Changeup

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of the term changeup is "a slow pitch in baseball thrown with the same motion as a fastball in order to deceive the batter". Wikipedia also mentions other names for the term changeup including: change, off-speed pitch, or change-of-pace. Over the weekend I was taking a look at the rookie cards I had acquired of Nick Senzel for my Senzational Rookies project and decided to change things up. While I could try to track down the numerous parallels of certain cards I had listed on the blog, specifically Bowman, Bowman's Best, Topps Update, Heritage and Chrome, I would be spending a large chunk of change on acquiring those cards just for different color borders and lower print runs. I've already attempted the rainbow thing with Joey Votto and his 2013 Topps Cards and I've been tracking down parallels for my 2008 Joey Votto rookie project. It just didn't make sense to me to throw a lot of money chasing parallels for this project too. Besides, it's been a while since I've devoted any funds to some of my vintage team sets and I would like to add more T206 and Goudey cards to my Reds binders before the end of the year. With that in mind, I've drastically pared down the number of Senzel rookie cards I'm chasing from 90 to 40. What boggles my mind is that out of those 50 cards I cut, all but 3 were parallels. I should definitely have this project wrapped up by the end of the year.

Buy Low, Sell.....Never!

Last week the market really took a beating with everyone in a panic over the coronavirus. I get it, the whole situation isn't something that should be taken lightly. While I'm not a market guy, watching the Dow drop more than 3,500 points can be a bit unsettling. Now that being said, every investor will tell you that when stocks are down, that's the perfect time to buy. I guess the same can be true for baseball cards. When prospects make it to the show their card values skyrocket and affordability diminishes quite quickly. However, if that prospect gets injured and requires surgery then his card values start to fall back down to earth. That's exactly the case with Cincinnati's number 2 pick Nick Senzel. Though his numbers weren't astronomical last year, they were decent. Unfortunately, he was bit by the injury bug towards the end of last season and had to have shoulder surgery. As a result, his cardboard prices have become easy for me to stomach and I've started acquiring his rookie cards from last season. So far I've been able to grab 20 different and I've decided to chase down 90 different rookie cards of the Reds center fielder. The parameters are the same as my Votto Rookie project with one exception, I'm not going to go after any non-licensed cards in this project. That means ABSOLUTELY NO PANINI CARDS will be joining this binder. What's fascinating is that I've identified 90 different Bowman and Topps cards to chase with room to spare, I could have added the Topps Gold parallels as well as Topps Fire, but there just isn't room on the wantlist. Anyway, I should enjoy working on this project as much as I have with chasing down Joey Votto rookie cards. You can keep track of my progress by clicking the link on the right hand column of the page titled Senzational Rookies