Paul Skenes Superfractor Ends in Goldin
 

Paul Skenes 1 of 1 Bowman Chrome Superfractor Auto ended tonight in Goldin Auctions at a touch over $80,000. I think it was a good price for the buyer. Investing in Pitchers is risky nowadays but Skenes looks like the real deal.
A Trout Superfractor sold for 3.9 Million a few years back.

He's pitched 4 games. Think it might be a bit early?

LOL just a smidge.

I got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. Modern pitchers never hold much value, even great ones. Even if he goes on to the HOF, it will lose value. He has to be one of the absolute greatest pitchers of all time (and probably on a different team) for that card to have a shot at being worth $80K in 10-15 years. Buying at the peak of a hype train for a rookie is rarely a good buy.

I'd be exhilarated if that was my consignment. And I would be hoping it gets paid for.

This card will turn over like a hot potato until someone gets burned

Sold for 10k less than the recent sale of an Sgc 4 1914 Cracker Jack Joe Jackson.

Just sayin'...

A mere 2.9 million for a Jordan.

https://goldin.co/item/2003-04-upper...JkSW5kZXgiOjF9

I can’t imagine paying that much for any card, but certainly not a card that is only graded “authentic”. Only the autograph is graded a 10.

It's the only one so I guess it doesn't matter. Not sure they even give these number grades.

Would you rather have the Jordan 1/1 or this (along with a nice beach house to put it in):

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...b806b7e054.jpg


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I would definitely rather have the Jordan than the Wagner

If you have 3 million to spend on Jordan, you probably don't need to make choices like that.

Nowhere is the greater fool theory proven more than modern sports cards

You and me both

Obviously, a 4 game sample is nothing. But there are other very good reasons to believe that Paul Skenes is in fact the real deal. His strikeout numbers at every level are extraordinary. And he's hitting 102 on the gun as a starter. The gun is virtually unhittable. He very well might be the best pitcher on the planet right now.

Skenes is the highest profile rookie pitcher since Stephen Strasburg and before him probably Mark Prior. Both are great illustrations of the risk. Both were elite pitchers and likely could have made the HOF if injuries had not interfered. The concern is the same with Skenes. I hope for his sake and for baseball that he does not get injured, but I am certainly not confident he will avoid injury.

If Skenes has a ROY season the buyer can probably double the investment. If Skenes can win a CY in the next few years the buyer can probably count on the same outcome, if not more.

Tim Lincecum was great once. He was a top-10 overall minor league prospect when he broke into the bigs. He won CY a couple years in a row at ages 24 and 25. He had a couple more good years and the rest of his short career was about as remarkable as a middle-rotation starter.

Considering these 2 scenarios, if the buyer is in it to flip it, it's not a bad gamble even if it is a gamble. If he's in it to get a future HOF'r or a player with an otherwise notable career then that's a hell of a gamble the buyer is playing.

Hell, in this era you gotta cross your fingers and hope they're not into roids, inappropriate sex, or beating women as well as any talent that might fail.

Who lol

Curt Schilling, whose baseball intelligence I respect greatly, posted on FB recently that he thought Skenes would need Tommy John within 400 innings of his major league debut. Just a note from a pitcher who should be in the HOF

Rich

+1

It’s blasphemy on a vintage card forum and goes against everything I believe as a vintage collector, but from an investment standpoint:

It took only 21 years for Jordan’s to eclipse $2MM+ vs. 100+ years for Wagner. It’s a 1/1 vs Wagner is 1/60+. As Jordan ages and passes on, he’ll become more mythical like our beloved vintage baseball pioneers and will have a very big market of buyers in the next 50-100 years.

Wasn’t Steven Strasberg hitting 102 also?
Shit happens. A lot of it for pitchers.

Looks like it's graded a 7 to me, not just Authentic. I agree with some others that if the buyer bought it to flip it, then they have a good chance at making a profit on this one. But only in the short term. Long term, it's going to tank. Pitchers always do in the modern market.



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Dude can hope to one day win an award named after this guy, whose true 1 of 1 rookie I would rather own (actually now do own) for 5x the cost of the 1 of 1 Bowman Chrome superfractor Skenes that also sold last night

+1

Skenes may need to outperform Kershaw, Verlander and Scherzer to retain value. Probably would have to be tue 2nd coming of Nolan Ryan as a no-hitter/strikeout machine.

Wow! Congrats, Ryan!

Skenes
 

Yikes! 80k for a guy who has pitched 4 games. Think of a) the cards you
could buy for 80k that dust that card's drawers or b) any other thing you
could buy as an investment or to make you happy, or both, for 80k. That
would be an awfully LONG list for me. No bueno. Trent King

Jesus, that's more than my house.

Skenes card
 

These manufactured rarities constitute for me the sports card industry's version of gambling with their inserts of "pull-cards". Buy a case and hope to pull a winning lottery ticket. This evokes for me the recent NFT craze, the intrinsic allure of which, other than making a score, I don't fully understand.

I have nothing against this. I myself buy an occasional lottery ticket. Each to his own.

His quote was about the Jordan auto card, not the Skenes.

Great card, Ryan. Congrats!

I can think of a lot of cool things I could buy with $80k, and Paul Skenes isn't even on the radar for 1/20th of that.

Nothing to add to this thread other than, "congratulations Ryan"! Pure gold....

Aaah, thanks for clarifying. :)



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Thanks all. No doubt it’s a super expensive card. But the Skenes is also super expensive at $80k, and I don’t understand the rationale of how a player who has literally accomplished nothing and has a micro-chance of being good enough to be mentioned with Cy Young, can sell for this price in comparison.

Otoh
 

Who would not want a card of his girlfriend! She is a 1/1

Two words come to mind for me……Kerry Wood

Ben McDonald. Todd Van Poppel. Rick Ankiel.

That's a provocative thing for Schilling to say, and for you.

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Kershaw, Verlander and Scherzer are probably all in the discussion as all-time greats, what are their most valuable rookies? I bet it's less than $80k.

To make it a fair assesment, they must have 1 of 1 signed rookie cards

Schilling may not have realized that Skenes started pitching his junior year in high school and it was quite limited until LSU. Pitching is his newest position and anything in his favour is that he had very limited use of his arm. But anything can happen. His supposed to be battery mate, Endy Rodriquez, threw out his arm in the offseason and needed TJ surgery.

Skenes played in the field between starts at Air Force in 2022, and won the John Olerud award as college's best two-way player.

He was the 17th pitcher to be selected #1 in the MLB draft. Here are the first sixteen:

Clyde, Bannister, Moore, Belcher, Benes, Mcdonald, Taylor, Wilson, Benson, Anderson, Burlington, Hochevar, Strassburg, Cole, Appel, Mize.

How many of them will make the Hall of Fame? How many do you even know their first names?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...ll_draft_picks

I think he will last more than 400 innings, but I agree it's a long shot for him to be an all-time great.

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That list seems incomplete. Ben McDonald was first overall in 1989.

If you can go back far enough into the archives of Net54, I remember an identical thread to this one, relating to Stephen Strasburg and his first major manufactured rarity that sold for some incredible amount back then...but would likely be considered peanuts today for a similar prospect.

Crazy how fast time goes by.

This is a game, just like NFT's, Most types of Crypto, Gambling and Penny Stocks to the people who are willing to shell out money like this.

Of course it's all short term, because long term makes no sense.

He'd have to be "Generational" in all caps, for it to make sense. Not just a multiple Cy Young Award winner, but GENERATIONAL.

Just picking two names off the top of my head...Johan Santana won 2 Cy Youngs by the age of 27...and Bret Saberhagen won 2 Cy Youngs by the age of 25...somebody already mentioned Lincecum.

Not my business though. Somebody's going to make money on this card, somebody's going to lose money on this card, and the wealth will just be redistributed among the economy, and the auction house will get their vig, whether the card loses money or makes money for somebody else. ;)

Does make me wonder...if Clemens (without the PEDs), or Randy Johnson, or Pedro Martinez had ones of ones in their rookie era days...what might they be worth?

Rationale? The lure of the unknown is no doubt very powerful. Visions of sugar plum fairies and all that. The book on the aforementioned players has already been written.

BTW, I attended the first MLB games of both McDonald and Stasburg. Well, we know what happened. The moral of the story - as a previous poster opined, sell’em while they’re hot!

They all do. Verlander's 2005 Topps Chrome has an auto superfractor. Kershaw had one in 2006. I think that Scherzer's Red 1/1 parallel of 2008 Bowman Draft would have been autographed, but I haven't seen it.

I wouldnt spend this money on a pitcher but he will have an opportunity to sell this for a quick profit (A 20k game, a no hitter) etc.
Skenes is fun to watch and the hype is huge. MLB network carried his debut.
The kid seems like a good kid- wish him well.

I doubt he would talk about things he is not well informed about.

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Oops, fixed.

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Imagine if he has the rookie season of Mark Fidrych...

He may well see something in his mechanics.

Or Doc Gooden.

But Gooden had a pretty good(en) hahaha, 10 year run (154-81, 3.04 ERA) while Fidrych was arguably done after his fantastic rookie year.

If Skenes is the next Gooden, that card retains / gains value for awhile, if he is the next Fidrych, then bicycle spokes await considerably sooner...

Similarity scores for Fidrych are Satchel Paige his rookie year, then Gus Krock the next.

Gooden has Kid Nichols, Drysdale, Clemens, Verlander in his as he gets older

Personally, I wouldn't want to own either (meaning I had to pay for it--a gift is OK). I'd rather have a card of Gil on the Yankees than that guy. As for the Young it is an early photograph of Cy Young, not, in my mind, a baseball card. Do we even know if its issuance was related to baseball? I'd MUCH MUCH rather own the Just So.

Fair enough, although in context I still consider Gooden as a huge bust relative to his beginning and otherworldly talent.

100% agreed, I'm just saying he had a "career" while Fidrych only graced us with a season. Poor guy. Still a legend.

For 80K you could buy a solid group of five vintage cards in lower grades and still have money to spare. Modern continues to boggle my mind. Even more so the fact that he's a pitcher. He can easily go the way of Strasburg, or Lincecum, have multiple dominant seasons and then fall off the rails due to injuries.

Nobody is buying this for his collection, it's just a commodity to try to flip at the right time. It feels too early to me even for that, but then again I don't have four social media accounts, three devices, endless t shirts or a three day growth of beard and a backwards ball cap.

Peter,

I fully know that, and I hate that part of the hobby has essentially turned into some gamified version of the stock market.

I don't consider it a part of the hobby, it is it's own entity.

When Upper Deck perfected the chase card in 1989 (or was it 1990) it caused me to mostly stop buying cards in packs, and aimed me backwards (more than I had been), so I thank them for helping me accumulate a lot of cool old stuff, most of which isn't worth much, but sure is fun.

As an example, I discovered a new Bobby Doerr m114 variation today. Woohoo!

Greater fool theory.

I think 1991 was the first autograph inserts but may be recalling wrong.

Remember Jasson Dominquez hadn't even played a major league game and his stuff was selling for crazy money years ago. He still hasn't played a major league game and if called up to the Yankees tomorrow, he would be a bench player.


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He did play in 8 ML games last year. Hit 4 HR. So he is on the way!!

In the absence of a quick and profitable flip, a single injury will quickly turn a jewel buyer into a fool buyer. And that scenario is exponentially more likely to happen when the player is a pitcher.

That was last year though. Long after his cards were selling for thousands. I'm talking about back then, he hadn't played a single ML game yet.

ETA: sorry, I did misspeak when I said he still hasn't played a ML game. My bad. But regarding his cards selling for so much, that was before that. :rolleyes:;)



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Wander Franco was hyped to the moon, stars and sun long before he played his first game. That worked out well.

The reason I don't collect much new stuff is because it's not just gambling now (and for years), it's massively skewed toward gambling. I buy a few packs or blasters a year...sometimes a hobby box.

Even simple entry-level product like flagship Topps, you're looking at $90+ for a hobby box and you're going to need 2 of them to get most of the set complete, and that's just for 1 of the 2 series. You're better off waiting for the compete set to be sold at less cost than even a single hobby box if you're just in it for the cards.

Some people don't even save base. They toss everything but the hits and maybe save some of the current hot RCs.

I leave the busting of packs to others and fill my personal collection with singles. The tipping point between the fun of putting together a set vs the cost to do it is way out of whack to the point it's not fun.

I'm near positive a scout called him a cross between Bo Jackson, Mickey Mantle and Mike Trout. I'll believe it, when I see it.

Really hope he stays healthy. His power and movement is just filthy. Fun to watch.

See the following:

Kerry Wood

Walker Buehler

Steven Strasburg


Steve

Fidrych was even better his second season before getting hurt. He had a 1.70 ERA and was 5 innings deep into a shutout when he got hurt. After that, he was finished.

Fidrych found out years later he had a torn rotator cuff.

Not that it matters but I am quite confident that Kershaw and Verlander's Bowman Chrome Auto 1/1's are worth well north of $80K. Possibly north of $500K.

Not that it makes the Skenes purchase more likely to look like a good deal in 5 years from now.

That's pretty funny because I was thinking the exact same thing when I was watching him lol. He whips that elbow pretty ferociously.

I just watched some clips, not that I am an expert in pitching mechanics, but it sure looks that way. He doesn't seem to me (amateur assessment to be sure) to be getting enough drive from his legs.

80K for a card of a rookie pitcher? That’s ridiculous.

You lost me at "superfractor"...; I gather that is some form of shiny crap?

I'm holding out for the "SuperDuperFractor".

Just wait until you learn about the TacoFractor.

(it's a real thing)