Stop me if you’ve heard this before:

2000 SPX Ben Sheets autographed rookie card /1500

He’s a stud, a work horse with an over powering arm, a wicked curveball, and great mound presence — a can’t miss pitching prospect.

Every few years or so, some kid with a cannon for an arm whizzes through his high school’s opponents in dazzling fashion and scouts rave for days about how he is the next Nolan Ryan, Walter Johnson, etc.

In the late 1990s, Ben Sheets was one of those guys.  No, check that.  He WAS the guy.

Sheets was blessed with THAT right arm.  With THAT curve ball. And was said to be in THAT pedigree.

Hell, he even led Team USA to a Gold Medal in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Sheets was THE man.  His rookie cards were crazy hot, and given the time period he arrived on the hobby scene, nothing was hotter than this 2000 SPX autographed rookie card.

Pack-seeded autographed rookie cards were still a pretty new thing in 2000.  And we all know that a hot rookie plus an autographed version of his rookie card from a pretty good product equals good coin.

Flashforward to 2012. Sheets hasn’t pitched in a Major League game in more than a year and could be done at age 33.   Injuries hurt his career, another common theme among young, stud pitchers.  Sad, but true.

Of course all of this is a recipe for an iconic rookie, one deserving of being added to the Cardboard Icons rookie collection.

About a week and a half ago I was lurking on eBay and lo and behold look what popped up, the 2000 SPX Ben Sheets autographed rookie card.  There are 1,500 of these, so they aren’t rare per se.  But they’re still being offered for at least $20 in most cases.  Remember, Sheets is a Gold Medal winner and a four time all-star afterall.

But you all know I didn’t pay $20 for this.  Hell, I didn’t even pay $15 or $10.

Try $2.69 (plus $3.25 shipping).

Yep, this iconic card was acquired for about the price of two retail packs.

That’s a score worthy of a gold medal.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2012 at 5:38 am and is filed under New Addition with tags baseball, baseball cards, Ben Sheets, rookie card, SPX Upper Deck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.