Investing in Stars of the Future

Marc Newfield is 19 years old, a professional baseball player, an outfielder by trade.

He has yet to hit a home run in the major leagues.

He has yet to hit a home run in triple A.

He has yet to hit a home run in double A.

Yet there he was Saturday afternoon inside the Huntington Beach High School gymnasium, sharing autograph duties with Darryl Strawberry and the L.A. Raiderettes, given his own table, his own handful of felt-tipped pens and his own line of bat-, ball- and card-toting fans that extended out the building and around a corner, headed for the parking lot.

Twenty feet away, a sports card dealer named Tim Landis was selling Marc Newfield baseball cards for $1.75 apiece. A bargain, Landis wanted you to know. “He’s $2.50, according to the book,” Landis said. “Somebody else here is selling them for $3.50.”

And somebody else was laminating them, mounting them on wooden plaques and selling the plaques for $15.

Marc Newfield?

In the words of one young boy who got Newfield’s autograph, stared at it and then quizzically inspected the face behind the signature: “What team do you play for?”

If you’re new to the area, or new to the cult-within-a-cult of sports card speculation, it’s a question worth asking. In these parts, Newfield is a local hero--the former Marina High star who hit 10 home runs as a junior, batted .457 as a senior and was made the sixth pick of the 1990 amateur draft by the Seattle Mariners.

But to the men and women who devote major chunks of their life to the buying and selling of colored pieces of cardboard for ungodly sums of money, Newfield is the wisest of investments--a flyer, a future, a $1.75 card headed for the $50-60 range, just you wait.

“He’s got great potential,” said John Bartusick, owner of AJ Sports Cards in Huntington Beach. “He hits the ball with consistency, he hits with power, he was the MVP of his minor league team at San Bernardino. I probably have 10,000 of his cards--and Marc is always in demand.

“In the sports card business, you’re always looking to get in on the ground floor. You’re looking for that rookie, that needle in the haystack that’s going to make it big someday. It’s just like playing the stock market. The idea is to buy his card cheap now and sell high when he’s made it.”

Newfield is simply hitching a ride on The Frank Thomas Phenomenon. Two years ago, a Frank Thomas rookie card could be had for $2 or $3. Today, now that Thomas is looking more and more like the next Eddie Murray, that same card goes for $70. Similarly, a card of Thomas playing for the double-A Birmingham Barons now sells for $24, with a bullet.

Bartusick caressed a long box filled with baseball cards. “There are 1,000 Marc Newfields in here,” Bartusick said. “Hopefully, someday, this card will be worth $70, too. That’s $70 times 1,000.”

Bartusick’s eyes widen, and a mental cash register goes cha-ching.

“That’s the dream,” he said with a wistful smile. “That’s the dream.”

That’s the industry, too. One ground rule all collectors live by: A player’s first card is generally his most valuable. Nolan Ryan struck out 383 batters in 1973, but his 1968 rookie card is the one worth $1,000. Mickey Mantle won the triple crown in 1956, but his 1952 rookie card is the killer--$28,000, bubble gum not included.

Eventually, the Ryan and Mantle rookie cards found their final resting places--give or take the odd lawsuit--and the sports card boom of the 1980s began to abate, desperate for new frontiers and fresh come-ons.

Let’s see: If a player’s first card is his most valuable, is there anything more valuable than a player’s rookie card?

How about . . . pre-rookie cards?

What a good idea.

Now, for $2.95, you can buy “Beckett’s Focus On Future Stars,” a magazine that serves as a tout sheet for the collecting world. The February edition has a cover story on former Westminster High Lion and potential Atlanta Brave Ryan Klesko (“He’s big, he’s left-handed, he’s strong, he has success written all over him,” says Bartusick), plus features on Michigan offensive lineman Greg Skrepenak, Georgia Tech safety Ken Swilling, Duke forward Grant Hill and Seattle Mariner double-A prospects Bret Boone and Jim Campanis.

Classic Wax cards has printed a Classic Draft Pick Collection, featuring baseball prospects in their high school uniforms, basketball prospects in their college uniforms and hockey prospects in the junior league uniforms. “Pretty soon they’ll be shooting them when they’re in grammar school,” Bartusick said. “ ‘And he attended eighth grade at St. Joe’s.’ ”

Newfield, who is usually paid between $1,500 and $2,000 per card show appearance, is glad to oblige the fad, even if he has difficulty comprehending it.

“My hand’s killing me,” he said after two hours of non-stop penmanship. “All these people . . . I never expected anything like this. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Oh, but the collectors do.

This Newfield kid, do you know he batted .313 for Tempe in 1990 and was MVP of the Arizona short-season rookie league?

This Newfield kid, he hit a 500-foot home run his first professional at-bat and batted .300 with 11 home runs and 68 RBIs for Class-A San Bernardino in 1991.

This Newfield kid has precisely 26 double-A at-bats--.231, no home runs--but he’s targeted for triple A in ’92 and, batting stroke willing, The Show in ’93.

Better cash in on the sneak preview while you can.

“Have some fun,” one autograph seeker told Newfield. “However long it lasts, have some fun.”

Newfield nodded.

However long this youth-crazed sports card craze lasts, Newfield certainly plans to.