Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As I am a part of the eBay Partner Network and other programs, if you follow these links and make a purchase, I’ll receive commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
If you’re new to the blog, don’t follow me on TikTok, and haven’t listened to the podcast, let me set the stage for a minute. I love to talk about flipping sports cards for profit. The difference with me, though, is that I aim to minimize as much risk as possible along the way.
Meaning, some like to chase big names and prospects, spending hundreds of dollars on a card in hopes that it increases in value to thousands, but that just isn’t me. Instead, I like to buy the cards that are simply underpriced or at “yesterday’s prices” and sell them immediately at market value or “today’s” increased worth.
There are three main strategies I use to do this:
1. Check the recently added sections of sites like COMC in hopes someone lists an underpriced card that I can pounce on. Like this Chauncey Billups 24K from Fleer Brilliants that I bought for $8 and sold for $800 before fees.
2. Follow the trends, spot a card skyrocketing in value and then searching card sites (not eBay) for cards with prices that haven’t been adjusted yet. Like these Bowden Francis rookie auto:
3. Learning about valuable cards and then going out and checking card sites (not eBay) for those cards to see if they’re for sale and underpriced.
This blog has to do with this third strategy—I call it “know and seek” and also refer to it as “find and flip.” You’re learning about a valuable card and then with that knowledge, seeking it out.
Of course, these aren’t going to be cards with obvious value—your Ken Griffey Jr. refractors, Derek Jeter gold rookies, etc. Instead these are cards that don’t really look like much on the surface, but because of that, fly under the radar until someone with the right knowledge comes around and buys them.
I’ve talked about this at length on my sneaky valuable card list, but here are five specific examples I felt were worth sharing in detail.
1. 1999 Topps MVP Promotion
Ok, first up—1999 Topps MVP Promotion.
To remind you what regular 1999 Topps card looks like, they have a gold border and a thin gold line running along one side and around the bottom – reminiscent of 1989 upper deck – then the player name vertically along the left or right side, and the team name in smaller print horizontally on the bottom.
For the MVP promotion cards, though, there is a large “MVP Promotion” logo in the bottom corner. Unlike other sneaky parallels, you can’t miss this designation. It’s very obvious. And then on the back of the card you’ll see contest guidelines—that it is not a typical baseball card back but a white back with terms and conditions.
I won’t get into the specifics of the contest, but basically these promotion cards could be exchanged, and according to baseballcardpedia.com, “Topps destroyed these Winner exchange cards once they received them, they’re in noticeably shorter supply”
Anyway, I bought a Roy Halladay MVP Promotion for under $3 on CollX and sold it for $75, and about $63 after fees.
2. 1994 Mothers’ Cookies California Angels Bo Jackson
This second card, I already shared it across a number of platforms but it blows my mind I went this long without knowing about it that it bears repeating.
It’s the 1994 Mothers’ Cookies California Angels Bo Jackson. When I first shared this out I made the incorrect assumption that everyone was familiar with Mothers’ Cookies cards simply because they were everywhere for me as a kid, and I still come across them a lot to this day.
And funnily enough, it looks like I’m not alone in thinking that given I came across an article from SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee which states “This was a distinctly West Coast release of a West Coast brand* which made cards from San Diego to Seattle and East as far as Houston and Minneapolis.”
So given all of that, the cards were stadium giveaways as team sets, and typically aren’t worth a ton, but the Bo Jackson is routinely selling between $50 and $70 from what I can tell. I still haven’t pinpointed why this card in particular is worth so much, but it could be a combination of a few things.
One, Bo Jackson wasn’t on the Angels for long, and while he has Angels cards, he doesn’t have a ton. Two, because it was a regional stadium giveaway, there aren’t a lot of these floating around. I also hypothesized that maybe the strike-shortened 1994 season had something to do with distribution, but perhaps not.
Anyway, be on the lookout for this card. It’s a pretty plain card by any standard, and actually feels more like a photograph than a card. It features Bo Jackson in his Angels batting practice or warmup top, and a small printing of “Bo Jackson” and “California Angels” in the top left.
I bought a copy for $4.16 on CollX and sold for $60, or about $50.5 after fees.
3. 1998 Pinnacle Epix
Ok, this one is a little more complicated, so stick with me. It’s 1998 Pinnacle Epix.
Now, I’ve actually known about the value of these for a while, but I was recently reminded of their potential value after finding an underpriced Cal Ripken from this set not too long ago on COMC.
Plus, I see a lot of question marks around this set, so I wanted to take some time to break it down.
What makes it complicated and thus a good flipping opportunity for those in the know is this is one of those sets that has a lot of things going on—there are a handful of variations between different colors, quote unquote levels, and more.
BaseballCardPedia describes it best as:
“1998 Pinnacle Epix is a multi-tiered, multi-fractured, 96-card, cross-brand insert set.”
To break things down to the simplest of forms, you can find these cards as base orange, or parallels purple and emerald, with emerald being most rare. Then, these colors are available across different tiers, which, in order of scarcity, would be play, game, season, and moment.
Here is an example of the three “play” versions for Ivan Rodriguez:
Given all of that, an orange play card should be most common while an emerald moment should be more rare.
While many of the cards described here and in future podcasts will be more subdued and “boring” these Epix cards are flash and in your face—they are all beautiful. To jog your memory, these have a big all-caps EPIX in the bottom left corner, and then the tier name printed multiple times in the background. They also have different patterns depending on the tier.
To give you an idea on how the prices differ between each of these, an Eddie Murray Epix Emerald Moment recently sold for around $60 while an Orange Moment sold for under $2. There was also an Albert Beller Purple Moment that sold for $94, so even a non-emerald moment can be worth something.
I recently bought a 1998 Pinnacle Plus All-Star Epix Moment Emerald #E14 of Cal Ripken Jr. on COMC for $2 and sold it at auction for $36 before fees. I’m not sure why the All-Star Epix cards seem to be lower-value, but they seem to be.
4. 1996 Upper Deck Diamond Destiny
Ok, Completely shifting gears here to a more boring-looking card in my opinion, but one that can be worth quite a bit—1996 Upper Deck Diamond Destiny Silver and Gold.
Again, not all valuable cards have to be beautiful. And I personally am just not a fan of this card design. But, while the basic Bronze versions are pretty common, the silver and gold are worth quite a bit. If thumbing through a bunch of cards, silver is easy to spot, but gold is a lot more difficult given how closely it resembles bronze.
These are so basic that they are hard to describe, but basically they have an acetate circular window with a profile picture of the player, and then a full-body action shot of the player to the left. “Diamond Destiny” is written around the circle. A shimmery name panel is at the bottom of the card, and this, along with the Upper Deck logo, circle outline, and writing is going to be bronze, silver, or gold.
As mentioned, if you see the bronze on its own, you might mistake it for gold, but when you put a bronze and a gold next to each other, the difference is audience. And then of course silver is pretty easy to spot.
For the value differences between the tiers, I’m seeing a Griffey gold that sold in early October for over $350, and then a silver on the same day for just over $50. A bronze Griffey might go between $5 and $10.
5. 1997 Bowman’s Best Mirror Image Inverted Refractor
Moving on to the last, but not least for today, 1997 Bowman’s Best Mirror Image Inverted Refractors. This is one of those cards you’ve probably seen a bunch of, but might not have known how valuable they could be if the rare parallel version was spotted.
To describe as best as possible, each side of this card has two players – so 4 in total – with the “star” player in the big photo that takes up most of the card and the rookie/prospect in the much smaller photo in the bottom left.
So for example, the card #5 in the set has Ken Griffey Jr. in the main photo, with Jose Cruz Jr. in the subphoto. The reverse side has Barry Bonds and then Andruw Jones.
Where the value comes in is one, when it’s a refractor (or even atomic refractor, but much more when it’s the inverted parallel. That is, the photo placements are swapped, with the younger prospects/rookies filling the big photo spot and the established stars in the lower.
In terms of value differences, an inverted atomic refractor of Chipper, Beltre, Branyan, and Matt Williams sold for over $2200! A regular inverted refractor sold for over $300, and a base non-refractor inverted sold for $220. All of that and the regular non-inverted atomic only sold for $58…so inverted is key!
Wow, what a handful of cards, and thanks for sticking with me through this one. ILooking forward to the next one, and good luck on your find and flips!
