We got a preview of the possibilities of the postseason last week when Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder/utility player Enrique Hernandez smacked three home runs in Game 5 of the NLCS.
His few baseball cards suddenly had a lot more interest and that’s something that David Freese, Andruw Jones, David Eckstein and many others can relate to. The postseason and the World Series is where new stars are born, especially on cardboard.
Hernandez played his first MLB game in 2014 — and was drafted five years before that, ironically by the Houston Astros, who he’ll face in the World Series beginning tonight — and through all that time he’d barely appeared on 100 different baseball cards, got just one Rookie Card and one certified autograph before a rainbow of Topps Now cards arrived last Friday.
Hernandez’s only certified truly autograph available now — those Topps Now cards are technically still on the way, but flipping left and right on eBay — is a signed version of his 2014 Donruss The Rookies card, which is also his only Rookie Card. The RC is found in every boxed set, while the autos are included at random one per box. His only card released in packs around that time that could arguably qualify for RC status is a 2015 Topps Update card, which is in a Dodgers uniform.
Rest assured if you’re not down with the seemingly eternal but simple RC debate, he has more than 20 cards for you to chase in 2009 Bowman Draft — his only cards for that year. He didn’t appear on an MLB-approved card again until 2015 Topps Update. He has no other cards that year and wasn’t in more than one product until just last year.
The only copy of Hernandez’s Donruss autographed card on eBay right now is $26 after 10 bids. Past copies of the card have sold for as much as $53.78 with others selling for $39.99, $31.51 and then several between $15 and $29 in recent days. The recent low on the card was just $5.50 the day of his big game.
His Topps Now autos, which ranged in price from $59.99 to $1,499.99 for the 1/1 auto Relic from Topps, have sold for as much as $170 (for a Blue auto Relic that originally was $109.99) on eBay.
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