A's Rookie Jacob Wilson's Cards Soaring in Value

According to a post on social media from Topps, the card's value was around $1,400 in late November of last year, and has recently sold for $18,100 as of a few days ago. This is easily the most expensive Jacob Wilson card thus far, though he is scheduled to appear on a number of new releases in Topps Series 2, including more autos and relic cards.

While the sudden jump may seem like it's happened pretty fast for a guy that has played all of 92 games in his career, he's also batting .335 in those games overall, and has the ability to make contact with pretty much anything that's put in front of him. Who knows what the future will hold for him?

While he has only played 64 games this season, and there is plenty of campaign left, he's collecting hits at a rate higher than Tony Gwynn's 218-hit season in which he batted .370 in 1987. Gwynn was good for 1.388 hits per game that year, while Wilson, in a smaller sample, is averaging 1.45 per contest. That is some elite company, if he can hold that pace.

The one big reason why he isn't likely to collect as many hits as Gwynn did that year is due to the fact that he's been banged up a couple of times this year, and has missed six games already. Gwynn played in 157 games in 1987, and Wilson already can't reach that total, even if he plays in every game. If he continued to collect hits at the same clip and played in 150 games, he'd finish with 217.5 hits on the year.

This is just one of the reasons that Wilson's card is soaring in value--because he's showing tremendous promise. That card could be worth a whole lot more in just a few years if the A's shortstop is able to produce at a clip anywhere near what he's doing right now for a longer period of time. Perhaps he has a big moment in the postseason one year, and that increases the value of the card as well.

He's already shown a knack for collecting walk-off hits this season, after all.

The biggest jump we could see in the value of his Bowman rookie card is if--and this is a huge if--but what if Wilson bats .400 in a season? That is something that hasn't been done since the Negro Leagues, with Artie Wilson batting .433 across 29 games in 1948. Ted Williams is the last player in Major League Baseball to achieve the feat, batting .406 in 1941.

He has the bat-to-ball skills to achieve some pretty rare feats over the course of his career. If he's able to stay healthy for the majority of his time in the game, and he runs into a little bit of luck, his cards could certainly be collector's items for years to come.