More Rescues From Among The Commons

As I've probably stated before in a number of ways, I'm not a rookie collector.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that a rookie card of a guy who only has a lot of potential is worth way more than (even the rookie sometimes) of a player who actually accomplished a HOF worthy career.  

But that's a whole other post...

One of the things that comes out of all the rookie hype is when you're building sets, you better hope you pulled the big rookie cards when you opened your boxes, or got them in trade before they took off.  Luckily, I had all the ones I was looking for.

On the flip side, since I don't pay so much attention to modern rookies, I will often leave them in the set boxes with all the rest of the base cards.  I will have finished the set, so they are in there somewhere, but as you saw with the Mike Trout post, I recently figured out it's probably better to pull them out and preserve on them at least a little bit.  

I intend to put them in the binder where all my major star cards are that aren't with their respective sets.  I have heard YouTubers say that binders and pages aren't good protection.  Aside from slabbing them, which will never happen, are top loaders or one-touches generally considered much better options than pages?  I don't have the storage space for many more top loaders.  Let me know in the comments...

So I went on COMC (This is generally how I figure out dollar values for stuff.)  and pulled up most of the current major stars (that I could think of - your comments helped a lot) and looked to see what their base Topps rookie cards were selling for, since those seem to be highly sought after lately.  I made a list of all the ones that were around $8 and over.  Nobody is close to Trout at four digits, but a few were more than I expected.  And since you can't really separate regular base cards in a COMC search for "topps base <player name>", I ran across a few others that I hunted down too, like A&G or Heritage high numbers.

Here is the group after I pulled them out:

I put them in top loaders for the time being, but like I said, they'll end up in a binder unless several of you leave screaming comments that I'm an idiot...Though I have put certain singles in top loaders and filed them back with the sets before too...

The down side of set building sometimes is that you amass the whole thing with most or all the inserts, sort it into a box, and then it goes on the shelf and sits for a very long time.  A few of these cards were in boxes that were way down on the bottom of stacks or deep in cabinets.

Like Altuve's 2011 Topps ($18) ~ that set was on the very bottom of the rack. 

Trout was in that bottom box too.  I just realized I forgot Goldschmidt ($35)...dangit!  Gotta pull that one back out again!

Had to think about where my 2013 Update set was.  I have a factory base set, and couldn't recall how I got the Update.  It was lurking in the cabinet.

 

...with the Opening Day set.

Yelich's Topps base is on the border of $7-8 like Posey's, so I haven't pulled it yet.  Arenado is $20+ and this Heritage High Number is selling for $68 right now.  Not sure if that's a fluke...

He was up on the cabinet shelf with the old school Update sets (lower right).  Mine isn't sorted, but he popped right up when I pulled out the first few cards.

2014 starts a run of Topps sets that fit into two row shoe boxes with Series 1, 2 & Update.  My run from 2014 to 2018 are all stored this way.  These guys are about $40-50 each for their regular rookies right now.  This is about when they started with the regular+rookie debut cards since just making one of a guy isn't nearly enough any more...

Lindor ($12) is the only one from 2015 or '16 that I pulled.  

Then we get to the guys that are still way up on the hot list.  Judge has one base ($41) and three Update cards ($8, $13, $20), plus I yanked his Bunt blue ($21) that I happened to pull and his '87 ($29) from my set.

And for Ohtani, almost nothing of his is registering below $10, so they all came out...even some Stadium Club inserts.  The one with Ichiro is only marked $4, so I might throw that one back...

If I was a good fan of the Nats, I should have a lot more Soto ($25) stuff, but he was in such high demand right from the jump that I never had any real opportunities to get anything exotic.

And I still need Tatis' RC from Stadium Club to finish that set....his are all about $10.

I did pull an Acuña auto from the previous Stadium Club and sold it on eBay.  Still have most of the others in that post.  His Update is going for around $20.

I was glad to pull the Vlad no-number at the time.  Of course, it's only like $17 now.  When those come out you think you might have hit a super rare short print, but the ones I find mellow out quickly.

So if you're a set builder, what do you do with the big name rookie cards?  (Guess it depends on how you store your sets too).  What is your value threshold to separate them from the set?  Or do you?  Bleep bloop it below, thanks!