My 2011 Card Purchasing Priorities

As you can see from reading my blog I mainly collect baseball prospects. I'm not much for cards from other sports, although I do dabble in hockey from time to time. I've thought about the cards that I want to purchase in the new year and I break them up into two categories, prospects and Hall of Famers.

I'm not much for vintage cards, but the thought of diversifying my collection is appealing. The problem I have with prospecting is the wait for return on investment. Granted, a player doesn't have to make the majors in order for you to turn a profit. I've sold plenty of prospect cards at a profit when a players moves from AA to AAA. The issue I have is that prospects are kind of like taking out a 2-year CD at the bank, the money is tied up and can't be touched. What if I come across a really great deal and need to come up with some cash quickly? I'd be selling off prospects at the expense of future earnings to purchase more prospect cards that are going to sit and wait for future earnings.

Vintage Cards

My 2011 collecting/investing goals now include vintage cards. I really think there are some deals to be had on vintage right now, especially with some of the bigger names. I'm doing this as an investment and a way to get that quick cash that I spoke of before if a great deal comes along.

1955 Topps Roberto Clemente - I had a chance to purchase one of these when I was a kid and didn't do it. For Pirates fans, this is the holy grail of baseball cards. A PSA 3.5 recently sold for $400.

1954 Topps Hank Aaron - The true home king. Did you know that you can pick up a PSA 3 of his rookie for around $400? Absolutely crazy.

1963 Topps Pete Rose - The hit king, another record that will probably never be broken. You can pick up a PSA 5 in the $400 range.

1980 Topps Rickey Henderson PSA 9 - The PSA 10 is a little to rich for me right now. The PSA 9 hangs out between $175-$200. That's a bargain in my eyes considering he owns a record that will never be broken.

Prospects

There are too many cards available to list individual cards. I'll go the route of just naming players, in no particular order, that I'll be prospecting in the next few months before prices really start to rise.

Jesus Montero
Dustin Ackley
Jarrod Parker
Grant Green
Aaron Hicks
Brett Jackson
Nick Castellanos
Tony Sanchez
Julio Teheran
Kyle Gibson
Mike Moustakas
Martin Perez

1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

My father grew up in Western Pennsylvania and rooted for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He raised me to be a Pirates fan even though we lived in Northern Virginia, within one hour of Baltimore, MD. It's been tough being a Pirates fan over the last sixteen losing seasons but it will make their resurgence that much sweeter whenever that day comes.

My father always told me stories about the 1960 Pirates team when I was growing up. Most of the stories were about Roberto Clemente but the best stories were about the 1960 World Series and the Pirates' improbable victory over the New York Yankees.

The name Bill Mazeroski always brought a smile to my father's face. About 10 years ago I dragged my father to a baseball card show with me, not telling him that Mazeroski was there signing autographs. He wondered what we were standing in line so long for but understood once he could see who was sitting at the table at the end of the line. I think it's the only time in my life that I saw my father in awe of something or someone. We both got baseballs autographed and my father traded a couple of stories with Mazeroski. Mazeroski couldn't have been nicer. It was a really special moment to share with my father.

I've been sending autograph requests through the mail for a couple months now and I was running out of ideas for new requests. Last weekend it hit me. I'm going to try and get every living member of the 1960 Pirates team on their 1960 Topps cards. I checked success rates on sportscollectors.net and it seems like this is a realistic project. There are only four players with low success rates, the rest are 80% or above. There are three players that didn't have a 1960 Topps card so I'll have to find another card for them.

I'm still trying to think of ways to display this but gathering all the cards and sending out the requests is my main focus right now. Once completed, I'll give this to my father as a gift. His birthday is in June so I'm really hustling to get all the cards and get them in the mail.

I will update my successes as they come in. If anyone has any cool ideas on how to display the cards I'd love to hear them. Leave them in the comments.