Dec 17 2008
Refractor Showdown: Golds or Blues?
An ever popular question among prospectors is what exactly to buy. Once you pick your player, you see that they have a card in chrome, and you go after everything you can get your hands on. But which is the better buy?
Both blue and gold refractors are stunningly attracted cards. Boldly colored borders combine nicely with low serial numbering to make two prospector favorites. Golds have been numbered out of 50 for some time now, while blues are out of 99 for the first time in 2008 BDP. Both are nice looking cards, both have sub-100 serial numbering, and both will take off if the prospect starts to dominate.
Golds will be more to buy and will ultimately sell for more at peak prices. Usually it is tough for the average prospector to afford more than a few of these if you don’t get on board before a prospect’s prices get off the ground. It’s high risk, high reward here. If your guy turns into Evan Longoria, you just made a lot of money. If he turns into Rickie Weeks, you might as well have dumped your money down the toilet. Golds are a good investment if you can get them for a reasonable price, but they can be risky.
Blues are easier to obtain AND you can usually afford more of them. They will still be great sellers if the guy takes off, but if your guy ends up not making it like you thought he would, you’re probably not gonna be out more money than you can afford to lose.
Let’s asssume you can buy four blues for every one gold. Golds will rarely do much more than doubling (unless you invested really early, which is hard to do. It’s hard to predict, but blues will usually will triple or more during a price spike. So let’s just assume you have 40 dollars to invest. If you buy one gold and the price doubles during spike, you sell for $80. Not bad. But if you buy 4 blues for the same $40 with which you bought the one gold, and the price triples to $30 during a price spike, you sell them all for $120. Better.
Sometimes it can be hard to sell all your stuff because price spikes do not always last a long time, but unless this happens and the spike only lasts a few days, it’s usually a better investment to go for quantity over quality in the case of golds vs. blues.
