Question by Nathan: Which is better: autographed baseballs or an autographed baseball bat?
I’m going to the baseball spring training this year and I hope to get some autographs. I was wondering which is better: a lot of autographed baseballs with one player per ball or one baseball bat with a lot of players on it? Which is easier, cheaper, worth more money, etc…? Thanks!
Best answer:
Answer by Andrew
You could sell about 25 balls with signatures for 100 dollars each. Once whole bat with signatures you could sell for about 1000 dollars, so do the math, and I would bring a lot of balls to each game! Get a player to sign each a different ball.
What do you think? Answer below!
Definitely a bat.
If a burglar breaks into your house at night, you can use the bat to beat the crap out of him.
You can’t really do much to deter a burglar with a ball.
Assuming both are signed by the same person, I would say the bat. They are worth more as an item by themselves, they hold up better, and their more rare. Also with the bat, if you were looking to sell it one day in the future, you would only have to deal with one transaction.
Andrews logic sounds good but people won’t pay $100 for a ball unless it’s a Hall of Fame type player. No team has 25 of those.
Nathan,
If you’ve never been to spring training, it’s awesome — it’s one of the few places you can get within arm’s reach of your favorite ballplayers. I used to work for Beckett Baseball and can tell you that the first question you need to answer is, “Are you going there to collect merchandise or memories?”
If your goal is to sell, the single baseballs are your best option. Players are savvy and if they get a feel that you’re in it to resell they will ignore your requests. Some wont sign bats flat-out because they know the value it assigns to the item.
If you’re collecting memories, I’d keep the bat in my backpack and if he says no you can offer the baseball. Personally putting a bat on my wall with the players I met and saw at spring training would be way more important than the value of it. If you do plan to sell the bat try to get a picture of him signing it for you because otherwise it will be hard to authenticate it later.
Another tip — bring a winter glove, one that’s stretchy preferably and punch a hole in it to tie a string to it. Then if you see a player on the other side of a fence, you can stuff your baseball and a pen in the glove toss it over the fence and ask for autograph.
Good luck and go for the memories, not merchandise.