Today is June 23rd, the first day of the new and improved $100 project. For those of you who are new to this blog, I underwent a personal challenge a couple of years ago to put my money where my mouth is and try to make a $100 investment grow over a year’s time through a variety of baseball card purchases and sales. The project started strong and ended prematurely as I was unable to see it all the way through.
I don’t have peace about this. I want another crack at it.
I was going to start this project on the 1st of July, but have made a couple of purchases over the last couple of days that I think would help me get off to a good start. Without further ado, let’s get to the project.
This lot consisted of four 2007 Bowman Sterling Chris Carter refractor RC’s (#/199), and a 2007 Bowman’s Best Blue Chris Carter (#/99). It was purchased from the same seller who had “Best Offer” features for these cards. He was selling these at $9.99 each and I offered $6.00 for each card shipped. I fully expected a counter offer as a 40% discount is usually regarded as being quite steep in these situations. To my pleasurable surprise, the seller agreed and sent the cards within days of receiving my Paypal payment.
Chris Carter was just called up today by the Oakland A’s to replace the injured Josh Willingham. Carter was batting .333 with 3 HR and 9 RBI since returning to Sacramento, following his rehab stint. This guy has amazing power when he barrels up on the ball. Unfortunately, as we saw last season, contact is not a foregone conclusion for Carter. He started his major league career with an 0-33 stretch, but rallied nicely over the last month of the season. I think he’ll fare much better this time around.
My plan is to put each of these up on auction for $20. This is steeper than the going rates, but I also sold two of his Sterling refractors for $40 last season. I’m confident that a couple of homeruns will bring people back into Carter’s camp. I’ve never left and think that it’s high time I am rewarded for my loyalty. That brings us to our next acquisition….
Do we detect a theme here? I already have a few of these autos, but the price tag of $8.00 shipped was too low to ignore. This was not a fixed price auction, but Carter’s slow start has turned many people off to his stuff–therefore keeping his conventional auction prices low. There just isn’t that much stuff of his out there that is not at a fixed price right now. That may change now that he’s been called up. I’m pricing this at $30, which is much lower than the other fixed price autos of his.
So, here’s the initial damage.
Starting Balance: $100.00
Expenses: $ 38.00
Ending Balance: $ 62.00
Inventory:
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Chris Carter 2007 Bowman Sterling Ref. (X4)
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Chris Carter 2007 Bowman’s Best Blue
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Chris Carter 2008 Donruss Threads Gold Auto
What do you think? Feel free to leave comments in the comments section and/or share a thought on what you think a good short term buy strategy would be right now.
About Jeremy
I live in the Pacific Northwest with my wife Amber and 9 year old son Derek. While I am passionate about sports and sports cards, I also love to spend time playing in the outdoors with family and friends.
I am always eager to get to know more about other collectors and aspiring speculators in this World Wide community. Don't hesitate to say hello and tell me a little about yourself!
Thanks for checking out my blog and happy prospecting!
Jeremy
I love the Chris Carter picks just before he got called up. This is a great site and the $100 project is my favorite feature. I hope you can keep it up successfully the full year!
Thanks for the kudos! It will be interesting to see just how long the A’s keep Carter up. The night of his call up, Mark Ellis played the majority of the game @ 1B before Carter went in as a defensive replacement. He promptly dropped a pop up in foul territory, allowing Hanley Ramirez a second chance which, if you watched Sportscenter you’d know that Han-Ram made the most of it and smacked a game-winning RBI.
Not a good start for Carter.
I’m really excited about this project and will do my best to make a diverse assortment of transactions in the process. I’ve dedicated an entire page to it that can be found in the links right below my header. Thanks A’s OK for the props!