Depending on what website you visit, Jose Altuve height is between 5′ 5″ to 5′ 7″ … but what doesn’t change is his high batting average and ability to get on base for the Houston Astros this season. Altuve has been getting lots of attention for being the shortest player in the MLB, but his play on the field lately has taken his cards to new heights.
Signed as an international free agent, Jose Altuve has been developing his skills in the minor leagues since 2007. With all that experience, he still is only 22 years old – and has proven that he might become a solid MLB player. All this has gotten the attention of collectors and especially Houston Astros fans. One of his most notable cards to date is his 2010 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor serial numbered to just 150 copies. I chose to look at the price movement of this card because I was able to find good sales data going back almost 1 year. Note that there are some gaps in the data, but I think this will give you a good idea of how his prices have risen over that last few months. You can imagine that the base version, and certainly all his other parallel cards from this set have risen over the last 3 months as well.
As you can see in the price graph, Jose Altuve actually made his MLB Debut in late 2011 … and didn’t play too poorly, but a .276 AVG with little power potential is not going to light your cards on fire. However, you can see once the 2012 season started, and he got his average into the high .300’s people really started to take notice. Now that he’s into his 3rd month of playing All-Star level baseball, you see people really start to bid up on his rare Bowman Chrome RC’s. The last sale was at $46.23 – and at the time of writing this, there were no Blue Refractor Jose Altuve Bowman Chrome cards for sale on eBay.
2010 Bowman Chrome #BCP137
Blue Refractor #/150
Complete Sales On eBay
- 6/14/2011 $19.85
- 7/25/2011 $21.56
- 8/7/2011 $26.00
- 8/31/2011 $20.00
- 9/21/2011 $9.65
- 12/23/2011 $12.69
- 3/15/2012 $12.99
- 4/2/2012 $12.59
- 5/16/2012 $22.72
- 6/11/2012 $46.23
It’s very difficult to know where this card goes the rest of the season. Altuve is playing at an ultra high level for a bad team – so that sometimes takes the pressure off because he is one of the few bright spots for Astros fans this season. Being the shortest player in the game will get Altuve more fans and more attention from collectors similar to Spud Webb and other ‘short’ athletes. If I was an owner of this card (or another rare cards of his) I would probably sell at some point this season because I feel his hype is about to swell. If you think he’s going to be a future HOF, you can probably re-buy at another point in his career when the hype wears off and the attention is on another group of prospects. Either way, if you bought and held his cards up to this point, your investment has done pretty well.
