What's It Worth?

 As an older guy getting back into the card collecting hobby, I struggle with some of the nuances that were not customary when I was a  kid.  A big one is the struggle to know how much a card is worth.  I see this question asked time and time again on card Twitter.  I see people disagreeing over the price of a card when it was sold in Facebook groups.  There seems to be no good way to value a card these days.

When I was a kid, it was simple.  You bought a Beckett, looked it up and got excited when you saw those little arrows going up for your card.  The matter was solved and there were no arguments.  The internet had complicated this to a fault.  A great example is the curious case of Jose Uribe.  There was a time that his 1990 Fleer error card (wrong birth date) was listed on eBay for thousands of dollars.  There are a ton of conspiracy theories around why, but the hard reality is that this is a common player.  I even got in on the act and put one up that I pulled on a YouTube video to see what kind of attention it might get.  As you can see, it got next to none.  And yes, my cynical listing title did not help I'm sure.

As much as I chuckled at this, it seemed to happen again with a Todd Zeile rated rookie card.   It was listed on eBay for thousands of dollars noting a very small error.  This doesn't make a card valuable and I often wonder if this is like many other internet scams where the scammer might list lots of these hoping to get one or two interested fools that might pay the money.  Cards are hot these days and the internet is a way to make some quick money by duping people.

I think my biggest frustration is not just people using the internet to over hype or over inflate a player's card, it is the notion that when a great card is pulled we have the moral dilemma to either sell it or keep it.  I heard a man say the other day that they have taken the hobby out of the hobby and this is a prime example.  Take the Tweet below.  If I had pulled a 1/1 card, I would keep it.  A true hobbyist would love to be the "one" that has the card.  Part of me thinks this is a fake, but if a 13 year old decided to sell this card, he had help from an adult that doesn't actually get it.  The hobby has become a business and does not seem like much fun anymore.  Unless you count big pulls turning into big money fun.  This is not a hobby, it is basically gambling and there are a lot of newcomers trying to cash in.

My therapy has come from moving away from today's hobby and trying to relive my own glory days.  I buy old cards from my day (Junk Wax) and enjoy them for the second time around.  To answer the question, "What's It Worth?"  The answer is uncertain.  I sold a Jordan card on eBay that booked for $100 and got way less than that for it.  I know that it is worth what people are willing to pay for it and there is no magical way to have all the right answers.  I have a binder of cards that I will never part with and that makes them invaluable to me.  If I tried to sell them, they might be worth $200 to the market.  That's what I get for deciding to live in the junk wax era.  Stick to the hobby and your cards will always be worth something to you.