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Everything you need to know about buying Bowman baseball cards.

Signed cards for sale at Marlins Park. (Photo by: Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

When it comes to the world of prospecting, specifically 1st Bowman cards, the questions I get asked most frequently in my DMs are about buying and selling. Should I buy raw or graded cards? Which parallels or colors should I buy? When should I sell? I figured the easiest way to answer all of those was to put it in writing for the first time and give you the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of Bowman prospecting. I present to you the first copy of my Bowman Buying Bible.

Who?

Well, this is the easiest question. Pretty much my entire publication is centered around who to buy. For those of you who don’t know me, I'm Bob and I have a Substack called Big Bob’s Cards. Starting today I’ve partnered with Mantel to share my content under their banner with the hope of giving collectors another edge in the chase for the next big thing.

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a prospect ranking system that is specifically formulated to rank prospects based on how well their cards should sell. It factors in everything from their dynasty ranking by multiple outlets, how productive they’ve been in their minor league career, their age, their tools, etc., and creates a weighted formula based on which things matter most to the hobby. Rankings are updated weekly along with a “Hot Sheet” every Monday highlighting the hottest hitters from the previous week with updated comps on every player’s 1st Bowman autograph. If you’re new to prospecting or aren’t sure who to buy, make sure you come on over to Substack or check back here weekly!

What?

There are quite a few answers to this question but the first part of it is making sure you are buying 1st Bowman Autographs. People do have success buying prospect autos or mega box autos that aren’t true 1st’s, but I would personally aim for 1st Bowman Autographs when you can, and try to stay away from in-person autos, that being a card that didn’t come out of the pack autographed but somebody had it signed in-person. You’d think it being signed in-person by the player would help its value, but most seasoned Bowman buyers tend to avoid them. Stick with the cards that come autographed straight from the pack. Many people also have success buying and selling the non-autographed numbered parallels so that is a great option as well if you don’t want to pay up for the autographs, but unless you’re holding them for your personal collection I personally wouldn’t have the players sign them.

Another part of the “what” is which parallels to buy. In my articles I always reference base autograph prices, but that doesn’t mean I’m telling you to buy base autos. One reason I use base autos as comps is that almost every player who has Bowman autos has base autos. While it does work both ways, I find it more common that a player is missing certain colors, so using base autos as the benchmark is the easiest way to compare prospects. Also, because they have the highest print runs, they sell more often, which makes it easier to track price movement in real time.

I don’t mind buying base autos because they can all go up, but when I say a player with a $5 base auto is a buy, you can buy as low of a numbered parallel as you want depending on how much you are comfortable spending. When I am excited that a player’s base auto has gone from $5 to $10 it’s not because I’m trying to make $5, but more likely that I bought a true gold auto /50 for $50 that is now worth $100, etc. I figure everything in percentages and obviously a guy’s cards doubling in value when you have a few hundred dollars worth is different from having $20 worth. Make sure you keep it within your budget though, I hardly ever would recommend going all-in on one player. Spread it out, but mix in some color because that is where the fun gains come from.

Everyone has their own preference on parallels, but since my goal is always to sell later, I stick to the most liquid colors. My go-tos are: Refractor /499, True Blue /150, and True Gold /50. If I can, I’ll go for True Orange /25, True Red /5, and Superfractors 1/1. I’ll buy Speckle /299 if it’s the same price as a Refractor, and I’ll sometimes mix in Sparkle /71 in Draft or Black /75, since those do well. But I generally avoid non-true colors like Purple, Aqua, Yellow, and Green, and I also try to stay away from Waves, Shimmers, and Lavas. I’ll scoop anything if it’s a deal, but if I’m paying full comps on a card I plan to resell, I stick to my list. I’ll admit though, I’m a sucker for a Gold Shimmer.

The truth is, OG Bowman people are snobs. Don’t try to make sense of why a Green sells for much less than a Blue despite being rarer. It’s just how it works. While I don’t agree with all of their quirks, I know they’re my buyers — so I buy what I know they’ll want later.

When?

I suppose the ‘when’, much like the ‘who’, will come from my articles. I’ll try to keep everyone up to date on when is a good time to buy a prospect. Usually it will be pretty direct. Often times I’ll say that I’m waiting another week on a player to see if they’ll continue the trajectory they’re on, but I’ll almost always put in writing when I think it is time to buy a certain prospect.

Where?

No wrong answer here. Card shows. Hobby shops. Facebook. Twitter (X). Instagram. COMC. eBay. Hell, I know people who have bought cards on Mercari and Etsy. Just make sure they’re coming from a reputable source before sending anyone your money. eBay is the king for me and I’ll also dabble on COMC too for lower end stuff. Sometimes I go there and will try to scoop ten copies of a guy with a $4 autograph just to try to corner the market. You can usually find good deals there and since you don’t have to pay shipping or handle the cards at all before re-selling it’s nice for quick flips. Card shows and hobby shops I tend to avoid because the singles are always overpriced, though you can often find nice deals at shows if you’re willing to look hard enough. For me personally I will always go to eBay first before any social media outlets, but as long as you’re finding the best deals then you do you.

How?

There’s been quite a few people asking me about buying raw vs. graded so let’s call that the ‘how’. How should you buy your cards? Again like the ‘where’, however you can get the best deals. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong approach if you’re getting a good price. Personally I only buy raw or PSA 10. If I do buy PSA 9’s it’s usually only in cards that are gold or better, meaning numbered to 50 or less. When you get up into those rare parallels sometimes you have to buy what you can find and oftentimes that’s a 9. I have zero issues with 9’s, and I’m in the boat with many who think it’s dumb that raw cards and PSA 9’s sell for the same price. Unfortunately over time I’ve realized it’s not about what I think is right, it matters what the people I’ll be selling to think, and the fact of the matter is that 9’s are harder to move in my experience. It reminds me of the Family Guy clip. ‘A PSA 9 is a PSA 9 but a raw card could be anything… it could even be a PSA 9!’. Why people view 9’s negatively I’ll never understand and maybe over time that will switch if PSA continues to grade as strictly as they have been, but for stuff I’m flipping it’s usually raw or 10.

I do also buy raw cards and have them graded but that is dependent on the timing of the purchase. Once the season ends that is when I’ll do the bulk of my offseason buying, around November/December when prices are down. Any raw cards I buy at that time I will review and see if they are worth grading and if they are I will try to send them off then, ensuring that they will be graded and back in my possession by the start of the next season. Once the season starts however, I wouldn’t recommend grading anything.

Sometimes these selling windows are really small. Prospects will get hot for a week or two and see their card prices double and triple quickly. It’s happened to countless prospects this season. The last thing that I’d ever want is to have a card I’m ready to sell and take my profits on and have it be stuck at PSA. It’s not a risk I’d ever take.

With almost every prospect I’m saying to buy, the goal is to sell before the season is over. Take your profits when they get hot, convert it into more cash, save it up for offseason buying. Rinse. Repeat. So it doesn’t really matter to me if you buy raw or graded right now, but I’d try not to grade anything between now and the end of the season.

Why?

Why else? To make money. The whole goal of my hobby prospect rankings, the weekly trending reports, etc. is to try to pick up cards of prospects before the general public has realized that they should be more expensive than they are. That’s why we’re here.

Selling

Now that I’ve covered all the bases of buying I’ll touch on what is probably the single question I get asked most often, “when should I sell?”. I wish I could give a definitive answer but unfortunately nobody in the world can predict when a player’s popularity is going to plateau.

Take Roman Anthony as an example. I was buying Roman Anthony Refractor Autos at $90 when 2023 Bowman was released and when his popularity took off I sold them for around $275 raw. I even had a couple of them that I graded and turned into PSA 10’s and sold for $600. At the time my thought process was that I would be foolish not to cash out when I’ve tripled my money. Well now that card is $700+ raw. Did I sell too soon? The answer really depends on how you view risk. I think I sold at the perfect time and I have no regrets. Cards can go down just as fast, if not faster than they go up. If Roman Anthony had debuted and batted under .200 for a couple of months the value of that card would have fallen off of a cliff. It’s not a risk I’ll ever take. Everything changes on a case by case basis but as soon as I’ve doubled my money I’m already starting to look for an exit strategy.

It hurts when you sell early and a player keeps going up, but I assure you it doesn’t hurt as much as when you turn down a fair offer because you think you can squeeze out more hype and next thing you know the card is worth half of what you wanted. The way I live my prospecting life is by the motto, “you’ll never go broke taking a profit”.

Other than prospects getting hot and having their prices double the other times I’m considering exiting is when they’re promoted. Not just called up to the MLB, but sometimes an early promotion from High-A to Double-A can trigger a market increase. Any time a player I’m holding is moved up a level I will at least check to see what it does to their prices and determine if it’s time to move on.

My single biggest piece of selling advice is to sell the MLB call-up. I currently own zero cards of active MLB players and I have zero desire to do so. Julio Rodríguez taught me this lesson. He debuted, prices skyrocketed, then slumped in his first month, and values dropped. Even after he caught fire and won Rookie of the Year, prices never returned to debut levels.

Sure you have your rare cases like Elly De La Cruz where they get called up and from day one they get the hype and are making highlight reel plays and their cards go through the roof. But you have to understand that it is more like a 1 in 100 scenario. Junior Caminero was a hot prospect name when he debuted and his PSA 10 1st Refractor Auto sold for $1,000. He is 22-years-old and on pace to hit about 50 homers this year and that card currently sells for less than it did on the day that he was first called up. Don’t bank on these guys coming out of the gates on fire and understand that for most of them they will never be more hyped than they were the day they got called up.

The next piece of advice I would give is to sell before the season is over. Now, if you’re into a player and they have a slow year, and you are planning to buy them again in the offseason because you expect them to bounce back next year, it’s fine to hold. Other than that I would try to liquidate pretty much everything you have before the season is over. It’s part of the reason why I don’t recommend grading during the season. I will buy guys today that will get hot for two weeks and if those card prices double and triple I’ll sell immediately.

I’ve had cards in my possession less than 24 hours because by the time a card was shipped to me a prospect had gone up so much that I sold him before I opened the package. Take your money and move on. I will say though, one strategy I don’t mind at all is selling part of your stash on a player and holding a couple of their cards as a free roll. Say you buy 20 autos of a guy that are $25 each and his card prices double. You sell 15 of those at $50 and you’re now up $250 and you have 5 more you can hold and see what happens. Probably something I should have considered with Roman Anthony but here we are.

There’s nothing worse to me than holding too long though. Even the prospects who are playing well to end the year lose hype in the offseason. I’d always rather have the cash than the cards, especially since most of the prices will start to trend down as the season comes to a close.