Bryce Harper has been on most collectors radar for a while now. He’s was the centerpiece of every 2011 Bowman Baseball product, and now is being featured in 2012 products with that RC Card Logo no one really ever understood.
Even though Bryce Harper had many cards released before his 2011 Bowman Autograph #BP1 – I kind of look at this as his first official autograph card (not that the Upper Deck USA or AFLAC ones aren’t nice). So I wanted to see what prices it has sold for over the course of the cards’ life. 2011 Bowman Baseball was released in early May 2011, unfortunately I couldn’t get data for the first few weeks of release, however I have good data from June 1st 2011 to the present.
One thing this graph shows is what happens when more & more releases come out with Bryce Harper Autographs.
2011 Bowman Platinum – July 27, 2011
2011 Topps Heritage Minor Leagues – September 21, 2011
2011 Bowman Chrome Baseball – October 19, 2011
2011 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects – November 23, 2011
2011 Bowman Sterling Baseball – December 21, 2011
It appears that as more 2011 releases came out, the less collectors were willing to pay for the 2011 Bowman BP1. The trend starts to reverse towards the end of the product cycle when 2011 Bowman Sterling comes out in December. I think if I was a buyer of baseball prospects, I would want to keep this in mind as the cards come out during the course of a guys career. I would expect that Bryce Harper will make appearances in 2012 Topps Chrome, 2012 Topps Finest and some other sets for the 1st time in 2012 … that might dilute his values despite playing well on the field.
There is no doubt that this young player has all the talent to be one of the better players in the game. Collectors have been paying big money for his cards for a while, but you certainly could have bought this particular card at better times than others. This just goes to show you that even with all the hype in the world, and in some cases living up to it … you still have supply vrs. demand forces that make cards go up/down. My guess is that we are only just beginning to see how popular this 19 year old kid can get, if he can somehow be apart of the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, that would boost his popularity among more casual fans. If this card ever gets down to $150 again, I might be a buyer.
