I never thought this would happen to Me

 

I am collecting Super Short Prints now. I have mixed feelings about this, although I quite enjoy owning that there newest edition to the collection.

Collecting expensive Baseball Cards has generally been off limits to me. Not just due to financial limitations, but personal ones, on the decision making between spending money on Entertainment, vs. other life choices.

I finally admitted this to myself a little over a year ago, when I deliberately purchased some SSPs, which is somewhat different than stumbling across an exceptionally good deal for one, which is always tremulous, when collecting Baseball Cards — all the marketing phrases hit you simultaneously: "limited time offer," "act fast," etc. You know they are true because - other people collect the exact same Baseball Cards you desire.

Along the way recently I have had some successes with this always-sure-to-be-very-difficult collecting goal, and some setbacks, too. So I thought I would pass along a few experiences that could possibly help someone else ooohhhhhing and ahhhhing those partially wonderful /25 Baseball Cards.

One of those has happened 3 years/times now - December seems like a key month to have a good amount of bummin'-around-money set aside, absolutely ready for that rare card to suddenly ping your ebay search that has never pinged before. It seems logical that the Christmas season is a likely time for a card owner to decide it's time to generate a little extra cash. It also seems like there will be fewer buyers to compete with, this time of year.

That Aaron card there is from 2013 Update, and specifically the SSP checklist; I think Update may have been the product that first introduced the concept of 2 levels of short printed image variations. It was my introduction to the infernal concept anyway.

I truly lusted after that card in particular because of the workings of a card back text feature, "The Chase," about a player's chances of becoming one of Baseball's "All Time" leaders in a given statistic. And it did not disappoint on that regard, something that will make it onto the Sea Turtle Cards blog oh maybe by the year 2036 or so. (I do expect to become much more 'off the road' in another year or two and should have way more time to spend on Baseball Cards).

The reason I recently "pulled the trigger" on it was the creeping horror of understanding that the rare RCs from that checklist are only a small portion of the battle. The dozen+ Hall of Famers included amongst the 25 entries are probably now more difficult to obtain than the Rookies, as the Rookies end up in the hands of people hoping for a large appreciation gain on the card, whereas HoF players all have dedicated Player Collectors who always want Moar cards of their "PC Guy", Moar, Moar, Moar. And a good portion of the 13 Update SSPs actually feature 2 HoF players on the same card - so Willie Mays collectors want the above card, too. Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

I'm not like that. 9 cards of one player is enough for me.

So now that the card in question has scrolled off your screen, can you recall anything about it that might have resulted in me obtaining it for a "reasonable" price (less than $100, in this case) ? 

The card has a severe crease across the whole top of the card, about 1/5th of the way down from the top edge. And that is fairly easily viewable, in-hand, and there is actually a slight loss of "eye appeal." In the scan above, it is most visible via the small white lines around Willie's eye brows. 

But for me, the appeal deficit is quite slight, and one quite worth saving .... $150 ? Who knows. I felt it was fairly unlikely I would ever see a copy of this For Sale, ever again, in any condition. Which is the even more frustrating part of attempting to collect a checklist like this one. Demand potentially very high, supply so very, very low.

Such concepts of eye appeal vs. likely official grade culminate in the expression "buy the card, not the grade" and can very much work in a collector's favor. Which is what happened for me finally obtaining this long-desired Baseball Card:

This copy has a short, barely perceptible surface wrinkle, well hidden in one of the black ink portions of the card. If you hold it up to a bright light and angle it just right, you can see it. Would a card grader find that? Some times, probably, maybe most of the time, or not. If they did see it, then the card would be an 8 or less, whereas the Aaron card is probably, I don't know, a 4 perhaps. I don't and will never have a lot of experience with those nutty concepts. Recently I read someone complaining about older PSA "slabs" being "often very over-graded." I truly pity such people.

That Cole card became an unfortunate keystone in this whole collecting concept, as I expected it to be one of the most expensive cards on the 25 card SSP checklist, forever and ever. Which is no longer the case, as all those Hall-of-Fame cards will likely retain their now high prices, forever and ever, and I could have purchased many of them for a fraction of their current values while I was hung-up deciding on whether to ever purchase this card for a far higher price than the HoF cards, years ago now.

I still have a love-hate relationship with the card. It is such a great card, the super anticipated 1-1 player (not the same as a 1/1 Baseball Card; 1-1 refers to a player selected as the very first in an MLB draft, like Henry Davis and Paul Skenes were, to name 2 pertinent examples) making his dramatic entrance to a game, with the big outfield wall team logo behind him while he wears a rarely-seen-on-cardboard Pirates black warmup jacket. And of course I fully expect the Cole-Pirates situation to repeat possibly quite soon on my favorite team, with Tarik Skubal, and all over again for the Pirates in a few years with Skenes. Sometimes I thoroughly dislike this ever more coast-tilted Sport. That particular Baseball Card is a horrible reminder of MLB's current structure.

And — why couldn't that be his regular Rookie Card card? It would be just exactly perfect. Some other random image, like say the one on his regular RC, could be on the /25 SSP version, inserted mainly to help create re-sale value in the box of lottery tickets. Such a card would still have plenty of dollar value, because a solid majority buy the serial number, not the Baseball Card. For soooooooo many purchasers / "collectors," card image and design are basically irrelevant. So ..... let me have the good photos, cheap, dammit!!!! Sometimes I thoroughly dislike this Hobby.

I did have some basically tangential Good Luck with finally landing the Cole as he spent 2025 off the field, for the inevitable Tommy John surgery rehab - a point where "investors" (how I loathe needing to use that word in relation to Baseball Cards) can often begin to "cut their losses," potentially. 

That likely helped move multiple copies of the Cole card into For Sale activity over the last few months, which becomes a huge help to the collector wanting a rare card. We of course all exist in the tension between sellers wanting as high a price as possible and buyers wanting as low a price as possible. But when 2 sellers attempt a sale of the same card simultaneously, the buyers have leverage that is absent when only one copy is For Sale.

Not having a lot of experience with purchasing expensive Baseball Cards, that now seemingly simple concept was a bit of an "I coulda had a V8" moment, or maybe a "I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn last night," or probably plenty more cute social aphorisms. Also recently, that basic concept well assisted purchasing this card via Best Offer -

That one has no defects aside from my scanner's usual struggle to discern the white boundary correctly. However the card still cost about double the last price I could remember for it, only 2-3 years ago. So it goes when you have to pick your Baseball Card battles oh so carefully.

The Gehrig card is also now a card in the lower tier of (potential, because few of the entries are ever actually For Sale) prices on that 25 card SSP checklist. Best illustrated by me purchasing it for just about half of what the John Kruk card on the checklist sold for a week or two later. Players from the 30s will never be as collected as players from the 50s regardless of overall fame; not even the presence of Jimmie Foxx on this card will change that as a huge amount of Baseball fans don't even know who Jimmie Foxx was. The Stars of those days just didn't have enough Baseball Cards depicting them, unlike the Post-War era players.

I am mostly enjoying this collecting by design goal - all of the 2013 Topps design cards. Even though it hasn't yet been used for a full design re-use checklist (only 36 years to go for its use in Heritage), a semi-regular scattering of such cards do exist. And one of them is a /87 Aaron Judge Rookie, which hasn't appeared for sale in several years now, and will almost certainly never be in my price range.

That is also true of a whole number of 2013 design cards issued in 2013, despite my halting step onto the Update SSP checklist. 2013 Topps Chrome has short printed image variations too - and most of those are now 4 figure cards. Yes, as in > $1,000, each. That's because they are probably printed in an edition of /10, and there are people just like me who want to complete that checklist, too. So I also know I will never own the really cool Miguel Cabrera Chrome SSSP, which shows off the Detroit Tigers special green uniform worn on St. Patrick's Day down in Florida.

And then 2013 also included a set of autographed cards on the Sea Turtle design, most well-known as part of the Wrapper Redemption program which supplied us the /150 "Blue Sparkle" cards which are a darn purdy parallel. The small 'packs' of those included randomly inserted autos, including things like a Manny Machado RC, and Hall of Famers like Gwynn and Ripken, amongst a few others, with copies limited to just 10. I also just recently learned that 2013 Series One & Two also included similar cards of some of the same HoF players, inserted into packs though not noted on official checklists. These cards had an edition of only /5, and I will almost certainly never see one even for sale, and even if then the price will be in the mid four figures.

Me, I still shudder at the idea of the numeral "2" fronting the price of a three digit card. Pulling the trigger on the numeral "1" a few times now is still creating Doubt in my mind, which is not an enjoyable concept to attach to collecting, at all. I saw a fork in the road, and I took it. The question is .... how far to the next exit on this ever more lonely road? I think I have about 12 more exits to reach the end of this road, which is now likely to head deep into unknown parts of Nevada, although there's always .... next December.