Now THAT is a return on investment!

Courtesy of ESPN.com:

Alex Gordon has yet to play a single game in the major leagues and yet his rookie card is the hottest in all of baseball, selling for as much as $2,550 in recent weeks.

Is Gordon the Kansas City Royals' next great player? Could be. But that isn't why his card, which is No. 297 in Topps' 2006 set, is worth that kind of money.

The piece of cardboard is worth that much only because it never should have been produced in the first place.

Last year, in part to reduce confusion in the marketplace, the Major League Baseball Players Association ruled that card manufacturers could make rookie cards only of players who either made the 25-man roster or played in a major league game the season before. Gordon didn't qualify either way. After he led Nebraska into the College World Series, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2005 draft didn't sign his contract -- including a $4 million signing bonus -- until late September.

"At the last second, we realized we had made a mistake, so we pulled the cards, destroyed them by cutting out the photo and then destroyed the plates," said Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi.

But a fan named Jeremy Troutman pulled five of Gordon's cards on a shopping trip in his hometown of Wichita, where, coincidentally, Gordon is playing Double-A ball for the Wranglers this season.

"I went to Wal-Mart, bought two boxes, and got two in the same pack," Troutman said. "So I bought seven more boxes and got another three in the same pack."

Troutman, whose story first appeared in the Wichita Eagle, opened 1,000 packs to find his five cards. He sold all five of them to different collectors for a total of $5,761.79.

Troutman had the right idea. The Gordon cards are believed to exist only in the earliest shipped packs, many of which went to Wal-Marts across the country.

When I was a lot younger, I collected baseball cards. A LOT of cards. They are now sitting in my sister's attic. The closest I even came to getting a sought-after error print was an 1988 Topps Al Leiter Future Stars card (which is mentioned in the sidebar of the story). I think the card was eventually worth about $5.00 a few years ago.

If he bought 1000 packs of cards, that's dropping about $1500. He turned the five error cards around, and sold them at a 275% short-term profit. Very nice. I hope Home Depot's and Nokia's stock does that in the next few months!

Imagine what the cards would be worth if Gordon develops his full potential as the #2 overall pick? Yikes. Of course, he plays for the Royals, so he'll probably be jinxed once he gets to Kansas City from Wichita.