2017 1st Bowman Base Autographs (Pricing Analysis)

Hi everyone. My name is Wesley, and I have tens of thousands of 90’s baseball cards worth more as kindling than a baseball card (unfortunately, I didn’t get or keep any of these more expensive 91 Donruss cards). Except for the memories. It was fun as a kid to collect.

Now, I still like to collect but part of that is having fun with it as pseudo-investments. I say pseudo, because I like to make money on some of my cards so that I can buy new cards. So, it’s more feeding the hobby and not investing. Part of that is trying to better understand the pricing of cards. Even those cards where the player never progressed very far.

So, I’m going to do some retrospective looks at previous year’s sets. And look at their current pricing. And if possible, pull up some older pricing as well as comparison points. But, really, I am most interested to see the minimum cards can go for if an “investment” falls completely flat.

The rest of this post is just going to be a table with some information, and some commentary at the end.

Table explanation:

Player Name: This one is obvious, but I want to highlight that this table only includes players from the Bowman Chrome Prospect Autograph line. And only includes those with a 1st Bowman.

Current Ebay Price (September 13th, 2020): This will be a rough average of recent Ebay sold prices. Bargain Bin denotes the price is generally under $5. Note: I have set these up as affiliate links. So, if you do end up buying a card I will get a small commission at no cost to you.

2018 Prospect Rank: This will include information about whether that prospect was ranking on top prospect lists in 2018 preseason (MinorLeagueBall, Baseball America)

2020 Player Information: This will include some notes I have on the quality of this player in 2020

Bowman Draft Performed Worst

42% of all Bowman draft base autos ended up being 2020 bargain bins. The other sets were closer to 30-33% (Bowman Chrome: 31%; Bowman Baseball: 33%). This is just one year, so this is not a judgment on the Bowman Draft product. If I were to break this down by perceived quality of player at the time of joining the minors (by looking at international bonus money, MLB draft round, etc.), then I believe I would find that the quality of the player is lower in Bowman Draft. Or at least for 2017.

Correlation Between Prospect Rankings and Long-Term Value

I’m not prepared to make any sweeping judgments based on this data. But the data suggests it could be worth investigating. The base autographs for almost all prospects who were ranked in 2018 are worth more than ~$5.