Trading Ultra-Modern Sports Cards For HOF Grails Is A Winning Strategy

Also: giveaway winner #2!

Author

Mike Junk Wax Hero
August 26, 2024

Subscriber Bruce, aka vintage_guy71 on Instagram and YouTube, has been wheeling and dealing like crazy the past few weeks, trading a ton of ultra-modern Jarren Duran cards for grails.

Duran, of course, is having a breakout season for the Red Sox, leading the league in doubles and triples and averaging an extra base hit more frequently than every other game. His OPS+ is 134, which very basically means he’s offensively 34% better than the average Major Leaguer. He’s also third in the American League at 7.5 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), behind only the juggernaut that is Aaron Judge (9.2) and young stud Bobby Witt Jr. (8.3). Because of his stellar defense and baserunning, Duran is actually tied with Juan Soto in WAR, which seems crazy but makes sense.

But Duran is 27 and is just getting his career started. It’s not often that a guy gets started at 27 and becomes a Hall of Famer. Bill James wrote an interesting Twitter thread about this very specific topic over the weekend, citing Duran’s Hall of Fame-caliber season.

So Bruce had been stockpiling low-numbered Duran cards the last couple of years while they were ultra-cheap, and decided to start selling and trading them away while Duran is having an amazing season, and exchanging them for more stable inner-circle Hall of Famers and iconic cards.

Here are some of the cards Bruce received in trades:

I’m a big believer in this strategy, but it’s really difficult to project these players for a couple of reasons:

  • The player needs to be relatively unknown initially, or

  • The player needs to be a post-hype sleeper for their cards to be cheap in the first place,

  • And then the player needs to take off and see their values go up significantly

  • It helps if they’re playing for the Red Sox, Yankees, or Dodgers

So good on Bruce for what I would consider to be a massive success!

The Craziest Hobby Room?

I love seeing and featuring amazing hobby rooms. Mark Hoyle only lives a couple of hours from me, and he’s quite close to the Shriners show I go to twice a year. The last couple of times down there, we’ve tried connecting and it didn’t work out. It’s unfortunate because Mark might have the craziest hobby room in existence. He’s a huge Red Sox collector, especially of the Impossible Dream team of 1967.

While I haven’t had a chance to yet, my friend Dan of Dan’s Vintage Baseball PC did make it there over the weekend. And while he hasn’t posted the video to his YouTube as of the time of me wrapping up this newsletter Sunday evening, he says it’ll be there soon. Make sure to check out his channel and subscribe. Here’s a photo to whet your appetite:

YouTube Comment Of The Week

I love to share funny comments, and even comments from viewers who hate my channel. Sometimes they’re so weirdly funny. But occasionally a comment gives me all the warm feelings:

But, okay, here’s a funny negative one:

I will never understand adding comments like this to a stranger’s content. Why waste your time? This isn’t constructive. Maybe he or she feels better though. That would be something.

Upcoming Videos

Again, I’m really struggling with this section. I’m on vacation so I’m definitely hoping to get some videos out. But I also have a ton of house and yard work to do, and the Vermont Collection (ding!) to finish up. I am heading to the Portland area one day for lunch, so maybe I’ll hit up a couple of card shops while there.

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Channel Highlights From the Past Week

The content circle of life: create content on one platform (newsletter), talk about the results of that content on another platform (YouTube), and then share that video back to the newsletter:

I also shared my 16ish favorite autographs from my personal collection:

My Pickup Of The Week

Here’s a video detailing them:

Brief Horror Movie Review of the Week

My favorite subgenre of horror is home invasion. When I was a kid in the ‘80s, that was what we were all terrified of. It seemed like the news was always talking about kids being abducted or families being murdered in their own homes. So I think that’s why I enjoy these movies so much. (My second-favorite is slashers, and I think these two subgenres are related.)

I am not into supernatural or paranormal, generally. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything from that subgenre, so it’s difficult for me to really get into that type of movie. But occasionally a movie will pique my interest, and The Conjuring (2013) has always been one that I wanted to watch. I’m a big Vera Farmiga fan, after all.

I finally got around to watching the first one, and it was fine. Maybe even good. Very formulaic and predictable, but a lot of the horror movies I enjoy are as well. It’s just hard to get into something when I can’t believe in what’s happening. Maybe that’s just me.

3 out of 5 stars, but I won’t be watching any of the sequels.

Giveaway Update!

Last week’s winner never responded, so I still have five items remaining, and a new winner selected: [email protected]

If that’s you, please email me (from that address) and tell me your address and which of the following cards (minus the Bo Jackson) you would like:

In case you’re wondering, the winner gets shouted out here in the newsletter, and if I don’t hear from them within a couple of days I’ll email them directly too.

Lots of links this week!

'His lifelong passion': Collection of decades of Buffalo sports memorabilia collection going up for sale (I think this is the one that required a subscription when I opened it during Clearing the Bases, but I can read it no problem now, for some reason.)

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