Junior Caminero's PSA 10 Rookie Has Tripled While Raw Copies Still Sell for $2
With the Rays playing for the pennant, all the gains in Junior Caminero's rookie have gone to the graded copies.
A PSA 10 of Junior Caminero's 2024 Topps Chrome rookie sold for $118 on Oct. 19 against about $37 for one last November. Raw copies of the same card still go for about $2.
All of that gain has gone to the slab. Collectors buying into a playoff run want a graded copy, while raw copies have sold more than 100 times since September without budging. Collectors are gearing up to submit their Caminero cards for grading to capture the upside.
His 1st Bowman Chrome card is the cheaper way in. A PSA 10 of the 2023 Bowman Chrome Prospects #BCP-61 sold for $83 on Oct. 4 against $125 for the Topps Chrome rookie. PSA has graded more than eight times as many of the Bowman as 10s.
Last October's rookie breakout shows how a run can fade. Trey Yesavage's 1st Bowman Chrome autograph in PSA 10 went from around $220 to $560 during his World Series run with Toronto last fall. By this August it sold for about $280. Caminero's own 1st Bowman Chrome autograph sold for around $960 in September. None has changed hands since the playoffs began.
We'd skip the $125 slab and buy raw copies to grade instead. At about $2 a card plus PSA's $60 fee, grading your own costs half the price of a slab. PSA has given a 10 to about two of every three copies sent in. The catch is the wait. Best case scenario is you see your slab by the start of next season, unless we get the dreaded lockout.
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