I saw it coming a mile away. With each passing day after the all star break, without series 2 in packs, I knew there would be less and less of those players who end up traded at the deadline. It was getting clearer that the players would be put in packs, traded, and then sold out before anyone could have the chance to pull them. We saw it a bit with Series 1 and some of the early trades/DFAs that happened (Upton, Quentin, etc), but nothing like this. So the question is, is it worth chasing them down? What value do they have? What if they are Series 1? I think these are all valid questions.

Bottom line, with the checklist for awards now showing that the cards are not required to complete the set, do they still have the same extreme value? I dont think they do. I mean, they are cool if you want to have them for posterity’s sake, but other than that, they dont really serve all that much of a purpose. I would even go so far as saying they are great trade bait if you are looking to pick up a few inserts here and there.

Aramis Ramirez is the base card that seems to have the lowest count in the game. In fact, he might end up being the lowest base card there is, period. At just 86 copies there are not a lot out there, and I am SO glad they took him off the checklist. His green, red and blue have even less, with the Blue at only 18 copies. Pretty low. If you are one of those completists, you might have to give up some major firepower to get one, if you can find one that is available. Personally, without these being needed for the award, I dont think they have as much value. Same thing goes for Uribe, Cueto, Price and others. The longer they were in packs, the lower the value they have.

Series 1 that are recently sold out have even less value to me, as there are still tens of thousands of copies out there. Scott Kazmir has been in packs since day 1, and I still get it added to offers like it is some crazy must have base card that I dont already have 30 copies of.

For the Series 1 that were sold out initially, there is more value attached, but we still saw them in packs for a few weeks. Now that they have been sitting at the top of everyone’s card sheet for three months, its just not the same shock value as when they first went sold out. The novelty has worn off. The same thing will happen with this group too, so it might be better to wait until things cool off.

Once I saw how few base cards were out there for many of the players, I gave up on collecting the sets, and traded off my sold out players for some NICE inserts. Now that I see the sets are not inclusive, Im even more satisfied with the decision. That’s just my approach, and you will find people out there who will still go nuts trying to get every card. There are only 18 TRUE master sets out there now, and that’s only if all 18 of the Ramirez cards are on active accounts. Interesting how that works.