Buying and selling windows for prospects are often small, so knowing when to pull the trigger can be the difference in big profits and big losses. 

One practice I like to employ when determining whether a prospect is within a buying or selling window is to do a comparative pricing analysis with other similarly ranked prospects at that time.  This gives me a pretty good baseline for “proper values.” 

I will then see if other factors may be positively or negatively affecting prices such as age-to-level, organization, position, production (positive or negative), park factors, proximity to the MLB, path to the MLB, promotion potential, injury, etc.  These factors can assist in determining if increases or decreases in prices can be leveraged for profit.  At this point, I will begin to include my personal assessment on players to determine whether I believe increases or decreases in production are on the horizon.   

When conducting a comparative analysis, I like to focus on common parallel pricing since some players may have short-printed base autos, and not all Bowman releases have the same parallels.  The refractor auto /499 is one I like to look at since it is in every release. 

I take out players who have no Bowman 1^st auto and players who have already made their MLB debuts as those factors can really skew pricing.  I also look at raw vs gem (PSA 10) and mint (PSA 9) prices, and look at the gem rate for that parallel.  If a player has a very high gem rate, it should cause the raw auto prices to exceed PSA 9 prices because a raw card is statistically much more likely to be a PSA 10.  Conversely, if gem rates are low for a player, it should raise PSA 9 prices over raw prices and substantially increase PSA 10 prices for the same card. 

This process assists me in locating players who are underpriced or overpriced.  Since we are seeking profits, we want to treat cards like stocks and buy low/sell high.  We may want to buy players who are injured, were given an aggressive assignment, are in a bad hitter’s park, are injured, etc.  If we can explain a dip in production, we can possibly buy into a prospect while their values are depressed, leaving room to make profit.  Conversely, we may be selling a prospect on a tear if we expect a decline in production based on age-to-level, a hitter’s park, etc. 

In another article, we will discuss where to buy and sell and what practices ensure you don’t miss windows and profits.