Three Great Evan Longoria Cards as a Ray
In this story:
After a career that spanned 16 seasons, long-time Ray Evan Longoria has officially retired. After signing a one-day contract, he retired as a member of the Rays, the team that drafted him third overall in the 2006 MLB Draft.
Longoria made his debut in April of 2008 and went on to win Rookie of the Year. In total he was a three-time All-star, a three-time Gold Glove Award winner, and won one Silver Slugger Award. He also made an appearance in one World Series with the Rays his rookie year.
RELATED: PSA Reverses Course on Minimum Grades
Longoria's first autograph comes out of the 2006 Bowman Chrome product. Featuring a young Longoria bordered by black and blue, this blue ink auto nestles nice in the bottom left corner, with the 'certified autograph issue' stamp on the other side.
According to Card Ladder, this card peaked in March 2010, when it sold for $280. In July 2022 it got close, when a sale hit $270. More recently though, eBay sold listings show one completed sale on April 27th for $145.
A rare rookie redemption, the Red Hot Rookie Evan Longoria autograph is a rare one. Given the time of the release, when both pack-pulled autographs and parallels were becoming popular in products across the board. This is a great piece, with the red ink surrounded by the shades of red and orange popping out. According to eBay sold listings, this card last sold for $144 on April 9th of this year.
While not a rookie or a Bowman 1st, this is important in the fact that it was one of the last cards to see him in a Rays uniform. Following the 2017 season, the Rays made the decision to move on from Longoria and traded him to the San Francisco Giants. The above card is a nice auto numbered to just 20 and went for, according to eBay sold listings went for just $50 on May 12th.
From his days in San Francisco, Longoria has a famous bat knob card you can read about it here.
After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 2008, Cole worked as an advertising copywriter until shifting to print journalism a few years later. Managing three weekly newspapers in the Dakotas, Cole won numerous awards from the North Dakota Newspaper Association including Best of the Dakotas and, their top award, General Excellence. He returned to collecting in 2021 and has since combined his passion for writing with his love of cards. Cole also writes for the Sports Cards Nonsense newsletter and has made guest appearances on multiple sports card collecting podcasts including Sports Cards Nonsense, and the Eephus Baseball Cards Podcast. IG: coleryan411 X: @colebenz