To Catch a Wander

Welcome to The Drip. Helping you start your week off right. Here’s what’s in store for today:

• Wander Franco… Yikes. 🤮 

1) ☠️☠️ ABORT!!! ABORT!!! IF YOU ARE HOLDING ANY WANDER FRANCO CARDS ABORT NOW!!! ☠️☠️ 

The news that I’m sure you’ve heard by now: Wander Franco is being investigated for having relations with a 14 year old girl.

It’s a tale as old as time:

• Athlete shows some promise

• Athlete gets hyped up by everyone

• Athlete starts to believe the hype and begins to feel invincible

• Vices take over

• A promising career ends

This is not looking good for Wander and a ban from baseball might be the least of his concerns in the near future.

Bringing it back to sports cards, this is further proof how risky our hobby can be. Early Sunday morning, Wander Franco rookie cards, autos, parallels, etc… were priced and selling for thousands. Now… you’re lucky if you can get a few hundred for these cards (and if you can: SELL THEM IMMEDIATELY). All the unopened wax where hobbyists were chasing Wander Franco hits? Likely going down in value too.

Painful as this is right now it’s a cautionary tale that’s important to learn: make sure you pay attention to the character and events surrounding each athlete you are holding long-term. Wander had some behavior issues back in June and was benched for two games. That should have turned some heads and raised his risk profile a bit.

We never have perfect information but when we go deep on investing in athletes, we need to do our due diligence and keep up to date on all their doings. We need to figure out how much risk each of us is willing to take on and adjust accordingly. If behavior issues start to occur, we should start to limit our buying (OR take advantage and start buying more depending on how risk-adverse you are). This is no different from investing in a company and reading their earnings report.

Which brings us to another example of high risk: the Brock Purdy 1of1 that sold for $100k+ a few days ago:

Yup, that’s right, $100k+. If you have trouble believing someone would pay that much for a barely proven QB, then I’m with you. Let’s have a sanity check here: someone spent over $100k for a player that

a) Is coming off an injury

b) Is entering his 2nd year with sophomore slumps being a real thing

$100k puts Brock Purdy above 49ers legend Joe Montana. Montana’s rookie card in a PSA 10 sold for $87k in 2022. So is Purdy a more valuable player than Montana and his 4 Super Bowl rings? Another 49er favorite: Steve Young’s rookie card is valued around $30k. Is Purdy above Young and his Super Bowl win? These are the comparisons, and sanity checks we should always do before dropping $$ on a high priced card. The odds of Purdy’s card dropping in value are significantly higher than any upside there is buying at $100k+.

And to think it all happened on Wander Franco snapback hat promo day! Yes that is real and completely unfortunate (especially the age restriction number):

Release Calendar

Wallets like 😢:

• 15th - 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing

• 16th - 2023 Panini Immaculate Collegiate Football

• 23rd -

  • 2023 Panini Immaculate Baseball

  • 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing

• 30th -

  • 2023 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball

  • 2023 Panini Donruss Elite Football

  • 2023 Panini Encased Football

  • 2023 Panini Prizm WNBA Basketball

  • 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome

  • 2023 Topps Chrome Star Wars Galaxy

Show Me That Card 📷️ 

One of the all time class acts in baseball, Ken Griffey Jr. During the junk wax era it was still a blast to pull a Jr card. He always wore a smile and had one of the smoothest swings you’ll ever witness.

If he hadn’t been bitten by the injury bug Jr might have made a case for being the greatest of all time. Even still, he is one of the best players to ever step on the field. His Donruss rookie card is a beauty and well worth digging through junk wax to find. PSA 10s sell consistently for around $400.

Meme of the Day