though, that caught my eye. It dealt with when to sell prospect’s cards. I don’t want to take from the post itself, but the guys were basically talking about doing your research and making the decision for yourself on when and what cards to sell.
To that end, I was thinking about what resources were out there to do some research on prospects. These are just a few of the places I thought would be helpful.
MLB.com This site is cool because if you click on the link for each prospect, you’ll find a cool little video snippet.
If you have any other sites you use for finding baseball prospects, feel free to share with the rest of the readers here. Thanks.
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Go by this rule: If you’ve heard of the player through ESPN, and he hasn’t played a single game at the major league level, SELL!
Of course, it’s also often too late by that point. I don’t know man, looking at baseball cards as an investment is kinda silly – you will very rarely, if ever, get any sort of “return” on what you spend. Sure, I’ve got a bunch of cards I could sell in desperate times, but nothing I could really live off of. Think of all the people sitting on stacks of Travis Lee and Jose Cruz Jr cards – the window of opportunity to “cash in” is SO small it’s nearly non-existent.
Kind of a rambling two cents, but I just wanted to share my thoughts! If you’re trying to see who’s legit and who isn’t, make sure to look past the glamor numbers and pay attention to things like batting average on balls in play, strikeout to walk ratio, and stuff like that. Those are much more telling of a guys overall skill as opposed to luck. Calvin Pickering hit a ton of homers in the minors but was never a serious prospect…
Hey Joe, thanks for the comment, and you’re right on the money, as far as most are concerned. I agree that looking at prospect baseball cards as an investment is kinda silly. (Kind of like investing in IPOs on the stock market as a blind strategy might be.) But….investing in high quality, high demand baseball cards of Hall of Fame players, or future Hall of Fame players, isn’t so silly. If you think there will be future demand, and inflation, then it might be a good investment. If you look at the amount of people collecting in the hobby today, and expect that will continue over time, then making an investment in a PSA 10 graded card of a future Hall of Famer might not be a bad move. Just like the stock market, or any market, it’s all about not overpaying for what you see as the card’s current “value”. Anyway, sorry for the long ramble here, but thanks for your comment Joe and for checking out Card Collector Universe.