Over Postseasoned

Topps starting putting out a set of Postseason cards starting with their 2006 set.  For almost a decade Topps has issued the set and featured players only from the World Series winning team.  The concept has been universally popular with collectors.  The cards are highly collectable amongst fans of the World Series winning teams, but they have also been popular with fans who just enjoy enjoy a good challenge baseball card to track down.  The first set featuring the 2005 White Sox looked like this:

Luckily my Cardinals have won the World Series twice since Topps has added the Postseason cards, so I have had a few years with a little bit of extra incentive to track down copies of these cards.  When Topps released the preliminary checklist for the 2014 Topps set I was shocked to see that the Postseason set features players outside of the Red Sox.  At first glance I noticed the Cardinals and thought that perhaps they had expanded the set out to the two World Series teams.  However, they went a little bit further than that.  Perhaps too far. 

Big shout out to Cardboard Connection for the pretty checklist.  So, the Postseason set now has the World Series winners, World Series losers, League Championship losers, and even the Division Series losers too.  Why not go ahead and throw in a few Reds and a couple of Indians too to round out the set.  Of course, expanded the set has created some problems with collectors. 

So, here it goes...the original Topps Postseason cards were extremely tough pulls and sold very well.  I know a lot of collectors who love these cards.  I know a lot of team collectors who love picking up copies of these cards featuring their favorite teams and players from World Series winners.  They demand for these cards has clearly been reflecting in their pricing. 

Let's take Julio Lugo.  Not the most popular Boston Red Sox player from the 2007 World Series winner, but his autographed Postseason relic card recently sold on Ebay for $78.  I know collectors who would not bat an eye at that price for this card.  If it finished off someone's set I would not be surprised to see it push to over $100. 

However, this year there are more Postseason cards.  The print runs are still the same, but insert rate has risen making them more common.  The results are dramatically lower prices.  Not even close. 

Felix Dubront won the World Series last year with the Red Sox.  He's still on the Red Sox.  His Postseason autographed card recently sold for $28.  Drastic decline in price, but still has not stopped sellers from trying to price their Postseason relics and autographs aggressively at high prices paid by collectors in years past.  I would love to get my hands on a Michael Wacha autograph from this set, but man, people are asking a lot.

  
A copy of the Matt Holliday relic would be cool too.  Until then my patience has paid off with this year's Postseason set and my rantings about pricing and Topps screwing things up with this annual set has come to an end.  The post is not over, it's just time to share my latest card. 

While I am sure that most Rays collectors would like to forget about last year's playoff appearance against the Red Sox, this is still a really cool looking card.  I managed to pick this card up for less than $10 last week and was happy to see a copy that was not a Buy It Now, or attached to a trader who valued it at $100, because you know...Postseason card.  Now, if we could only talk a little bit about the player selection.  Why isn't Jose Lobaton in the set?  This was the best moment of the Rays Postseason in my opinion.