Random Cubs Musings

[Deeg]

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-cubs-historic-offensive-infusion/

 

fangraphs on the cubs impending world dongination

 

Not quite. The key paragraph is this one:

 

There is one thing that all 12 of these organizations and their prospect clusters have in common – none of them have won a World Series... A handful of the players listed went on to win World Series rings – Ramirez, Damon and Konerko – but only after leaving for greener pastures. These players were largely developed by small- to middle-market clubs, but had to go to large-market teams to win the big one.

 

The key here is that Ricketts follows through on his promise to start acting like a big-market owner again. Until (unless) he does, the Cubs face longshot odds to finish the journey all these talented kids will start.

[Guest]

It was difficult to take the premise seriously once I found out it was based on his random ranking of minor leaguers, and that this year Kris Bryant narrowly lost out to Joey Gallo for the #1 spot.

[Guest]

The "longshot odds" are the same ones every playoff team faces. Dominance (donginance?) is established in the regular season.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Reds are down 6-0 to the O's. If they lose, we're only 2 out of 4th place and a non-protected pick.

[bukie]

The Cubs have used 46 players so far this year, for a net total of 30.7 fWAR:

Name                     fWAR
Anthony Rizzo             4.2
Jake Arrieta              3.9
Starlin Castro            2.7
Luis Valbuena             2.6
Travis Wood               2.3
Jeff Samardzija           2.1
Jason Hammel              1.9
Emilio Bonifacio          1.8
Welington Castillo        1.8
Chris Coghlan             1.7
Hector Rondon             1.6
Kyle Hendricks            1.1
Carlos Villanueva         0.9
Jorge Soler               0.8
Neil Ramirez              0.8
Edwin Jackson             0.8
Pedro Strop               0.7
Arismendy Alcantara       0.6
Logan Watkins             0.5
Tsuyoshi Wada             0.5
Darwin Barney             0.4
Justin Grimm              0.4
Justin Ruggiano           0.4
Brian Schlitter           0.3
Wesley Wright             0.3
Chris Valaika             0.2
Felix Doubront            0.2
Jacob Turner              0.2
Blake Parker              0.1
Dallas Beeler             0.1
Chris Rusin                 0
Dan Straily                 0
Rafael Lopez                0
Ryan Sweeney                0
Kyuji Fujikawa           -0.1
Matthew Szczur           -0.1
James Russell            -0.2
Javier Baez              -0.2
Zac Rosscup              -0.2
Eli Whiteside            -0.3
Jose Veras               -0.3
Mike Olt                 -0.6
Ryan Kalish              -0.6
Junior Lake              -0.7
John Baker               -0.9
Nate Schierholtz           -1
                        30.7

[Guest]

new future stars card. lifted from the sth "personalized webpage" thing

 

http://cubs.brochure-mlb.com/2015/images/tops-baseball.png

[jersey cubs fan]

One of my favorite parts of randomly seeing old card collections are the ridiculous future star ones that have three dudes I never heard of outside of the card I saw them on in the first place.

[Clem Fandango]

Man, I might need to start collecting baseball cards again. Or at least just spend a stupid amount of money on the pricey RC's of these guys. When I was collecting a while back (07-08) I wasn't big into prospects, but I collected Bowman because it was the cheapest and filled with a lot of potentially valuable cards people would clamor for because of recently drafted guys. I had a $120 Nick Noonan autographed blue refractor card that I sold for a premium because he was their first round pick that year. He's practically worthless now.

 

But our guys would be worth investing for, methinks.

[Guest]

people still legitimately collect cards?

[Clem Fandango]

people still legitimately collect cards?

 

Yup. It's not a kids hobby anymore, everything is [expletive] expensive as [expletive]. I had a problem with it, like a serious addiction. It was like gambling. It's embarrassing what kind of cards I acquired and then promptly traded or sold away. Cards you should hang on to. Like an Albert Pujols RC, or a card with 6 pieces of Ty Cobb's bat on it. Or a card with a signature of Carl Hubbel cut from an old letter he signed. A magenta printing plate of a Matt Kemp and a Hiroki Kuroda card that was used to print the actual card and they were the only ones in existence. EDIT: Oh God, a Miguel Cabrera RC, too. [expletive] I was stupid.

 

I lament the amount of money I spent on cards back then, especially since it was all bought with credit. I fucked myself up big time because of it. Still have some nice cards though.

 

http://imgur.com/a/80b93/all

 

But you can see where my intentions lied in 2007 with my collecting. It's a funny way to look back and see who you thought was gonna be the next big thing and who turned out to be complete [expletive]. I was not too good with that. Although my crowning jewel at the end there is still pretty [expletive] awesome.

[imb]

i've got a sweet corey patterson autographed RC with a jersey swatch that i stayed up one night in 2003 to win on ebay

[Guest]

Weren't the good ones always expensive?

 

Kids always collected the crap they found at 7-11 that was slightly more worthy of collecting than the ones they stuck in their bike spokes. Pretty sure they can still do that (but I don't think they do).

 

I'm legitimately shocked this is still a big hobby in any circles. I thought it was largely dead (outside of some crazy old and super rare stuff).

[Clem Fandango]

Weren't the good ones always expensive?

 

Kids always collected the crap they found at 7-11 that was slightly more worthy of collecting than the ones they stuck in their bike spokes. Pretty sure they can still do that (but I don't think they do).

 

I'm legitimately shocked this is still a big hobby in any circles. I thought it was largely dead (outside of some crazy old and super rare stuff).

 

The thing I learned as an adult is that if you buy packs of cards form stores like Walgreens or Wal-Mart or whatever, your odds of getting anything valuable are dick. That's why they were cheaper there. They are retail boxes. An insert card from there for the easiest pull might be 1:16 packs. If you bought it from a hobby store, pulled form a hobby box, those odds jump to 1:4. Basically, since they have to manufacture in bulk for retail giants, the odds of pulling valuable cards suck. If you purchase hobby boxes, you're guaranteed at least one big pull from a box nearly all the time, usually an autograph. I would purchase whole boxes because I wanted that big pull.

 

The hobby isn't huge anymore, but it definitely still exists. Less hobby stores now. It doesn't help that Upper Deck and Topps are pretty much monopolizing the industry. Topps and Upper Deck are the only licensed MLB retailers for trading cards. So companies like Donruss had to shift focus to other sports. It's then that you realize how many subsets that you didn't realize were Topps or Upper Deck, actually were owned by them.

 

I remember in 08 I think Donruss got around the MLB thing by selling a st called Donruss Elite which focused on college athletes from all sports. I pulled a ([expletive] that's another one) David Price Autographed RC. And a couple of Josh Vitters autos, too!

 

And yeah the good ones were always expensive. I had a issue with Topps Triple Threads. It was like $300 a box, and you only get 3 packs of card, and each pack had 3 cards... but you get that one big pull in each box (the Ty Cobb card I reference earlier). It was basically like playing a slot machine. It was addicting, and because it involved my favorite thing in the world (baseball) it made it even worse.

[biittner77]

The Cubs have used 46 players so far this year, for a net total of 30.7 fWAR:

Name                     fWAR
Edwin Jackson             0.8

 

How is this even possible?

[Clem Fandango]

The Cubs have used 46 players so far this year, for a net total of 30.7 fWAR:

Name                     fWAR
Edwin Jackson             0.8

 

How is this even possible?

 

http://i.imgur.com/Mk76H.gif

[JennieGarthAlgar]

 

And yeah the good ones were always expensive. I had a issue with Topps Triple Threads. It was like $300 a box, and you only get 3 packs of card, and each pack had 3 cards... but you get that one big pull in each box (the Ty Cobb card I reference earlier). It was basically like playing a slot machine. It was addicting, and because it involved my favorite thing in the world (baseball) it made it even worse.

 

At what point do you stop saying its "$300 a box" and call it what it really is, "$300 for 9 cards"?

[Clem Fandango]

 

And yeah the good ones were always expensive. I had a issue with Topps Triple Threads. It was like $300 a box, and you only get 3 packs of card, and each pack had 3 cards... but you get that one big pull in each box (the Ty Cobb card I reference earlier). It was basically like playing a slot machine. It was addicting, and because it involved my favorite thing in the world (baseball) it made it even worse.

 

At what point do you stop saying its "$300 a box" and call it what it really is, "$300 for 9 cards"?

 

Sometimes you wouldn't get 9 cards. Some of the big pulls from that set included pieces of game used material or even would have flip out cards to include even more memorabilia and the pack would only have one card in it. For example, this is one card:

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/Rdh1S2F.jpg

 

 

Damn I forgot about another big pull from that set. It was a triple autograph/game used jersey card of Carl Yastremsky, Harmon Killebrew, and I think Eddie Matthews.

 

EDIT: [expletive] I also had an Adrian Beltre autographed Bowman Chrome RC from like 1997 back when autographed cards were still relatively new.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

I bet you'd get better value for your money just buying actual memorabilia instead of playing some weird, expensive memorabilia slot machine dressed up as baseball cards.

[davell]

Growing up in the 80's, I collected cards, as did most of my friends. But it didn't take me long to turn to memorabilia and vintage cards. I don't collect anymore really, but if I see something cool, I'd still buy it.

 

But [expletive] all this new stuff that comes out at a higher value than it ever will be again. I've got no idea why people want that stuff.

[Clem Fandango]

I bet you'd get better value for your money just buying actual memorabilia instead of playing some weird, expensive memorabilia slot machine dressed up as baseball cards.

You are correct. Theres still just something exhilarating about not knowing what you're gonna get when you know you're gonna get something good. That was the addiction. It sucked in retrospect, but it when it was good it was seriously satisfying. Like hitting blackjack on both hands after splitting. Again, gambling metaphor because that's all it basically is.

[treebird]

One of my favorite parts of randomly seeing old card collections are the ridiculous future star ones that have three dudes I never heard of outside of the card I saw them on in the first place.

 

almora is on the card above as a tribute to those dudes

[Splendid Splinter]

My most expensive card to date is probably my Mike Trout card that he personally signed when he was in Arkansas for AA ball. I imagine the card is worth a ton right now because he signed the card with #23 which is what # he wore then. Now he signs with #27 so the #23 is somewhat of an oddity. Other than that, I got a few 1940s/50s cards and a 1922 W573 Johnny Mostil card, but it's in REALLY REALLY bad shape. I have quite a few more in my collection too (like 120 different Michael Jordan cards). My brother has David Robinson and Eric Dickerson rookie card that were personally signed. He also has a signed Walter Payton card too. That's about all he has though because he wasn't that big into collecting cards.

 

I'll still randomly buy cards if the right one comes along (whether it's from hobby stores/online or ebay/friends/etc), but I rather buy memorabilia now as you get better value there like Kyle said. All this talk makes me want to bust out my collection and see what I actually have still.

[Clem Fandango]

My most expensive card to date is probably my Mike Trout card that he personally signed when he was in Arkansas for AA ball. I imagine the card is worth a ton right now because he signed the card with #23 which is what # he wore then. Now he signs with #27 so the #23 is somewhat of an oddity. Other than that, I got a few 1940s/50s cards and a 1922 W573 Johnny Mostil card, but it's in REALLY REALLY bad shape. I have quite a few more in my collection too (like 120 different Michael Jordan cards). My brother has David Robinson and Eric Dickerson rookie card that were personally signed. He also has a signed Walter Payton card too. That's about all he has though because he wasn't that big into collecting cards.

 

I'll still randomly buy cards if the right one comes along (whether it's from hobby stores/online or ebay/friends/etc), but I rather buy memorabilia now as you get better value there like Kyle said. All this talk makes me want to bust out my collection and see what I actually have still.

 

What kind of card was it? Was it a basic card they handed out at the game or was it a licensed product like Bowman or Topps? Regardless, this may sound odd, but if you get a player to personally sign an autograph on a card you are essentially erasing any book value it has, and it will only hold value to a collector who wants it. Let's say you have an Albert Pujols RC. Just a basic one, nothing fancy. It books at $50. If you get him to autograph it, that $50 pretty much goes to zero, because you've compromised the integrity of the card, plus you don't have a certificate of authenticity so if you try and sell it later you won't get nearly as much for it as you should. Autographed cards are planned out in advance. More often than not Topps and UD will send sheets upon sheets of authentic autograph labels and players will sign all of them and mail them back, then the card companies will just peel and stick them on cards designed to house them as they see fit. There are still cards out there with autographs on the actual cards and pieces, which they need to sign, but the vast majority of auto'd cards were autographs that were signed in mass quantities in one sitting most likely without ever having seen the card they get placed on.

 

Your card holds value as a unique Mike Trout collectible, but if it held any book value before it's likely nil now. That said, you go to collectible shows these days and what do you see? Personalized autographed memorabilia that sells for bunches. So if you are holding onto it for the purpose of selling it later , you have to a) wait a long time and b) hope Mike Trout doesn't fall off the face of the Earth and suck. But if you're holding onto it because you yourself want to keep it, then who cares what dollar value it has? Enjoy it!

 

That's the nature of the card business, though. I hate it, but that's how it is in regards to stuff like that. Basically it's a way for the card companies to not get jipped on their rare cards. If I have a regular Clayton Kershaw RC and I get it autographed and you put it next to the licensed autographed RC, yours is worth nothing and theirs is worth a couple grand, because they only made X amount of their autographed Clayton Kershaw, whereas you got an autograph on a card they made thousands of. They could be the exact same card, but that's how it will be. So if you have your card and try and sell it at an auction next to the licensed card, licensed card will trump you ten fold even though they are both autographed Clayton Kershaw RC's.

[Post Count Padder]

Collected a lot more as a kid and sold much of what I had to collectors and at a garage sale but held on to most of my favorite/good cards and still occasionally make a purchase. I pulled an auto/game used jersey Nolan Ryan card out of a pack years ago. Also have an Ernie Banks RC that's in good shape (though it isn't graded) and have a Solly Hofman card from 1910 that I'm fond of.

[Splendid Splinter]

If you're wondering... here's the card below. I bought the card and brought to the game for him to sign it. I have pictures of that day of him playing and pretty sure i got the ticket of the game somewhere so I can prove the "authenticity" of it although it wouldn't be a certificate like most places do. Like you said, it doesn't matter to me how much $ I could get because I'm keeping it unless I LITERALLY have to sell it. I know how those companies do their autographed cards. I have several of those types like Castro for example.

 

Now if we're going by book value, it's probably my 96'-97' (I think that's the right year) MJ A Cut Above card although I haven't checked book value in a few years, but I know that card is worth quite a bit. It has the buzzsaw insert at the top. It was ~1:300 packs. Maybe that card is the most expensive card I have.

 

 

BTW... does anyone know how much it cost to get a card graded (PSA/BGS/etc)? I really need to do this with some of these cards.