Dusting Off the Investment Corner

First Up: the Hall of Fame Class of 2025

One early feature of the Market Report newsletter that has been dormant for a while is the Investment Corner.

As a refresher, that involved me picking a theme each month and then fake-buying cards of players who fit that theme. The rules were:

• I didn’t actually buy the cards but rather chose from real “sold” listings on eBay.

• I could faux spend about $1000 each time around.

• I would check back a year later to see how my picks were doing.

With a new year upon us (and already a sixth of the way behind us!), I thought it might be time to dust this baby off and take it for another whirl.

For now, I’m not committing to a schedule for these, and the format might change. Also, I’m definitely still not actually buying these cards. Remember, this is cardboard we’re talking about, so any money you or I drop into cards should be for pleasure only.

This is all just for fun, in other words. It’s not investment advice.

All that said, this time around, I decided to “buy” some cards of players who will appear on the 2025 Hall of Fame ballot in December 2024 and January 2025.

Note: When you click on links to various merchants in this newsletter (and in the discussion below) and make a purchase, this can result in this newsletter earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Here are my picks…

1993 BBM Ichiro Suzuki (#239) PSA 9 - $455.77

Could be a unanimous first-ballot pick, and this an early card from his legendary career in Japan. Hard to see this one ever going down relative to the rest of the market.

1999 Bowman Chrome C.C. Sabathia (#344) PSA 10 - $166

The mythos seems to be growing around Sabathia as his first year on the ballot approaches. An easy election appears more and more likely with a fairly light crop of alternatives around him.

1995 Bowman Andruw Jones (#23) PSA 10 - $220

Jones only increased his vote share by 3% from 2023 to 2024, but with Gary Sheffield and Todd Helton out of the way, he figures to gain more attention. So do his cards.

2002 Bowman Chrome David Wright (#) BGS 9.5/Auto 10 - $105.01

Wright sort of surprisingly captured 6% of the Cooperstown vote this year and thus lives to see another ballot. If he gains any traction, his New York ties could mean renewed interest in his card.

1994 Flair Alex Rodriguez (#340) PSA 10 - $49

This is my obligatory Pariah Pick. A-Rod isn’t likely to get his plaque any time soon, but if he starts climbing a bit in the vote after three years around 35%, there could be some room in his early cards.

—

That’s a $995.78 spend overall with $4.22 left over for a stomach pump after I chew my next batch of 1978 O-Pee-Chee orange bubble gum.

If I keep this series going, or even if I don’t, I’m thinking I might pull my picks into a spreadsheet/database and keep track of them there rather than rewrite about the old stuff every month.

At any rate, let me know if you like this type of content and how you’d like to see it play out.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam