As the story goes with many members of our hobby community today, I enjoyed collecting cards as a kid but had stashed those binders away for years until COVID came along and reignited my love for cardboard. One of the first products that I opened upon my return to the hobby was 2020 Bowman Draft. While everyone was off chasing rookie cards I became fascinated by the thought of collecting players who hadn’t yet made it to the MLB. Back then there were very little resources available, and as I pulled these serial numbered and autograph cards out of the packs all I could really do was go to MLB.com and see where the players were ranked as prospects. It wasn’t until I began selling a few of these cards that I learned there wasn’t much correlation between where that prospect was ranked and how valuable their cards were. When I asked people why that was the case nobody really had a concrete answer other than, “that’s kind of just the way it is.”

Of course that answer was not good enough for me. There had to be something quantifiable. Surely people weren’t spending hundreds, even thousands, on these cards without knowing exactly who they were looking for and why? I soon found out that’s exactly what we were all doing. After analyzing card sales I started looking for a common theme among the prospects with the most expensive cards. Was it having good power or speed? Being young? Playing for a team with a strong fanbase? There seemed to be things that mattered more than others so I started to track which ones applied to the top names in Bowman most frequently and began weighting them accordingly. Over the years that has evolved into what I believe are the first of their kind MLB prospect rankings specifically designed for the card hobby. No more, “yeah he’s top 10 on MLB Pipeline but he doesn’t have power”, or he’s too old, or he doesn’t play an exciting position. These rankings have everything that you need factored in. In years past you’ve never been able to look at prospects ranked side-by-side on any list and definitively say that their card prices should be the same. Now you can.