Clayton Kershaw gets his 2,000 strikeouts, bucks the trend for pitcher rookie cards

What more can be said about the great Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw?
His phenomenal statistics speak for themselves -– three Cy Young awards already, National League MVP award in 2014, and now the third fastest to reach the 2,000-strikeout mark (in innings pitched).
Even in his injury plagued season last year, Kershaw’s overall stats with missed time was still very impressive.
As collectors, there’s plenty of risk when investing in pitchers who are prone to get injured due to the regular wear and tear on their arm.
With pitchers these days throwing even harder, their career span seems to be getting shorter, which makes it difficult to increase the value of their cards beyond a certain point.
The optimal value of rookie cards belonging to pitchers is either as a top prospect (when values tend to be inflated) or at the other end when their Hall of Fame career is wrapping up (when values are at its peak).
But once in awhile, players like Kershaw buck the trend. As a rookie, his value might have been inflated but hindsight being 20/20, collectors should have gone all in on a generational player like Kershaw.
Those who didn’t care about the high risk nature of investing in pitchers and bought Kershaw’s 2006 Bowman Chrome Draft base autographed rookie (BGS Graded 9.5/10) for about $300 a couple years ago, could easily sell it for triple that amount now.
The way Kershaw is hitting one milestone after another, his base autographed rookie will surpass the $1,000 mark in no time. By comparison, the refractor version of the same card is well past the $2,000 mark.
CK