94 SP Arod

[Peter_Spaeth]

I ran across a couple of these today in PSA 9 on ebay and they are selling for $75. To me that is remarkable, they used to be 300 plus if not more. 600 HR 3000 hits but no.

[swarmee]

Use steroids and your market falls out, because you lose a huge portion of people who originally collected you. Same with McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, etc cards.

Doesn't surprise me in the least.

[almostdone]

I remember meeting a guy at a card show around 2005 who bought every single ne he could for $55 each no matter condition. He thought he could flip them and triple his money by the time ARod retired. Hope he sold them about 6 years ago. At the time I met him he said he had close to 1500 copies.
Drew

[Rookiemonster]

Surprises me ! I wouldn't pay anywhere near that for one. I don't know who's really collecting A Roid.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Tiffany Traded Bonds seem to have come back a long way though.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Tiffany Traded Bonds seem to have come back a long way though.

The 85 Tiffany McGwire has not though.

[Rookiemonster]

1984 fleet update roger Clemens is a good performer. I really want that card but the asking prices always way more then I'm willing to pay.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by almostdone

I remember meeting a guy at a card show around 2005 who bought every single ne he could for $55 each no matter condition....... he said he had close to 1500 copies.
Drew

Wow! By complex mathematic calculations it looks like that's over $82,000 in a single card. Talk about portfolio concentration risk.....

[almostdone]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

Wow! By complex mathematic calculations it looks like that's over $82,000 in a single card. Talk about portfolio concentration risk.....

I remember he as young, ambitious, arrogant and when he walked in to the show every dealer paid attention because he would buy every rookie from the 80's and early 90's you had. If memory serves right I think he was some hot shot attorney with lots of cash to spend.
Drew

[ls7plus]

The problem with A-Roid is not just the steroids, but the fact that he firmly established himself as the most untruthful SOB who ever played major league sports. I sold some of his rare rookies in 2007, and haven't looked back since!

Regards,

Larry

PS: McGwire's regular '85 Topps rookie seems to be on a mission--"10's" are up from around the low $500 range a year ago to $800-$1000 now; and even "9's" are following suit--up from the low $30 range to $55-$65. If you don't care about the steroid issue, he really was quite Bunyonesque.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by almostdone

I remember meeting a guy at a card show around 2005 who bought every single ne he could for $55 each no matter condition. He thought he could flip them and triple his money by the time ARod retired. Hope he sold them about 6 years ago. At the time I met him he said he had close to 1500 copies.
Drew

Sad--reminds me of the local dealer who quite seriously told me he was going to retire on Ken Griffey Jr. Diversification, anyone?

Best wishes,

Larry

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

Sad--reminds me of the local dealer who quite seriously told me he was going to retire on Ken Griffey Jr. Diversification, anyone?

Best wishes,

Larry

If your friend had focused on 89 UD griffey 10s he would have done ok. Maybe not a retirement plan but they've been going up steadily from 200 2-3 years ago to about 400 now. I know there are a lot of them but was the card for collectors who started in that era like myself. No ties to steroids. I think high end griffeys are a good investment personally.

[Duluth Eskimo]

Originally Posted by pokerplyr80

If your friend had focused on 89 UD griffey 10s he would have done ok. Maybe not a retirement plan but they've been going up steadily from 200 2-3 years ago to about 400 now. I know there are a lot of them but was the card for collectors who started in that era like myself. No ties to steroids. I think high end griffeys are a good investment personally.

Ah, none proven. Gained considerable size, body fell apart on him, just got too bulky to be the complete athlete he was in his 20's. I can't buy that no matter how many people say otherwise. Sad thing is, just like Bonds he had so much incredible talent he never needed to do it.

[WillBBC]

I had an aunt that dated a scout for the Twins through the late 80s and early 90s. He had me so sold on both Rick Ankiel and JD Drew simply because he was a scout/insider that I bought in as much as I could making minimum wage in Jersey in 1999/2000.

I was told Drew's cards would put me through college.

They did not.

At all.

[WillBBC]

Meanwhile, a PSA 9 SP Jeter rookie went for over $3000 last night. Couldn't believe that 8s are routinely 250-300 now.

Unreal.

[packs]

Originally Posted by Duluth Eskimo

Ah, none proven. Gained considerable size, body fell apart on him, just got too bulky to be the complete athlete he was in his 20's. I can't buy that no matter how many people say otherwise. Sad thing is, just like Bonds he had so much incredible talent he never needed to do it.

I don't really think he gained considerable size at all. Griffey was bloated, as in an out of shape old dude, by the end of his career. Listed at 195 in 1989 and 230 in 2010. That's 30 pounds in 20 years, and I would not call his 230 "muscular".

[Tradegeek]

I agree re: ARod

McGwire will be forever linked to steroids. But he was always considered a nice guy. One of the bash brothers. There is some nostalgia there.

ARod is like Bonds. They are guys that put up historic numbers. Otherwise I don't see people getting teary eyed and nostalgic about them. For the Yankees those fans have Jeter and Rivera for that era. I don't think he really has a team that considers him "their" guy.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Tradegeek

I agree re: ARod

McGwire will be forever linked to steroids. But he was always considered a nice guy. One of the bash brothers. There is some nostalgia there.

ARod is like Bonds. They are guys that put up historic numbers. Otherwise I don't see people getting teary eyed and nostalgic about them. For the Yankees those fans have Jeter and Rivera for that era. I don't think he really has a team that considers him "their" guy.

I can see that.

I'm a Red Sox fan, and while I disliked the hype over Jeter on occasion he and Rivera were hard to dislike (unless they were beating the Sox then it was easy ) Arod wasn't really a player I liked. When everyone was upset about the deal to bring him to Boston getting cancelled, I was quite happy. Great numbers, but always seemed to make the teams he went to worse.

Steve B

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by pokerplyr80

If your friend had focused on 89 UD griffey 10s he would have done ok. Maybe not a retirement plan but they've been going up steadily from 200 2-3 years ago to about 400 now. I know there are a lot of them but was the card for collectors who started in that era like myself. No ties to steroids. I think high end griffeys are a good investment personally.

If you think 3-4% compounded annually is a good investment. Over one million printed plus more gems for Upper Deck employees. Just way, way too many. An iconic card? Yes. A good investment? Don't bet the farm (or even a small, backyard vegetable garden) on it. 3-4% may even be highly optimistic in a true COLLECTOR'S MARKET, not a speculative, investor's--that would mean its value would double every 18-24 years. There's still a lot of pack-fresh, ungraded one's out there.

Best of luck in your collecting,

Larry

[pokerplyr80]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

If you think 3-4% compounded annually is a good investment. Over one million printed plus more gems for Upper Deck employees. Just way, way too many. An iconic card? Yes. A good investment? Don't bet the farm (or even a small, backyard vegetable garden) on it. 3-4% may even be highly optimistic in a true COLLECTOR'S MARKET, not a speculative, investor's--that would mean its value would double every 18-24 years. There's still a lot of pack-fresh, ungraded one's out there.

Best of luck in your collecting,

Larry

To be fair you never said when your friend made the decision to invest in griffey. It's pretty difficult to calculate an annual rate of return without that information. They have gone up about 100% in the last 3 years which is a decent rate of return.

I'm not personally betting the farm on them, I have 2 PSA 10 griffeys in my personal collection, along with a few of his other less expensive rookies. One I picked up for 200, and the other I pulled a couple of weeks later from one of those leaf best of baseball boxes. I do believe they're still buys at current prices. But if they go up to a grand or more, or drop back to 200 or less, they will stay in my collection as 89 was my first year collecting as a kid and griffey was my favorite player. I always wanted one back then, even ripped open a few packs trying to find one but never did at the time.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by pokerplyr80

If your friend had focused on 89 UD griffey 10s he would have done ok. Maybe not a retirement plan but they've been going up steadily from 200 2-3 years ago to about 400 now. I know there are a lot of them but was the card for collectors who started in that era like myself. No ties to steroids. I think high end griffeys are a good investment personally.

Not even close. Until the recent investment market, PSA gem mint "10's" were going in the $300 range in June, 2016. That represents little, if any, real change in the true collector market from the August, 2009 SMR, which had them at $240. Since SMR is and has been traditionally low, it is a fair assumption that real sales SEVEN YEARS AGO were at or approaching $300. Disregarding the recent investment surge, which most real collectors can see is most likely unsustainable, the real increase in value of this card OVER THE LAST SEVEN YEARS AS A MATTER OF ACTUAL FACT WAS ABOUT 10-25%. 10-25%, not annually, BUT TOTAL. Should it return to that pace, which when the investors leave is probably quite likely, that means it will take the card 28 years or more to achieve a real doubling in value. That rate of appreciation is less than 3% compounded annually. I wouldn't bet the farm (and I own one) on it being a good investment with that track record!

But to each his own and best of luck to you,

Larry

PS: The Winter 2007 edition of Beckett's Graded Card Investor & Price Guide, which I found to be as up to date as was reasonably possible while it was being published, listed the PSA 10 Griffey, Jr. at $350. Hence, the card basically flat-lined for 9 YEARS until it's recent run-up this past summer. That run-up to about $450 was due either to the recent influx of investor types, or to what is most likely a temporary surge due to his hall of fame induction this year. At any rate, the rate of appreciation for the last 9 years has been just 2.3% compounded annually, lower than even I would have guessed. But completely understandable, with probably little more than a tenth of what's out there having been graded by PSA, and over 27,000 "8"'s, over 20,000 "9"'s, and 2717 "10"'s already graded. Simply stated, there are not only just too many of them already, but likely a supply that will be increasing for some time to come.