Quote:
Originally Posted by Snapolit1
Hype machine on this kid has been off the charts for a while. "The Martian"
May turn out to be a very nice player. May not. Mets had a five tool phenom a few years ago Fernando Martinez who was supposed to the second coming of Willie Mays. Didn't work out too well. Sure fans of other teams can easily pull up their own examples.
What doesn't make sense to me about this is Juan Soto has turned into an amazing player. Has established himself as a bona fide superstar. Would his 1/1/ refractor today sell for this much? I guess maybe. How much could this card really appreciate. If he turns into the next Mickey Mantle in two years is this going to be worth more than a Honus Wagner card all of a sudden? Just don't understand the investment thesis here. And it's an investment nothing else. Whoever paid this likely has never see the kid take a swing.
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I agree with what you say, Steve, and I would add that while the purchasers of these modern sportscards try and present themselves as investors and their six digit prospect cards and break slots as shrewd investments, it's much less "Gordon Gekko" or "Goldman Sachs" and much more like degenerate gambling for greedy adrenaline junkies. The card is no different to them than a slip from a sports book or a hand in a poker game. They hold and wait for some morsel of hype that will induce the next guy to pay more, hoping at the next hype nugget, he can find the next man to pay more. And this game continues, as Dennis Reynolds said in one great episode of Sunny in Philly, "until it just, sort of, ends."
On its face, the notion that the card of someone who never has taken a swing in the majors costs more than the cards of icons of the game, it is sheer lunacy-- it is the economics of this high stakes gambling game the participants play, the agreed-upon ante amongst them, that results in these sky high prices for these cards. Because it surely has zero to do with achievement on the field or even potential at these numbers, relative to what cards of the true greats cost.