The Baseball Hall of Fame effect

This week Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell and Ivan Rodriguez were announced as the three newest inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF).
All three players enjoyed illustrious careers and should be recognized as worthy members of one of the most exclusive honors in all of sports.

At fivecardguys.com we enjoy the debates about who should and shouldn’t have been voted into the HOF. But what we’re really interested in is if the HOF announcement has had any impact on the value of the inductees’ baseball cards.
This week we will take a closer look at each of the three inductees and calculate what impact (if any) the HOF announcement has had on the value of their respective rookie cards. Let’s start by seeing what impact was made on the volume of transactions for all three players.
Unsurprisingly, when the announcement was made on Jan. 18, 2017, there was a boost in the number of Raines, Bagwell and Rodriguez rookie cards that were bought and sold. What was remarkable was how dramatic the spike in sales were.
Below is a chart that displays how many rookie cards of each player were sold during the month of January.
For all three players, the busiest trading day of their rookie cards was in fact Jan. 18, accounting for over 30% of total sales up until Jan. 21. And if we compare the number of transactions after the HOF announcement that took place within the small four-day window form Jan. 18 to 21, that accounts for an astonishing 66% of the total sales in the first three weeks of January.
It seems the HOF announcement has sparked an interest among buyers looking to own a piece of history of the new inductees, and hope among sellers that prospective buyers would be willing to pay more for a rookie card than they would have a week ago.
So do you think potential sellers should wait until the player they own a rookie card of is inducted into the HOF? Or for buyers, is it really a wise investment to buy a player’s card right after they are inducted?
DK