There’s still more than a month and a half left in baseball's regular season, but the MVP awards for each league might already be decided, and some of the hobby’s savviest collectors are capitalizing.
As of Thursday, New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge is a -1100 favorite to win AL MVP, according to DraftKings, with Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. a distant second at +550.
The story is the same in the National League, with Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani a -1000 favorite, and Arizona’s Ketel Marte trailing at +600.
With Judge and Ohtani such heavy favorites, a number of card collectors have already swarmed secondary marketplaces hoping to make a profit redeeming cards from 2024 Topps Chrome Baseball through the MVP Buyback.
Local hobby shops participating in the MVP Buyback will offer store credit in exchange for cards featuring the 2024 MVP award winners in November, and cards that might normally sell for $3 or less are selling for $10-plus.
In recent days, prices for Judge and Ohtani base cards have climbed above $10 and have trended around $13 or $14. Base cards will be eligible for $20 in store credit, while non-numbered refractors will fetch $40, refractors numbered over 100 will get $100, and refractors numbered under 100 will earn $200.
So far, it appears buyers are willing to scoop up cards of the likely MVPs early if there is a potential profit margin between 15 percent or higher. Some sellers are even including the “MVP Buyback” wording in the auction titles.
A number of cards that are redeemed as part of the program are then stamped and eventually reinserted into the following year’s product. Stamped refractors from 2023 featuring Ohtani and Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuna Jr. can be redeemed this year for between $400 and $1,000 as part of last season's buyback.
For Topps and Fanatics, the MVP Buyback has been a way to get collectors into local card shops, something they believe is critical to growing the hobby as a whole.
But for savvy collectors, the buyback has simply been an arbitrage opportunity with both the 2023 and 2024 MVP races apparently decided relatively early.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.