The San Francisco Bay Area, and Northern California in general, is a part of the world that can embrace athletes the rest of the sporting world has written off. Some examples in the past might be the Raiders team and made it to the Super Bowl with Rich Gannon, Jerry Rice, Tim Brown and other “older” players. Barry Bonds was hated and often booed across the entire country, but still draws cheers from fans to this day in San Francisco. Vlade Divac was re-born in Sacramento, Aubrey Huff and Cody Ross are superstars.
That being said, the fans around here can go from being “some of the best in the league” to booing & trashing the players on talk-radio … especially when you don’t win.
You could throw Alex Smith, quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, and former #1 pick in 2005, into the list of players fans were booing for most of his career. The 49ers themselves have tried to replace Alex Smith several times, they even drafted young quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2011. Not to mention during the current off-season, after Alex Smith finally has a great season, (which led the 49ers all the way to the NFC championship game) the 49ers were rumored as one of the teams trying to sign Peyton Manning. Coach Jim Harbaugh downplayed the issue after Manning signed with Denver, but one thing is for certain, Alex Smith’s career has been a wild ride!
Speaking of wild rides, you can bet with the ups/downs Alex Smith has experienced in the past year – one of his best rookie cards has been going up/down right with him. Smith has tons of rookie cards, but I found some really nice data on his 2005 Playoff Contenders RC #106 – which has a stated print run of 401 copies. This time last year (July 2011) collectors weren’t paying much attention to Alex Smith, and most San Francisco 49ers fans had given up on the 7 year pro. Being the #1 pick, Even as the 49ers were winning games, the lack of big numbers from Smith kept most collectors away.
Then this little thing called the NFL Playoffs started
The rise in this price graph is not nearly as impressive as the data actually is if you include all the Buy-It-Now cards that were sold. Many eBay sellers were moving these during the December – January months as the 49ers marched through the playoffs for Buy-it-Now prices similar to the ones you see in the month of January. This data below only includes auctions with multiple bids … so the volume of cards sold during the NFL Playoff months was much greater.
This graph shows how quickly your cards can go up in the NFL if your team starts winning games. This graph also shows how important it is to remember as collectors – you can always wait until the hype wears off to buy the cards at a lower price. Even if the 49ers had went on to win the Super Bowl, his cards would have certainly cooled off a bit during the off-season. Buying cards during the heat of the playoff run is always exciting …. but being able to sell the card for that price ($200) is going to be difficult now unless Alex Smith can win a Super Bowl.
Buying in at today’s price of $75 – $80 really can’t get you hurt too bad considering the same card was selling for $25 – $40 when everyone thought he sucked. Additionally, if you are a collector who never really sells your cards, you can see selling this card during the hype would have been a great idea because you could have bought one back later at a much lower price. You’ll want to keep this in mind as we are on the cusp of the 2012 NFL season
Here Is The Raw eBay Data
7/10/2011 —Â $37.00
7/21/2011 —Â $35.35
8/9/2011 —Â $35.00
8/29/2011 —Â $24.50
9/3/2011 —Â $27.00
9/19/2011 —Â $27.00
10/2/2011 —Â $39.99
10/11/2011 —Â $51.48
10/18/2011 —Â $69.74
10/19/2011 —Â $61.00
10/30/2011 —Â $78.00
10/31/2011 —Â $63.69
11/6/2011 —Â $90.00
11/7/2011 —Â $76.01
11/19/2011 —Â $72.00
11/20/2011 —Â $79.00
11/21/2011 —Â $69.01
12/4/2011 —Â $68.00
12/7/2011 —Â $65.96
12/7/2011 —Â $70.00
12/10/2011 —Â $76.75
12/18/2011 —Â $58.00
1/14/2012 —Â $69.95
1/15/2012 —Â $89.88
1/15/2012 —Â $131.32
1/15/2012 —Â $202.50
1/17/2012 —Â $147.50
1/19/2012 —Â $122.57
1/21/2012 —Â $125.73
1/23/2012 —Â $76.00
1/24/2012 —Â $85.77
1/30/2012 —Â $82.13
3/15/2012 —Â $86.00
3/27/2012 —Â $89.00
4/9/2012 —Â $112.50
7/1/2012 —Â $72.67
Current Contenders Cards on eBay
{module 532}Who’s The Next “Alex Smith???”
Can Sam Bradford Bounce Back?Is Colt McCoy Done?Is Kevin Kolb The Real Deal?
