Undervalued Auto: Nick Markakis

September 25, 2008 at 12:45 am | Posted in Baseball, My Cards | Leave a comment

Speaking of the Orioles, I was browsing eBay tonight, looking at card auctions that were within a few minutes of ending, and looking for good deals.  I was very surprised to see a 2008 SPX autographed card of Nick Markakis with a starting bid of $3.95 and no bids yet with three minutes left in the auction.  I put in a bid for a few bucks more than that, fully expecting that someone would snipe this auction and win it for about $10.  Amazingly, I won the auction and I’ll be getting the card for only $3.95 (and $2 for shipping) – less than the price of many packs!  Here’s the card that I won:

I knew that Markakis was underrated, but I didn’t realize that he was so severely underrated that his autographed cards were going for under $4.  Check out his stats over the last two years:

2007: .300 AVG, .362 OBP, .485 SLG, 23 HR, 112 RBI, 18 SB
2008: .303 AVG, .404 OBP, .490 SLG, 20 HR, 87 RBI, 10 SB (through 9/24)

All that from a guy who’s still only 24 years old.  Can you imagine the hype if he was playing in New York, Boston, or Chicago?  If I were building a MLB team from scratch, there are few players that I’d rather have than Nick Markakis!