A Great Plan Foiled

Fate, circumstance, luck, Beckett, and possibly Juan Nieves (I never trusted that guy) have all conspired to keep me penniless and poor. I very sad to announce that I must now scrap my foolproof plan to strike it rich.

You may remember the plan

It hinged around the awesome Legends Chrome cards that you got in the cereal box packs at Target and Walmart (and Giant Eagle, as it turns out). There are 20 cards in all, 10 for each set. Beckett assured me that these were very valuable cards.




Beckett, after thorough and painstaking research, taking into account all manner of complex mathematical formulas, using some of the worlds most powerful computers to put these formulas and computations through various probability matrixes, carefully studying the results of these repeated tests, and just plain old good common sense, have decided to drop the values of the cards in these sets.

Here are the updated values of these cards:

Walmart set: (silver ones)

1. Ted Williams $25
now $12
2. Jackie Robinson $12
now $8
3. Babe Ruth $20
now $12
4. Honus Wagner $10
now $8
5. Lou Gehrig $12
now $10
6. Nolan Ryan $25
now $15
7. Mickey Mantle $25
now $15
8. Thurman Munson $15
now $8
9. Cal Ripken Jr. $40
now $20
10.George Sisler $8
STILL $8!

I guess I should start by saying that I am using the high values for this. There is a lower value column that should be used. But, let's face it, anyone who puts any stock in Beckett value uses the High column.

As you can see, the returns are somewhat less than they were a few short weeks ago. It's funny that I barely noticed the bottom dropping out of the 2009 Chrome Legends market. I guess I just need to pay more attention.

As disappointed as I am that I won't be retiring to the Virgin Islands with a small harem any time soon, I can still take pride in the fact that you can STILL get all of the other cards in the cereal boxes for free. Just get the box, sell off the Chrome, and keep the base cards for free! I plan on finishing the Turkey Red set that way (I'm a fool for Turkey Red). Oh, and, look at Sisler! Good for that dude! Holding strong at $8!

Now, I know there are those of you who are thinking that maybe Beckett lowered the prices in response to my first post. You are thinking of the great power wielded by The Achiever Card Blog!. But, alas, you would be mistaken. I am but a mere pimple on the Great Ass that is Beckett.

Mario, however. I do believe he may have the juice. I'm just saying. It makes you think doesn't it? Is Beckett now setting prices in response to Wax Heaven?

2009 Chrome Legends

Here is a cool little set of cards for you. A few months ago Dayf went over all of the different ways that you can get Topps cards and what to expect in each kind of pack. He went over Hobby, retail, rack packs, blasters,...everything. He also talked about these $10 "cereal boxes". I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Cereal boxes are big. Did they put some cards in boxes of cereal or something? What kind of cereal. I was very confused. It didn't make sense to me. If I would have read Dayf's post more closely I probably would have figured it out, but I didn't. I'm a lazy man and to tell you the truth, my ignorance didn't bother me a whole hell of a lot.





Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I'm in Walmart or Target or something and I see all of the different configurations of cards. And there's this little box that is obviously Topps, but I hadn't seen before. "Hey, that looks like a little cereal box" me thinks.

"HEY! THAT"S WHAT DAYF WAS TALKING ABOUT!" It's all coming together.

Well $10 seemed a little steep for 55 cards plus some stupid chrome refractor thing. But hey, why not? I love shiny things.

Well, I'm glad I did because I LOVE these Chrome cards. Looking back on it, I don't know why I was skeptical. I just love Chrome in general.




So I've picked up a few more of these cereal boxes, basically for the Turkey Red and the Chrome. These are the 2 I've pulled so far and I have 1 box I've yet to open. Also, apparently there are two different 10 card sets. One for Target and one for Walmart. One is gold, the other silver. I'm not sure which is which. I could look it up, but, what the hell do you want from me? Reliable information? You can get that somewhere else. I've got idiocy to offer here. Take it or leave it.

This brings me to a genius plan that I've hatched. The Beckett book value of all of these cards is astronomical. The least valuable one is George Sisler at $8. The others go up to $40! So I plan on buying all of these $10 cereal boxes in existence, opening them, and selling all of the Chrome cards for a profit. So I take a $2 hit on the Sislers. Big deal. I make $30 above cost every time I pull a Ripken JR!

It's a can't miss, unless BV is off. But how could it be? Anyway, it doesn't matter what the ebay value is. The BV is right because I CHOSE TO BELIEVE! I'm a genius. I'm going to be rich!

I might even save a set of these for myself. I really do like them a lot. There are 20 cards in all. I have 3 of them (unless the unopened one is a double.) If anyone has extra of these and wants to complete their 1989 Topps set I have a lot to offer in trade. Let me know.

UPDATE!!

The veritable tidal wave of comments has prompted me to actual do about 2 minutes of research on this after all. The following are the Beckett values of these 2 sets:

Target set: (these are the gold ones)
Ted Williams is the only one with a price and it is $10
All other players are "N/A"

Walmart set: (silver ones)

1. Ted Williams $25
2. Jackie Robinson $12
3. Babe Ruth $20
4. Honus Wagner $10
5. Lou Gehrig $12
6. Nolan Ryan $25
7. Mickey Mantle $25
8. Thurman Munson $15
9. Cal Ripken Jr. $40
10.George Sisler $ 8

Curiously, the walmart set has a price for every card, but the value of the entire set is "N/A".

High Beckett value was used because that is what I Choose to accept as accurate. And as we all know, if we all want Beckett to be correct hard enough, it will make it true.

As you can surely see, my plan is foolproof.