As most of our regulars know, I got hooked on collecting sports cards after buying my first pack back in 1968 and pulling my hero, Pete Rose. My brother and I owned a sports card memorabilia shop back in the late eighties, early nineties. At the end of the junk wax boom, we got out, and I have kept an eye on the market and collect a few cards from a distance.
I have been involved in multiple businesses over the years, and my wife and I still operate several businesses, some which we in the process of selling. Through a serious of circumstances, I got back into the market at a more in-depth level a little over a year ago. A lot has changed since the time my brother and I owned our shop. I have devoted many hours a week to attempt to re-learn this market and all the cards and different series and parallels that have been introduced over the past twenty-five years or so.
The one thing I have proven to myself over the past year is that ANYONE can use specific systems and process to GUARANTEE themselves profits in the sports card market, and we have proven that over and over on our YouTube channel. If you have patience and are willing to start small and follow the strategic moves that we teach, you can build up a nice nest egg.
There is no question that the best way to generate the highest profits is to buy raw, grade, and flip, or buy PSA 10 cards of THE RIGHT PLAYERS and hold for 6 months to five years before selling them, for double digit profits.
Our philosophy is, first implement the proven systems and process to GUARANTEE yourself profits, take those profits and build a nest egg, then BUY RAW …… WITH YOUR PROFITS ……GRADE AND FLIP.
I have had many people, publications, and articles that have helped me on my journey, and that I will continue to learn from as I talk about in this video. CARD COLLECTOR HYPE & 18 TRENDS YOU CAN PROFIT FROM. Without question the guys over at Spit Ballin Cards have been a big part of my education. One of those guys is Scotty B Cards, who recently dropped a video that was so good for where I am on my personal journey right now, I had to have it transcribed for my own education and to personally study and internalize what Scotty was sharing.
Below is his video and the transcript. I have modified the transcript for my own education and interest, and I hope when you are ready, you will find this information as informative and valuable as I have.
TRANSCRIPT
Hey guys it’s Scott with Scotty B cards in this video we look at some budget investment options so recently I did a video where I looked at my top 10 investment cards for a pure investment that I personally buy. Sometimes it’s hard because those cards can be expensive and on top of that order there is really difficult to find so I wanted to make a video on 10 cool cards you can target.
I don’t know if you want to call them an investment all baseball cards probably shouldn’t be called a pure investment but these are cards that are generally the player plays well they go up and that’s not the case for all cards but these are personally my favorite Top 10 that I would buy if I was on a budget myself one thing I will note is while some of these cards are still a little bit expensive they’re being compared to the higher end option so that’s the budget version of that higher end option.
On this list we’ll see that with Dynasty versus Definitive on here. It might be a little expensive still some will be very inexpensive and some will be a little bit more but it’s a good breakdown for whatever your budget currently is so let’s just jump right into it the very first one the granddaddy of them all this is the TOPPS GOLD we’ve had tops gold since 1993, Derek Jeter’s rookie card but they were not numbered until 2001. Once they were numbered in 2001, they were numbered two that year, 2001.
They are still numbered to the year they’re produced today. So James Wood, he has a rookie card released in 2025 Topps Series 1 numbered to 2025 and so forth. These are always great, these are the longest running parallel in all of Topps cards and a great card to target if you would like just a really good card of a player. Here is an example of like what these are going for in regards to their pricing for that card at a show of Elly De La Cruz you could still get them currently for 50 to 70 bucks raw which is relatively budget friendly. When I say budget friendly I also want to make sure there’s going to be some expensive cards on this list but it’s relative to the higher cost of the Top 10 Investment cards for that player.
So let’s look at the Bowman Chrome rookie refractor these are very interesting because these Bowman Chrome rookie refractors are numbered to 499. You know exactly how many of are made they’ve been made for a while and they’re really cool cards and they’re really shiny really pretty. Bowman Chrome is a great set for rookie cards and they’re incredibly affordable you can get them for around 30 bucks of Elly De La Cruz right now. With other lesser name rookies for all of these it’s going to be even less.
I’m using more popular rookies just to give you a sense of how they are in relation to the more expensive cards but Bowman Chrome rookies are a really great card to have in your collection. This isn’t really my favorite but I know some people really love it so I included it because it is popular more so than anything else. I understand that some people do like them and that’s the Topps Chrome Logo Fractor numbered parallels so here we have the amamoto rookie and the difference between these and regular tops Chrome is they come from a Mega Box where you get two packs of this logo fractor which is literally just the MLB logo over the whole card they show Moto in for 200 bucks add the Blue in for $29 out of 50.
They’re all numbered the same as regular Topps Chrome refractors and we have the logo refractor image variation of Gunner Henderson this one isn’t like super cheap, definitely 280 bucks for an image variation PSA 10. There are cool image variations in these sets for some players and those can be sought after. I think it’s worth calling out the next set Stadium Club Gold Minted these are very short printed. They are tough to find and that’s just because there’s less than a 100 of them made 50 to 100 I believe is kind of the range for these. I don’t know off the top of my head depending on the year but here’s a Bobby Witt Jr. rookie card they’re really nice. It’s like a gold refractor from Stadium Club now that Stadium Club Chrome doesn’t exist in the previous way it did, where it’s not a standalone set.
You can get gold refractors but these Gold Minted, the whole card is gold where the gold refractor sometimes just have the logo right here the Stadium Club Chrome logo as gold and everything else is the same. So the whole card here is Gold kind of like the CPO refractors from Topps Chrome. They go for a good amount of money but realistically for how rare they are these are the last two sales of Bobby Wood Jr $192 for really cool sought after collected set I think is not terrible and $400 for a PSA 10. I’d imagine those are more expensive now for his rookie card but who knows that’s a card I personally do like after that we have Topps Chrome and Bowman Chrome refractor autographs number to 499. I would personally avoid base but this is kind of the thought process if a player does well a rising tide raises all boats but out of 499 are just more attractive to a lot of collectors.
Not every single player has a refractor out of 499 and that’s simply because sometimes top short print specific players. Look at Otani in 2018 Bowman Chrome pitching and hitting he does not have a refractor autograph His Highest numbered I believe is the Blue out of 150 so to give you an idea that’s what this looks like but these are nice. They are numbered to 499 we know exactly how many of them are produced they’re common enough or they’re sold but not too common they’re sold all the time.
I know they’re not cheap like we can see I think Jackson Merl’s bum and Chrome first autograph it’s going for like 200 to 250 but that’s because it’s not his picture on the card I think really hurts that a little bit. Yes you heard that right they use the wrong players picture on the card. I probably should correct that, they used the wrong player on his first Bowman Chrome autograph so for what it’s worth his top Chrome rookie autograph right here. Even Corbin Carroll for 150 bucks Jackson holiday for 186 bucks and Bowman Chrome I like both sets I think they’re both great.
Next is Definitive rookie patch autographs and this is where saying I know these aren’t cheap and I get that but in comparison to Dynasty, if Dynasty is like your number one set that you like to target Definitive is a really good second choice. What they did recently is they’re actually making all of these vertical rookie patch autos so in the past Definitive had horizontal like you’ll see the Gunner Henderson like Dynasty but now they’re making Definitive almost exclusively vertical so that way they are different than Dynasty.
I think that could help the values but to give you an idea this is what these cards sold for we saw the last Gunner Henderson go for 350 bucks for a game used patch rookie autograph which sounds like a lot but it’s really not that bad and on top of that we can see someone like Shay langers for $25 and even at the time of release the Jackson Merrill is going for 450 compare that to Dynasty this is the Lesser sought after version of the Gunner Henderson Dynasty autograph one Ends Tonight the horizontal kind I will put on the screen what that’s sold for it’s going to be well over two maybe even $3,000. So again compare that to a Definitive RPA it’s a tenth of the cost it doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea to me but there are a lot of Rookie Patch Autos out there. There’s a reason why Dynasty is worth more. it’s a bigger collector base.
If you just want a cool RPA these are a great option to go with next up we have the Real One Autograph blue ink not really a secret these are collected and cool but majority of players they have real one autographs they’re all on-card rookie autograph some of the best cards you can get really and the red ink autographs are numbered to the year the card is produced. So if the card is based off of the 1969 top set it’ll be numbered to 69 if it’s from this set. The 1971 look is going to be numbered to 71 for the red ink but the Blue base is not numbered and we can see right here they don’t go for a ton of money. I know this is from December and a PSA 10 to go for a lot of money because it’s hard to grade but they’re all on card.
All retro Topps designs usually look really good and 112 bucks for Yordon autograph rookie pretty cool especially one that does have collectability. So Real One autographs are cards I personally do buy myself I think they’re great cards so they are a great choice to target if you’re looking for a nice on-card rookie autograph. They are a really Mainstay card set that’s been around since 2001.
Up next, don’t be afraid to buy Basic Topps Chrome Refractors, xfractors, Blue refractors, these types of cards so the main ones have been out for awhile are xfractors refractors, Blue, Red out of five, Orange, Golds, Greens, you get the idea. Don’t forget the Shimmers, the Waves. they don’t do as well but can be really sought after & can also be very affordable. We can see a Gunner Henderson xfactor for $15 that’s basically less than the cost of grading of this particular card you can see a Jared Jones he’s like a sleeper pick Blue Topps autograph for 20 bucks Acuna refractor for 60 bucks and then a jack samaro PSA 10 for 217 and again the idea here is that the player does well a rising tide raises all boats. These are kind of more affordable entry options for people so sometimes they’re even easier to move than the higher end.
The next set is Heritage Chromes and Heritage Chrome Refractors there’s a lot of different types of cards, year to year, but the basic chromes are at $999 and the refractors do vary but you can see these ones are numbered to 574 and 673 they change all the time but for Bobby Witt Jr. this base out of 999 went for $44. This Julio refractor it went for $99 and for that Corbin Carol refractor it went for $14.50.
Even Soto has very few rookies in general very few rookies his out of 999 SGC 9.5 went for $90 on auction so these can be cool cards to target they look amazing. I’m always surprised how good Heritage looks in hand. It’s like the you can see it kind of like all the dimples in the background it makes it look almost 3D like and like textured and it’s not textured it’s chromium so I’m a big fan of Heritage Chrome refractors and I know a lot of people are as well. In 2025 Heritage they’re going to have more traditional rainbow of colors so they’re going to have blue they’re going to have gold they’re out of 50 not out of five anymore. They’re going to have the black refractor probably out of 10, I would guess.
They’re going to have the red out of five and so forth so those will exist but in the past if you want something nicer than these in regards to Heritage looking at the black number of the year the sets coming out of and the gold out of five and the separator that’s basically it so those get more expensive.
The last card I’m going to talk about is Topps Chrome Gilded these are the base cards the base for Bobby Witt in 2022 was 199, the base for Ellie De La Cruz was out of 99 the base cards are all numbered and it’s from a high-end set that seems to be catching on. I don’t love Gilded as much as the next guy but I also understand that I don’t open it I don’t break it so maybe that’s I don’t own. Maybe if I did, I’d like it more but either way many people are very high on Gilded and these cards are interesting. These are definitely more risky than some of the other ones in the set same with the logo fractor we talked about earlier, These are the base cards and they look great and on top of that they’re all serial numbered to19 or 99 depending on the year for the base rookie cards.
We can see they’re still expensive and I understand that we can see the the Bobby Whit went for $300 and the Ellie De La Cruz went for $150 or or so but it’s one of those things where if this is going to be the high-end Topps Chrome set and this is the base card out of 99 that’s pretty cool.