Two weeks after the new year, there was a bidding war over a baseball card. 14 bids were made by midnight after the bidding opened at $30,000. A one-of-a-kind card of a minor league prospect, believed to be the most ever for a card featuring a player, was sold for $474,000 by a high end collector.
Ken Goldin is the marketplace's founder and executive chairman. Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuna Jr., and Juan Soto are interested.
The show was years away. Jasson was a switch-hitting teenager who had played 57 games of minor league ball for the New York Yankees when the card was sold.
The card collecting world was shocked by the total, the name on the card and the brazenness of Shyne's prospecting. The investment is usually more conservative than before.
He saw potential that was waiting to be fulfilled and a profit margin that would make him proud. Baseball gives a longer runway for prospects to succeed than other sports.
I wouldn't even consider it if you tried to buy the Dominguez from me for $200,000 more than I paid for it. It's not like a bond yet. You just need to be patient.
One general manager told Jeff Passan that he was like Mike Trout and another said he was like Mickey Mantle. The Yankees gave him a franchise-record $5.1 million signing bonus, using 85% of their international bonus pool for 2019.
After the 2020 minor league season was canceled, the debut of Dominguez was not great. He hit.252 with five homers in the 57 games he played between the two levels. He wasn't the Yankees top prospect anymore. He was promoted to High-A ahead of the MLB Futures Game in 2022.
The promise of stardom was apparent in his trade value, but his team won't get the rewards for a long time.
The risk has been taken by big league teams. Even with the hobby's shocking unpredictability and a looming recession, it was something new to the sports card collector. It would take a multiple-time MLB All-Star for him to pay off. It's a big risk.
Is it possible that it actually happens?
Jesse Craig says timing is everything. Some people think of themselves as short- and long-term gamblers.
Some people think their guy will be the next big thing.
Shyne's real name is Matt Allen, but that's not something you will see on his social media. Allen made money from private equity and put it into cards. Allen does not want to get into that. People want to know the story. He estimates his sports card collection to be worth more than 100 million dollars.
The most expensive basketball card of all time was briefly held by the Luka Doncic autograph, which was sold for $4.7 million. He showed off a piece of art on his social media accounts. The one-of-one Justin Herbert card he paid $550,000 for sold for over $1 million at a Goldin auction. Allen bought a red Bowman Chrome refractor for $50,000 a year and a half ago, and it just sold at an auction for $276,000.
The Triple Logoman boasting James, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant is said to be the best modern card in existence.
Allen is a tentpole of the hobby's entrepreneurial evolution and has allowed him to rub elbows with some of the world's most famous people. He knows where the bathroom is at Rob's house, can tell you where Drake is, and he's friends with a lot of people.
Allen is known for his large bets. Allen doesn't agree with industry experts that a half-million on Dominguez is a prospecting outlier.
He says that what seems expensive today seems cheap tomorrow. I don't pay attention to the card's day-to-day value. It doesn't matter to me because I am so long on it. You can't say, "Hey, I'll give you X for the card right now."
I don't want to make money now.
Allen overpaid because he didn't want to risk not being able to acquire it when Dominguez launches moonshots into Monument Park.
Allen says that other people wouldn't pay $120,000 for a card that sold for $100,000 yesterday. According to Goldin, there is a growing group of people who are taking a calculated risk.
"It's common that people are prospecting, but the Dominguez case is prospecting on steroids," Goldin says. Yankee fans and collector want a young draft pick to be their next star. The card is going to be a lot of money if he is.
Bob Means, who oversees eBay's sports card category, does not know ifprospectors are thinking about the downside. I believe it is part of the hunt.
Allen says that he was actually paying future prices, even though others in the hobby were not so sure. He pushed the private market for 312 years. My own and Ken Goldman.
Pre-pandemic, margins were not so thin. The price of prospecting is much more expensive than it was three years ago.
Recent multimillion-dollar sales, high demand from an influx ofcollectors and a one-of-one card justify Allen's bet. He admits that the sale was well received. After the sale was finalized, one hobby mainstay called Allen and asked if he was stretching.
Allen said he paid $100,000 for a Wander Franco Superfractor two years before the former top prospect made his MLB debut. There wasn't much of a sample size to work off. If Dominguez is as good as advertised, that return-on- investment could soar.
"Then later on,flippers, or prospectors who cash in at the earliest opportunity, are kicking themselves because it's worth $1,000,000," says Allen, who claims to have rejected a million dollar offer for Franco recently. People who make a small percent margin are the ones who can afford it. I've spent $9 million on cards in the last three weeks, and I haven't released anything.
A friend of mine has an signed one-of-one Superfractor of Seattle's young sensation, Julio Rodriguez, who is likely to be the American League's first baseman of the year. He was offered a million dollars for his HomeRun Derby heroics. The man turned it down.
Craig says thatprospecting is a form of gambling. Some people can look at a player, see he's a five tool guy, in the right organization, and make an educated bet that he's going to be a superstars.
In August of 2020, Mike Trout was already a three-time American League Most Valuable Player. Before their first MLB opening day, Goldin rattled off names of the big things of the past. On one hand, there was the two of them, and on the other, there was the two of them together.
He stopped.
He said, actually. The most obvious one is this one.
He felt a light go off in his head.
Ken Griffey Jr. was born in '89.
It's amazing and fitting to compare Dominguez to Ken Griffey Jr.. The Upper Deck rookies card is the most famous example of prospecting within the hobby.
Modern prospecting is what it is due to this. The hobby almost died from it.
Sports cards were a billion dollar business in the 1980's. The Upper Deck is a hobby shop that is partnering with businessmen who want to create superior baseball cards.
New companies were able to compete in the space after the monopoly on baseball cards ended. Upper Deck knew that collectors wanted upscale products, such as foil pack wrappers instead of wax, hologram technology, and higher quality cards, all of which would cause consumers to eat a product that cost double, per pack, what Topps cost. Their slogan was decades ahead of its time, "Upper Deck: For the kid on the street and the Wall Street investor"
They wanted their release to start with a wunderkind.
He was chosen as the debut set's face because he was raking at High-A San Bernardino, which was seven miles from the school attended by an Upper Deck employee. Junior finished the season at Double-A Vermont and had never been photographed in a SeattleMariners uniform, so Upper Deck superimposed Seattle regalia over a SportsIllustrated photo of him in San Bernardino garb, despite even bullish estimates pegging him as a mid-season call-up.
When "The Kid" hit.397 in spring training and made the opening day roster, collectors went looking for his teammate.
Upper Deck printed more than two million junior rookies. It is one of the two most graded cards of all time. It wasn't easy to know how many cards each manufacturer produced. Baseball was the most popular sport in the industry. Junior's smiling visage was the scapegoat for over production and the 1994 MLB strike.
The introduction of serial numbering in the early 1990s was followed by the introduction of one-of-ones. As the economic downturn of the late 2000s wreaked havoc, those with expendable income looked for investments outside of the stock market. The card industry was reborn as a portfolio diversification after Investing in cards from 2008 to 2018.
"Chase" cards are usually one-of-onesigned rookies. There is no one-of-ones without that Griffey, Jr.
The rare card of a prospect billed to rewrite record books under the MLB's most famous lights isn't just a natural progression of the industry, it's also related to Junior. Since the late 2000s, it's been a perfect storm of collecting.
In 1989, prospecting on "The Kid" was not a mortgage-leveraging endeavor. In 2022, with a high-end card market producing boxes costing thousands, risky prospecting could decimate a savings account.
It could also mean early retirement now that prospecting has become more successful. That is a risk worth taking for those who can afford it.
The last five years have seen cards become an alternate asset class. People are interested in the next big company.
Anthony Giovanni refused to give up getting his 1952 Mickey Mantle card graded and sold for decades. The first eight-figure card sale was what a generation of his family and those in the industry had been waiting for.
The denouement for Allen's card is also pie-in- the-sky.
The 1952 Topps card is considered to be one of the best cards in the history of the game. The pen has barely touched the paper.
It was a reminder of the risk-reward when he hit a home run in the second half of the game after dropping a fly ball in the second.
prospectors are onto the next new thing if Dominguez is washed up in 5 years. The majority of it is hype.
Even though he didn't have a baseball card, he still happily read the statistics off the back of his card. He was watching the Futures Game when he saw Dominguez hit a round-tripper in the seats.
Allen's initial thoughts?
"Everyone is going to be crazy for him now," he said.
At the age of 16, he was on the cover of SportsIllustrated. He has been named to seven All-Star games since he arrived in the majors in 2012 and has won a number of awards. I think it's pretty good. Craig says thatHarper was supposed to catapult a franchise, be the next Mickey Mantle, but he was a hobby disappointment.
Modern cards are more prone to change. Craig said there's risk when a player is active. If I invested $500,000 into a card, I would be going vintage.
Means believes vintage is more reliable than Willie Mays. The thing is done. A person lays an egg during a playoff series. People can have bad moods.
You're going to see a 20%, 30%, and 50% drop in their card values.
The All-Star Game was going to be played in the same stadium as the Futures Game, with all eyes on Judge. Judge was trying to break the American League single- season home run record. The Superfractor sold for $150,000 less than the one Allen paid for.
Shohei Ohtani is doing things in baseball that haven't been seen in a long time. The Superfractor went for 39% of the total.
He wasn't making anMVP push or challenging hallowed records at the time. He had been a player for the team. He hit a game-tying, ninth-inning home run against the Blue Rocks on July 22. Two days later, as the MLB trade deadline closed in, there was a lot of anger on social media.
I was wondering if he was being traded. Nope, that's right. He felt that his star had earned a rest. Dominguez was unmoved by the deadline and did not change his mind.
The Yankees made a number of moves, but they weren't for Castillo or Soto, who were traded.
Time will tell if that's a positive thing for the Yankees. With him in pinstripes, the value of the card is higher.
The Yankees are the center of baseball markets. Allen said that the epicenter was the reason for buying the card.
He is aware of the work that is being done. He has rare five-tool talent that made him a scout darling.
As his competition improved, so did his play, as he had 16 extra-base hits and 17 steals, while hitting................. He hit two home runs in his final game in High-A.
After he was named the South Atlantic League Player of the Week, Allen was overjoyed when he was promoted to Double-A.
Is it better still?
Allen says he is getting phone calls from people saying he is the hottest Yankee in the farm system.
Allen said that one of his friends wanted the card as a sign of the market's ever-evolving clientele. He is a minority owner of an MLB team and sent Allen a text from his yacht.
Allen thinks he can get at least $600,000 for the Dominguez card if he wanted to. He is still holding out for more.
He says that the card can break a million dollars before he makes it to the majors.
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