For the vast majority of my time in the hobby, I've focused entirely on sports, and in particular the big three of baseball, basketball and football. But over the past year I've gotten more interested in the massive TCG market. I've got kids who play a couple of the games, and that was my gateway to learning a bit more about them and coming to appreciate some of the artwork on the cards.

At the moment, cards of all types are seeing their markets explode, and TCG is no exception. In fact, many popular TCG's seem to be leading the way in terms of growth both in volume and sales.

I'm a data nut, so I decided to dig into eBay sales data for some popular card games as well as a few potential up and comers to see what I could learn about each market in terms of volume and supply/demand. Naturally, since I focus primarily on raw-to-grade, I focused specifically on the grading angle.

Everything below is based on data directly from eBay on the sale of PSA 10's for each different TCG. The data was collected August 4th.

Unsurprisingly, Pokemon is king when it comes to volume, but there's a lot more going on in the TCG market than Pokemon and that's where the interesting bits are.

Grading sales volume

Dollar volume over the last 90 days based on PSA 10 sales (average sold price × total sold):

There's no real surprise here in terms of the three leaders. Everyone knows Pokemon is a massive, unparalleled market and the sales volume supports that with a massive lead in terms of cards sold, unique sellers and total sales dollars.

If you've been following along with the TCG market, the next two aren't particularly surprising either. One Piece has been taking off and Lorcana has been exploding this year (more on that particular game later). Even with the growing hype for both games, the gap between them and Pokemon in terms of total market is staggering. Lorcana in particular is clearly in its very earliest days of growth.

Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, and Dragon Ball are interesting in that they've been around for quite a while, but at least in terms of grading collectibility, none of those markets has really taken off the way One Piece or Lorcana have.

Dragon Ball and Yu-Gi-Oh actually have more total graded cards sold in the past 90 days than Lorcana and Riftbound, but at a much lower per slab price, and with much lower sell-through rates, keeping their overall volume much lower.

Union Arena and Bo Jackson Battle Arena are newer entries with a lot of room to go. Lorcana (2023) and Riftbound sit at the other end of the newer-TCG spectrum: smaller dollar markets than Pokemon or One Piece, but the strongest sell-through and per-slab prices on the board. More on that contrast below.

Lorcana and Riftbound: The Next Big Markets?

Lorcana is having itself a year and so is Riftbound. Both have a smaller amount of graded cards available and are in the early stages of grading taking off, and both are seeing some very large per-slab prices. Pokemon and One Piece have the large audience, but Riftbound and Lorcana have the underserved demand driving massive sales.

Lorcana does about $6.6M on only 6,900 units and 1,500 sellers with an average PSA 10 sale of $946. Graded cards also move very quickly. The 90-day sell through rate is 51.5%—much higher than Pokemon and One Piece.

Part of that is the Disney IP. Disney has a massive fan-base and if you think about how much those fans spend on trips to theme-parks, cruises, movies, etc, it shouldn't be any surprise that they're not afraid to pay up for the cards they want. Lorcana also benefits from a very consolidated chase. There's 3-4 sets released each year (a small fraction of what we see in sports) and within those sets, for the most part the graded audience is sticking to Enchanted's and the newly introduced Iconics. Per set, there's only a few of each introduced so everyone is targeting the same few cards. So far, Lorcana has done a great job of protecting the scarcity of their chase cards. The result is a high premium on graded copies despite a very high gem rate.

The only TCG with a better sell-through rate is Riftbound, and it actually shares a lot in common with Lorcana. Like Lorcana, Riftbound is based around an IP that has a big fan base and has been around for awhile (League of Legends is a massive online battle game first released in 2009). And once again the hits are pretty consolidated. Most of the graded dollars flow towards Signature cards (full-art) with a very low pull rate. The result is that we once again see everyone after the same few cards, and not enough grading supply to keep up with demand.

Metric (90d, all formats) Lorcana Riftbound Sell-through 51.5% 63.9% Avg sold price $946 $1,023 Volume $6.6M $3.7M Units sold 6,936 3,577 Unique sellers 1,538 450 Sales per seller 4.5 8.0

Same shape: scarce graded supply, expensive chase hits, strong clearance. Riftbound is younger and smaller in dollars. On sell-through and average price, it's ahead of Lorcana right now.

What about fixed price only?

Auctions inherently raise the sell-through rate as they are guaranteed to end within 10 days at most (on eBay at least). So I also ran the data for each TCG focusing only on fixed price and offer accepted listings to see if that changes the picture in any substantial way.

While the sell-through rates do drop, the order at the top does not: Riftbound, Lorcana, One Piece, Pokemon all continue to stay on top of the list. Lorcana and Riftbound are also more BIN-native than Pokemon and One Piece (roughly a third of units via auction vs ~45%). Magic barely moves (33.0% → 32.7%)—not a lot of auctions there. Dragon Ball loses nearly 10 points without auctions (27% → 17%)—almost half its units clear that way.

Sell-through isn't the only thing that shifts when you strip out auctions. Average sold price does too and from a selling perspective, that might be the more useful cut.

The board splits cleanly into two camps.

In Pokemon, One Piece, Lorcana, Riftbound, and Yu-Gi-Oh, the fixed / Best Offer average is lower than the all-formats average. Auctions are pulling the blended price up meaning the more expensive stuff is clearing through auction more often than through an ask. This is typically a sign of a rising market—when a market is on the rise auctions are often what sets new highs; when a market is declining auctions often set new lows.

In Dragon Ball, Magic, Union Arena, and Bo Jackson Battle Arena, it flips. Fixed / Best Offer averages are higher. Auctions are clearing cheaper and dragging the overall average down. In those markets, BIN / Best Offer is where the better comps live and dumping a slab into a short auction is more likely to leave money on the table. This makes sense for the four TCG's we see here: Bo Jackson Battle Arena and Union Arena are still so small in terms of audience size, and Dragon Ball and Magic the Gathering have pretty low sell-through rates which again is an indication demand isn't quite where you want it to be at in order for auctions to be the viable route.

Practical takeaway: don't just check "what's the average PSA 10." Check how those averages were made. Format mix changes what a good ask looks like.

The "other" TCG's

We've given a lot of attention to the top markets—Pokemon, One Piece, Lorcana and Riftbound—but now let's focus in on the "others" a bit.

There's a clear drop-off after the top 4 when it comes to sell-through rate—graded cards just sit longer for the rest. They fall into a couple of different camps, though.

Magic the Gathering has been around since 1993, Yu-Gi-Oh cards since 1996, and Dragon Ball cards since 2000. None of these are new TCG's, but to date we just haven't really seen them catch on with the grading audience.

Longevity gets you brand recognition. It does not automatically get you a liquid PSA 10 secondary market. YGO is still the clearest case of volume without liquidity. Dragon Ball has more dollars moving, but just not enough clearance to feel hot.

Newer TCG's

The other camp is the newer TCG's. Union Arena was introduced in 2023, Bo Jackson Battle Arena in 2024, and Riftbound in 2025. We've covered Lorcana a lot already, but since that too was introduced in 2023 we'll include it here as I think, paired with Riftbound, it provides an interesting contrast. On a hobby timeline, all four are still young graded markets and they do not look anything alike.

Lorcana and Riftbound are the massive success cases. We've already covered the mechanics above— consolidated chase hits, big IP fans who will pay, thin graded supply—but put next to the other young games, the gap is stark. Lorcana clears 52% over 90 days at a $946 average. Riftbound clears 64% at $1,023. Both move real dollars on relatively tiny seller counts.

Despite releasing the same year as Lorcana and a couple years before Riftbound, Union Arena has a much quieter market so far. There are a few reasons why that might be the case. Union Arena releases sets based on different Anime IP's. But those different releases cannot be played together in a single deck. That's great for new players who can just jump on the release or two they care about, but for the grading market it means the IP is a bit fragmented. Chases are also not quite as consolidated. There are serialized cards, and the non-serialized are fairly easy to come by.

Bo Jackson is also very young and while the market at the moment looks pretty unexciting, it is worth noting it's only been out a couple of years and there are certainly some signs that there's a growing demand: boxes struggle to stay in stock, and the marketing team has done a great job of promoting the release (as evidenced by long lines at this year's National conference).

What I'd actually do with this

If you're grading TCGs for resale (or any cards, actually), treat sell-through as seriously as comps. A $1,000 average means nothing if the listing sits for three months.

Pokemon and One Piece are the deep, liquid ponds and fairly safe as long as you're not chasing that new-release hype cycle. They're liquid with a big enough buyer pool to keep the cards moving.

Lorcana and Riftbound are the expensive, thinner markets where the upside is in the hits and growth seems fairly inevitable. Some of the sales seem almost silly in numbers and it wouldn't be surprising to see some price consolidation as more graded copies hit the market, but if you're in the mood to speculate, these do feel like the ones to dip your toes into and they're the ones I'm most interested in. I personally never advise holding in hopes things go up so I'll refrain from suggesting you do that, but I would be very confident buying raw singles to grade and sell.

Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragon Ball are stable markets that have been around for awhile, but the demand for graded cards just isn't particularly high. They're much more player-based at the moment than collector based. Unless that's your passion or you've got the audience built up somewhere, it's hard to advise going too deep here.

Bo Jackson Battle Arena and Union Arena are too early to call. Both suffer a bit from a diluted pool of chase cards, and in the case of Bo Jackson Battle Arena, their characters being based on athletes means many are going to label these as "unlicensed" which is always a challenge. You can probably stockpile some raw cards cheap if you feel particularly confident in one or the other, in hopes that they go up and are worth grading at some point, but the risk here is certainly a lot higher.

The integration makes a world of sense for both PSA and eBay, who are striking up an increasingly tight connection together. Cards bought at that price range are often (not always, but often) cards bought with the hope of grading, so in theory it’s a nice little value add for eBay’s users. For PSA, the benefits are obvious: it opens PSA grading up to the massive amount of eBay buyers who don’t even need to sign up for an account to be able to use the service. Making it easier to grade means more cards being graded, which means more money for PSA.

I do think it’s in everyone’s best interest to be VERY cautious about using the feature, however, at least if your goal is to grade something to later sell. The feature doesn’t do anything to help you get better grades, or make better decisions about whether the card warrants grading. It exists to encourage you to grade more, regardless of result.

That’s where things get a bit problematic.

I don’t have any local shops around me, and haven’t had the opportunity to go to any shows since I got back into this. Everything is sourced online, and eBay is the primary place I purchase raw cards.

I’ve developed a pretty good eye for potential quality issues, and am very careful about checking quality of any online listings. More often than not I’m losing money on any cards I buy that I end up having to sell raw. So I’m pretty careful about what I buy and making sure that the quality looks up to snuff.

But that’s hard to do with online images. Unless you can get them to post a video (which does a much better job of letting you see condition), there’s a certain level of “welp, I’ve done what I can…let’s see how it turns out” involved in buying online.

I find about 70% of what I purchase from eBay turns out to be worth sending in to grade. That means that once I get the cards in my hand, 3 out of every 10 I purchase has a flaw or two that I think makes it unlikely to grade as well as I would need for it to be profitable. From what I hear from other people, that 70% success rate is a lot higher than the experience of many others.

On top of that, my personal gem rate over the past 12 months is ~75%. Again, from what I’ve heard from others, that’s pretty high.

That means that, all in all, for every 10 cards I purchase on eBay, on average, around 5 of them won’t gem.

I mentioned I tend to lose money more often than not on cards I have to turn around and re-sell raw, but it’s even worse for ultra-modern cards that don’t gem.

Looking at my whuppit data for ultra-modern cards, I lose:

• 27% on cards I can’t grade

• 36% on cards that get a 9

• 67% on cards that get an 8

• 89% on cards that grade a 7 or lower (thankfully a very small number of cards..only 1% of all cards I’ve sent in)

Right now, that’s very manageable. I have a high gem rate and the gems more than make up for everything else.

But if I wasn’t evaluating things in hand first and just sending them in from eBay? Well, suddenly those 3 non-gradeables are, at best, 9’s (in reality, they’re probably worse…I tend to take some gambles so if I say something is not gradeable, the most likely outcome is an 8 or lower). Suddenly I’m losing at least 36% on half of the cards I’m purchasing.

That…would not be good for business.

To be clear, there are some benefits to send things directly to PSA. It’s nice for folks not to have to have their own PSA account. I also imagine it speeds things up a bit—instead of having to wait for a card to get back to you before sending it out, it goes right from eBay’s Authentication program to PSA, cutting a few days out.

If you’re grading for PC purposes, I could see how this could be useful. Or if you’re a purely volume seller playing the odds and you’re not really doing any pregrading yourself, then the added speed might be a nice boost.

But for everyone else, the ease of use is almost certainly going to come at the cost of your margins and dramatically increases the risk of not just non-10’s, but an increase in sub-9 grades as well.

It’s worth remembering that the incentive for PSA here isn’t to help you get better grades or make more money, the incentive is for them to make more money by making it easier for more people to send in more cards.1

So I’m not necessarily saying don’t use eBay’s new feature, but I am saying it’s wise to proceed with a bit of caution.

So first up, here’s what’s changing (I’m not going to talk about the ticket grading changes because I don’t do anything with that and know nothing about it).

• TCG Bulk (a collector’s club benefit) is increasing by $2 a card, from $14.99 to $16.99.

• Value Bulk (a collector’s club benefit) is increasing by $1 a card, from $18.99 to $19.99 a card.

• Express is increasing by $20 a card, from $129 to $149.

• Super Express is increasing by $50 a card, from $249 to $299.

• Walk-Through is increasing by $100 a card, from $499 to $599.

  

What this means for the value of Collector’s Club?

Two of the changes involve the two cheapest grading levels, exclusive to the paid Collector’s Club. While this does mean that, excluding monthly specials, the benefit of having a membership is reduced since the gap between Value and Value Bulk is a little tighter, the impact is fairly minimal.

A Collector’s Club membership costs for $149 a year. Before, at the $18.99 price, you were saving $6 a card by having a membership and sending in Value Bulk. That meant that purely on grading fees (and again, ignoring specials) if you graded just 25 cards all year, the membership paid for itself (25 * $6 difference = $150).

Now you save $5 a card, putting your break even point at 30 cards (30 * $5 difference = $150). That’s still not that bad, and if you grade enough to be considering a membership, you’re likely going to hit that number very easily.

It’s not too bad for TCG graders either. Before you saved $10 per card by having a membership, meaning you only needed to grade 15 cards to break even. Now you’re saving 8, so your break even point jumps to 19 cards. Again, that’s a pretty small number.

So value wise, I don’t think this changes too much. We get a little less value, but not enough to completely change the game. Basically, if you grade any significant amount of cards, the Collector’s Club continues to be a really great value and a no-brainer.

Predicting the impact on grading submissions

Overall, I don’t expect PSA will see too significant of a reduction in submissions for the price changes. If any dip, it will be minor. Grading continues to increase YoY and I don’t think these price changes do anything to stop that.

Putting on my product manager hat for a moment, I do think there may be some changes at each level though that PSA is probably expecting.

Value Bulk/TCG

I’d expect a very minor reduction here. Like, marginal. The price change just isn’t significant enough to make a dramatic change.

Value, Value Plus and Regular

I’d expect no difference here. The prices didn’t change, and if you weren’t paying up for Value Plus before, a $1 increase at the Value Bulk level isn’t going to make you pay up now.

Express Level & Super Express Level

I actually think submissions at Express level may go up slightly, despite the price increase. The reason for that is that folks who previously may have paid for a Super Express submission to cut their turnaround time from 10 to 5 days, may balk at the more significant increase in price at the Super Express Level and decide they’re happy to wait a few more days for a cheaper submission.

The optics

I’m sure there’s going to be some upset folks. There are anytime prices increase, particularly when there’s no real clear benefit to users associated with that increase.

The optics are even a little worse than usual because this is fresh off of PSA announcing that they are dramatically backlogged. At a point where people are already really frustrated with the service, adding a price change is not great timing.

Now, I suspect that maybe there could be a marginal benefit to users. Maybe a few folks get disgruntled enough by some of the pricing changes that they send in a few less orders. I don’t know. As we just went through, I’m not sure the price changes (at least at the lower levels) are significant enough to cause a major reduction in orders.

More likely, it just increases PSA’s profit margins a little bit more so that they can afford to hire more and start speeding up their turnaround times again. (Does anyone know what their margins are? It feels like it has to be significant already.)

Maybe. That’s all speculation. Again, the optics of “raising the price at a time where service quality is already down, without adding any benefit to the users” is not a great look for sure.

A missed opportunity

Anytime you make a change in pricing, I think you need to recognize that people will immediately want to know what’s in it for them. Pricing changes without some indication of benefit rarely go well.

I think this was a missed opportunity by PSA to provide something that users would actually be excited about. Here’s a few ideas that come to mind.

Grader notes at lower grading levels

One would be to introduce grader notes at more levels (currently it’s only Express or above). Grader notes may be the single most requested PSA feature (well, that or faster turnaround times) and would help a ton with the perception that PSA’s grading standards vary from grader to grader (as much as they may try to stick with consistent standards, it is absolutely subjective).

PSA has said they want to be careful because grader notes adds time, but I don’t really buy that. I’ve been tracking my own pre-grade notes in whuppit since I started grading. It takes me maybe 2 seconds to type out a quick note about why I think a card is going to get the grade I’m predicting. The time impact is very minimal, so I don’t buy this excuse at all.

Introduce a new level between Value Plus and Regular

Right now, the Value Plus level is $39.99 and has a value limit of $500 a card. The next level up is the Regular limit, which is $74.99 a card and has a value limit of $1,500.

That puts people who want to grade cards whose values fall just above that $500 value in a tough spot where they’re paying nearly double the grading fees.

Now there’s already a little bit of of wiggle room here. You can choose to send at the Value Plus level and then wait to see if they up-charge, which (at least in my experience) they often don’t. But I’m sure PSA would love to encourage folks to pay up a little bit rather than have all that extra cash slip through the cracks. To me, a $50 level right in between those two would make a world of sense for everyone involved.

Make the “Turbo" special a regular level for Collector’s Club Members

One special that is going on this month (and very similar specials have happened before) is the “Turbo Special”. For cards valued at $500 or less, you pay $24.99 a card (the same price as the standard $24.99 Value level available to non-members), but you get a 20 day turnaround.

Turnaround times are wildly important, and also one of the biggest complaints people have with PSA. Timing is very important, and having inconsistent turnaround times can really mess with people’s business. I know me and quite a few other folks are all taking advantage of the Turbo special because cutting our turnaround time in half is well worth paying a few extra bucks for.

We could use the Value Plus level (20 day turnaround, $500 max value), but at $40 a card, the price jump is way too significant—the difference between that and the new $19.99 pricing is about 4% less margin for a $500 card, 8% less margin for a $250 card and 20% less margin for a $100 card.

Turbo Special makes that gap a lot less painful, and also makes folks a lot more comfortable sending in cards knowing they’ll get them back in time for key events and, in the case of ultra-modern stuff, back before the market on that card has a chance to completely change.

Introducing a “Turbo” level for Collector’s Club members would not only provide a bit more value for members to counter the optics of increased pricing, but it would likely provide a lot more revenue for PSA as I suspect more members would be happily willing to pay up a little for the faster turnaround for a lot of their submissions.

Summing it up

All in all, while I’ve seen some angry reactions, the changes aren’t that big of a deal. I think you need to do a little math on some of the higher levels, and it does reduce margins a little on lower-end slabs, but mostly the price changes are minimal.

I think the biggest thing here is that there was just a missed opportunity for PSA to pair this with a change that would have benefit both users and the company at the same time, buying some goodwill.

I mean look—we all know PSA is not really at risk at the moment. Grading continues to grow, PSA continues to dominate, BGS is looking like they’re on the ropes, and no other slab carries the same value premium.

But competition sneaks in through the margins, and PSA is absolutely leaving some cracks—lack of grading transparency, gaps in submission values, slow turnaround times, etc—that give the competition a way to get their foot in the door. If I were them, I would be looking for opportunities to close those gaps while improving company perception and value at the same time.

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For example, from a selling perspective, targeting a prominent release like Prizm, and particularly buying up Prizm Silver’s to get graded and sell, is a really, really smart move. As a collector, I find Prizm to be pretty boring. Give me something with a bit more character and design. It’s nowhere near as valuable, but for my own collection, give me a Wembanyama’s Court Kings (particularly Level II) over his Prizm Silver any day off the week.

I’ve always loved the “odd-ball” releases, so it’s no surprise that I have a soft spot for the holiday versions of card sets.

I feel like this year, Topps absolutely knocked it out of the park with their Holiday baseball release. I mean, come on…how fun is this design?

Last year’s base was mostly just snow in the background, and while this is an admittedly noisy background, it’s also just fun. Then of course you have all the variations like the Elf Hat, Santa Belt, etc. On top of that you have the parallels, and those are pretty fun too. I actually really like the Holiday tree (1:1 in the tins).

Panini had a winter Hoops version last year, but it’s incredibly boring by comparison. Just some snow in the background—no fun variations, no clever parallels.

I’m hoping they get more bold this year (assuming we get a winter/holiday release—it looks like 2024 Hoops may not even be out until January). I thought they did a little better job with the Haunted Hoops stuff.

My kids were loving the Slime parallel.

And I actually think the Holo parallels looked pretty nice, particularly the Holo webs.

I would like to see more of this from Panini. If you’re going to to random holiday releases, go all out and lean into it a bit more. Be creative and bold. Remember what it’s like to be a kid ripping this stuff.

I’m sure not everyone will agree with me on this stuff. These designs aren’t exactly timeless or sophisticated.

But they’re fun. Holiday releases aren’t aimed at the “investor”—they are 100% squarely aimed at collectors. And collecting is supposed to be fun.

More bold and wild holiday designs, please.

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When I first started doing this, I was very precious about my margins. I still am to some point. It’s painful to look at a card and see that you took a loss on it. And it’s always so tempting to hold onto a card that you think may go up in the future.

But profit today is better than maybe profit tomorrow and there are so many hobby stories of folks left holding the bag on cards that they held onto too long. I personally have definitely seem margins dip, particularly when a card doesn’t sell before the post-release hype cycle dips.

So I’ve been trying to talk myself into being a little less precious about my margins and work more on the efficiency of moving my inventory.

I built a simple (and free) little “Now or Later” calculator for whuppit to help me (and hopefully others) make some better decisions there.

I figured a specific example might help, so let’s use one that I literally sold this week.

Now or Later, JuJu Watkins Inception Auto

JuJu Watkins is the real deal. Last year, as a freshman, she was second in the nation (behind only Caitlin) with 27.1 points per game and set the all-time record for most points by a freshman with 920 (yes, even more than Clark had in her freshman year). In this year’s opener, she dropped 27 points, 20 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals and 5 (!!) blocks. She’s a baller.

I had a PSA 10 2022 Bowman U Inception Autograph of JuJu that I had listed for $475 or best offer. I’ve had a few lower offers that I turned down, but just got an offer for $420 which is right in line with the last few sales.

I was really tempted to hold. The margin on the sale would be nice as it is, but barring injury, there’s virtually no way this card doesn’t go up substantially as the season goes along. The only question is how long would I have to hold?

So, I ran the numbers to see how much I was potentially risking by holding out for a higher offer.

I ran two scenario’s:

• A conservative scenario based on a 10 week buy/sell cycle (I’ve had the card for 8 weeks, so adding some buffer to acknowledge it might take longer next time), and 20% margin with each round (my lifetime is ~30%, and this card itself is around 90% so this is pretty low)

• A more aggressive scenario based on the same buy/sell cycle, but bumping the per round margin to 50% to account for being more aggressive about getting more of her stuff in particular.

Scenario 1: Being conservative

For the first scenario, I used a 10 week buy/sell cycle (it’s been 8 weeks since I purchased this card, so 10 weeks would allow for slower cycles in the future) and a 20% margin on each subsequent cycle (my lifetime is ~30%, so this is pretty low).

The initial profit is around $200 (93%), so the calculator uses that as the starting point. Every 10 weeks, it adds another 20%, but it also tries to account for the head start you would get selling today by providing a portion of that margin during each projected month.

So in the conservative scenario, if I held out for another month before selling, I would need to sell for ~$450 (an increase of 8%) to match where I would be if I sold today for less. If I waited 2 months, I’d have to sell for $487. I think those are actually possible outcomes, but still, it’s hard to bank on a 8% increase in a card’s value month over month.

Scenario 2: Being aggressive

The first scenario was super conservative, so I wanted a more aggressive scenario to compare against.

This time, I used the same sales cycle of 10 weeks, but I bumped the per round margin to 50%. I’ve often told folks that with players/cards I believe in, I try to remember that if I sell today for profit, I can directly put that into more cards of that same player. So in this scenario, I was imagining just putting this directly back into more JuJu autographs.

Even 50% here might be conservative, as my initial margin is around 93%. But I wanted to play it safe on the chance that some of these cards may not gem, or if her cards do dip for any reason.

Under a more aggressive scenario, the decision as to whether to sell now or hold for later became even more clear. If I think I can get 50% or so on each cycle (which is very achievable for this card), then even waiting just a single month would require a 20% increase in the value of the card to make holding worthwhile.

The decision…

So, long story short, I accepted the offer and immediately went out and bought one more Inception auto, and made an offer on another. I think there’s a lot of upside on this card, but in this case, it’s probably going to be easier to grow that profit by buying more than it is by waiting for a better price later.

I’m not saying I’m completely sold on being less precious about my margins yet—I need to play around with this more. I also need to get over the emotional/irrational part of me that gets involved, but I’m going to start using this little calculator to try to make my decisions going forward a bit more rational and rooted in data.

Without proper odds on packs and boxes (hey there Panini) it’s hard to say definitely how rare something is or isn’t.

Blitz & Bones has been digging into grading population reports recently as a way to try to determine just how short print an insert is, and while it’s not a perfect approach, it’s probably the best option we have and I’ve been finding the results super interesting.

For example, one conclusion was that Prizm Snakeskins are legitimately a super short print, with no one showing up more than 20 times on the population report.

Or their example that Downtowns, a very popular chase card, are actually far from SSP this year.

I think it’s a really useful approach to trying to put a little bit of data behind the scarcity of a card. Here’s how you can use Gemrate (one of my absolute favorite resources) to figure it out.

For this example, let’s look at three animation-style insert releases from this year’s basketball products:

• Hoops Presentations

• Donruss Animation

• Prizm Prizmania

All have been described at some point as SSP, but let’s take a look to see how scarce they each actually are.

My favorite way to do this is to use GemRate’s Set Breakdown as it let’s us see every card for a particular set.

First, we can do some level setting to make sure that it’s a fair comparison. Hoops has been out a lot longer than the other two releases, so it’s possible that there would be more cards graded in general.

Looking at the set breakdown, however, here’s how many total graded cards we see of each set:

• Hoops: 22,304 cards

• Donruss: 9,735 cards

• Prizm: 44,839 cards

It looks like maybe Donruss might be at a bit of a disadvantage in our comparison, but certainly not Prizm. So when we look at the population for each of our three example inserts, if anything, we might expect more Prizmania to be found and graded than the others, with Animation potentially having the least.

Ok. Now the fun bit—let’s look at the actual inserts.

Hoops Presentations

First up, Presentations.

There are 3,288 graded Presentations cards, with the most popular (unsurprisingly Wembanyama) sitting around 574. Definitely not something we could call SSP.

Donruss Animation

Next up, let’s look at Donruss Animation.

This one looks a lot more rare, with only 38 total cards being graded. The most we see for any particular card is a whopping 8. It’s worth noting that Donruss in general had a lot less cards graded than the other two releases, so maybe that means there’s more to be found here. But even if we accounted for that difference, Animation would still be much more rare than the Presentations cards.

This one looks like a genuine SSP.

Prizm Prizmania

Finally, let’s look at Prizm Prizmania.

Here we’ve got 46 total graded cards, but a larger checklist than Donruss Animation—the most for any individual player so far is Curry at 6. Given the massive amount of Prizm cards graded, if this insert wasn’t a SSP, we would expect to see more of them here.

This one definitely qualifies as a SSP.

Ok…so what?

For what it’s worth, there’s no clear definition of what exactly qualifies as an SP or SSP. I do like Blitz & Bones suggestion of < 50 qualifying as a SSP, but it’s not like that’s been defined anywhere.

But I do think it’s worth double-checking sometimes when you see something listed as an SSP. I mean look—market value is market value: if everyone is paying for a particular card as if it’s an SSP and you really want that card in your collection now, then you might have to pay up too.

This data is still interesting to look at, though, because I think it can hint at what might happen to a card’s value over time.

If a card is carrying a SSP price premium, but you can see in the population report that it’s actually fairly widely distributed, the safest bet is that the premium is going to evaporate, at least a bit, at some point. Demand may be high, but so is supply and eventually that evens out.

If a card legitimately is an SSP, it seems more likely to hold onto a price premium for the long-haul. Even if that card is Prizmania and looks super goofy (opinions, I know), it’s likely that at demand will continue to be much higher than supply, perhaps even more so down the road.

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I’ve really enjoyed the “Better than a Box” series at Sports Collector Daily where they compare the price of a box to a few singles you could purchase instead. I also enjoy “Degen Rips” on YouTube because he always ends the video with a quick breakdown of how much he made back on that particular rip.

I thought I’d start writing up my some of my own rips and give them a rank in terms of both return on investment and how much I enjoyed them.

So, to kick things off, here’s a look at my most recent rip: 2023-24 Select Basketball Blasters.

What got ripped?

Basketball’s my favorite sport and the Spurs are my favorite team which means, well, I’m going fairly heavy on all new releases this year.

I bought 12 blaster boxes from Target. All in all it came to $381 with shipping, or around $32 per blaster box.

Each blaster has 6 packs with 4 cards per pack. Select is follows the typical formula of having a ton of different parallels to pull and chase. The Tiger and Zebra Prizms are the big ones here, though the blasters are also your only chance at the Flash Prizms (which I quite like).

Select also has a few different “levels” of cards, with each level getting harder to pull. Retail has an exclusive Mezzanine Level, and you can find those here too.

Fun rating?

I enjoyed the rip overall. Select isn’t my favorite product, necessarily, but there’s a lot of color to be pulled here which makes it pretty fun. Numbered cards are harder to pull, but not too scarce: I pulled two Purple Flash Prizm’s numbered to 175 and one Blue Flash prizm numbered to 99 across the 12 boxes. The fact that you’re also sort of chasing different “levels” of cards adds a bit more excitement as well.

Quite frankly, it’s a 100x better rip than Prizm retail which was pretty brutal. The quality, as I’ll discuss in a bit, was also much better.

What got pulled?

I saw someone post a bunch of Wemby’s they pulled from their blasters.

That wasn’t the case for me. I pulled one base total out of all 12 blasters. That’s it. Obviously I would have liked more, but there was still some good stuff.

The two Purple Flash cards are super nice to look at though Jalen Green and Kawhi (the betrayer) Leonard aren’t gonna hold a ton of value. The Blue Flash also looks sharp, though again, I would have been ok with someone other than RJ Barrett.

I did pull a Brandon Miller Premier Level, Green/White/Purple’s of Cason Wallace and Giannis (that guy does not get anywhere near the level of hobby love that he should), an Orange Flash of Jamie Jaquez Jr, another of Gradey Dick Courtside Level, and a pair of Jaime Jaqueze Jr. Blue Prizm’s—one Concourse Level and one Premier.

In total, across all 12 blasters I pulled:

• 21 Orange Flash Prizm’s

• 16 Blue Prizm’s

• 11 Green/White/Purple Prizm’s

• 5 Silver Prizm’s

• 2 Purple Flash Prizm’s /175

• 1 Blue Flash Prizm /99

I would be interested to see how well that lines up with others as going into the rip, I would have expected Orange Flash to be more rare than the Blue Prizm’s for sure (and if you look at early eBay sales, they’re definitely selling as if they were).

For the non-Concourse levels, I pulled:

• 23 Premier Level

• 11 Mezzanine Level

• 7 Courtside Level

So Mezzanine, surprisingly, seems a bit more common than Courtside and I’ve heard that from other folks too. But the twist of course is that you can pull Courtside in hobby releases, but Mezzanine can only be pulled in retail releases. I’m…not sure if that means one is gonna end up being more rare than the other—I’d expect it will kind of even out. It’ll be fun to watch the Wembanyama PSA pop count for each level as time goes on to see.

I definitely like the Mezzanine level the best—there’s a lot more space dedicated to the player in the photo, and the card definitely stands out more as a result.

Quality?

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality control. When I ripped Prizm this year, centering was all over the place and there were print lines and scratches everywhere.

That wasn’t the case here.

The centering was super consistent—I would say there were less than 5 cards that looked off-center. And while there were a few print lines here and there, they were again few and far between.

Overall, I would expect this set is going to grade very well if these blasters were any indication of the overall quality.

Estimated return?

This one is gonna be close.

I’ve got a few cards I’m going to get graded and after accounting for fees and such, I’d conservatively estimate ~$300 return there. Which leaves me with an $80 loss to make up through selling everything else. I think that’s doable between SportLots and COMC.

So I’m not losing my shirt on this one, but I’m also not coming out ahead. That’s where I land probably 80-90% of the time I rip something.

It’s probably worth noting that since the rip, I did end up grabbing another Wemby Base, a Wemby Blue Prizm, and two Wemby Green/White/Purple Prizm’s for a little less than the cost I paid for the 12 blasters.

I got a really good deal on all of those compared to what they’re currently going for (that “just got released” price bump is in full effect). If all four got graded as 10’s and I were to sell them (I do PC Wemby—Spurs fan after all—so selling all four isn’t a given), I’d expect a conservative ~$350 profit after grading fees (based on how other releases have sold when graded close to release date).

It’s a super solid reminder that from a financial perspective, singles will almost always make more sense.

But again, you probably aren’t ripping because you think it’s the best use of your money—you’re ripping because it’s fun. And on that, I felt like the Select blasters delivered.

The result was a very affordable release (you can get hobby boxes now in the $30-$35 range). And while there isn’t as much upside if you’re buying for the purpose of investing, there are some absolutely incredible inserts.

One of my personal favorites is are the Roll Call Wildstyle Edition cards.

The set was designed in collaboration with Robert Provenzano (professionally known as CES). CES is an artist based in New York, who is considered a pioneer the “wildstyle” writing style. Wildstyle is a form of writing style used in Graffiti where big, bold colors are used with letters that are distorted to the point of being difficult for many (particularly those not familiar with the style) to read.

This actually wasn’t the first time Topps has worked with CES. He also contributed to Topps Project70 in 2021, and his distinctive style shows up in a bunch of cards in the series.

I mean—how cool is that Jeter! I love the contrast of the bold colors with the thick black border. And there’s so much iconic New York imagery in the card that it’s hard not to love.

CES collected cards as a kid, and I think it’s the combination of his experience with the hobby combined with his incredible style of art that makes all these cards so effective.

The Roll Call Wildstyle Edition set isn’t expensive—you can get raw versions of most of the cards in the set for $5 or less, and even graded most won’t cost you more than $50-$60 at the time I’m writing this.

The cards do not grade easily—the full bleed color fronts result in a lot of white corners and edges—but they do look great in a slab. I sent out a few Ohtani’s, which all gemmed, but my attempt to get a Bo Jackson (the wildstyle “Bo” is darn near iconic in my opinion) and Babe Ruth to hasn’t worked out as well.

I’m hopeful we see more of this kind of thing—cards designed through collaboration with talented artists who love the hobby, and kept at a price point that the majority of folks will find much easier to be able to justify purchasing and collecting.

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The big news in the hobby, at least for folks who grade, is that PSA is all set to acquire SGC. SGC is the third-largest trading card grading company (behind PSA and CGC) and the second largest sports card grading company (CGC sees the bulk of it’s submissions come non-sports cards).

I’m not gonna talk much about that—there’s plenty out there. But I have been thinking for awhile about what it would take for a company to compete with, and potentially even dethrone PSA someday.

So here’s my unsolicited advice to grading companies who want to compete: target the weaknesses. (And if you work at PSA and are reading this, my advice is to focus on shoring these up.)

Specifically:

• There’s a definite perception that PSA grades can be subjective depending on the grader and their mood on any given day. A great way to compete right out of the gate is to target this with transparency around how the grade was arrived at.

• PSA slabs aren’t bad, but I feel like grading companies have really overlooked the importance of creating a truly stunning grading label and slab. A big part of grading is because you want to add value to your cards, and I feel like there’s definitely room for someone to come in with a jaw-dropping slab and label combo.

• Turnaround times have been a constant pain point for PSA. I’ve mentioned it before, but I know a ton of people who have sent stuff to SGC solely because the turnaround time is faster and they want to get to market first. PSA has been doing much better on this front, but there’s still room for the competition to sneak in here.

• Don’t compete on price. I hate myself for saying this because I love it when PSA provides grading specials and would love grading to cost less. But the main reason most people grade is to add value to the card. Even those that grade for PC purposes are doing it because they value the card they have and want it taken care of and put in a nice slab. Any company that wants to compete has to be able to retain that value, and eventually get to a point where their slabs have similar resell value as PSA currently has. Positioning yourself as the cheap alternative to PSA is a sure-fire way for that not to happen while also cutting into your margins.

Right now, I don’t think most companies have really emphasized the price difference while neglecting focus on some of the other areas for improvement.

SGC, too, is (was?) cheaper than PSA and their turnaround times were much faster than PSA. The slabs were definitely a step up from what CGC provides and depending on who you ask, might even be a step above PSA, though I don’t feel like they were dramatically more premium looking in any way. But again, there’s no real transparency around grading here so there’s nothing to appease folks critical of a potentially subjective grading process.

CGC is cheaper, but the turnaround time is roughly the same as PSA for their Bulk submission level. Their slab labels are a bit underwhelming—they could certainly stand for a more premium looking face lift. And there isn’t anything they’re doing around transparency to poke at that weakness either. My advice to CGC would be to give their slabs and label a makeover, add some transparency to their grading process and reduce their turnaround times.

BGS’s biggest advantage is their sub grades which provide at least a little more context to the grade, but they pull their punches a bit by charging extra for it instead of just including it on every order.. I know it’s subjective, but I would personally rank their slabs ahead of CGC, but behind both SGC and PSA. Their pricing is a little cheaper than PSA if you are not a PSA member, but their turnaround times are actually slower. My advice to BGS would be to include sub grades on all slabs, give the slab and label a face-lift, and greatly decrease their turnaround times.

TAG is actually kind of interesting and if I had to bet on one company to eventually be a legitimate competitor, it would be them. They are much smaller, but they also seem to be targeting a lot of these areas. Their advertised turnaround time is a little faster than PSA, which is nice. Their slab is pretty slick, and they are clearly trying to position it as a premium slab (all of the auto-generated images have this sleek black background and Apple-esque reflection effect). That focus on a premium feel is also very obvious in their slab packaging. Their grading report is probably the biggest differentiator. They detail to an exhaustive detail why the card got the grade it did which makes it pretty hard to argue with.

My biggest advice to TAG is to keep hammering on the marketing and positioning. They need to get to a point where their slabs have similar resell value to PSA, and that’s going to take time and a focus on building up that reputation.

For PSA, well, the advice is to focus on shoring up those weaknesses so it’s harder for competitors to gain an edge. The improvements around turnaround times as of late has been very nice, but it will take time for that reputation to change. There’s definitely some room for improvement around the slab and label to cultivate a more premium feel. The biggest issue, I think is the grading transparency. They don’t necessarily need to go as detailed as a TAG report (I actually think it’s overkill for most collectors), but some level of sub grading to indicate which of the areas is the one that kept the card from gemming would be a big step in the right direction.

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Someone asked when they could expect Prizm football to stabilize, which is a great question. Prizm is, whether deserved or not, the premier product release for both football and basketball, and the Prizm silver card’s in particular are a card that has the ideal combination of liquidity (lot of people buying and selling) and value.

The offseason is often touted as a good time to buy, as the hype of the season wears off and attention turns elsewhere for a bit, so it’s natural to want to “time” things so you’re getting the lowest price before things swing back up.

The usual disclaimer of “timing the market is hard” applies here, but we can still get a relative idea.

Looking back at 2022

The 2022 Prizm football release date was March 15th. I went into Market Movers1 and plotted the raw Prizm silver cards of four quarterbacks who all received a good amount of offseason hype last year—Brock Purdy, Kenny Pickett, Sam Howell and Desmond Ridder—from that release date through to the start of the preseason (August 10th).

A few things jump out to me.

Prizm stabilized about one month after release. All four cards started hot and the value dropped off for each, hitting a floor somewhere in April.

Just one month after release, Purdy’s card was down 61%, Pickett was down 78%, Ridder was down 52% and Howell was down 79%. (As an aside, look at how much higher Pickett started than Purdy. Seems silly in retrospect.)

From April on, the cards all started to climb back up as pre-season approached. Again, preseason kicked off in mid-August—August 10th to be exact. By that point, all four cards had climbed back up in value a bit.

If we start at that April 16th spot and compare to August 10th, Purdy was up 142%, Pickett up 34%, Ridder up 14% and Howell up 34%.

The pre-season hype cycle is very reliable, and something I touched on recently.

Despite the pre-season hype, all four cards were still below their launch date value. There was significant off-season hype around all four players, but by the start of preseason (where hype is at it’s highest), all four cards were still much cheaper than they were on the day of their release.

Timing is everything

I mentioned at the start of the post that trying to time the high’s and low’s is hard, nearly impossible even to get right. If you look at each card individually, you’ll see the each bottomed out at slightly different points, and peaked at different points as well.

Ridder’s card actually peaked in June, as his mini-camp and preseason performances didn’t command as much attention.

Howell and Pickett both had strong preseason performances that fueled their hype, so their cards actually peaked right before the regular season kicked off.

And Purdy started off hot so his cards didn’t start to decrease in any meaningful way until late October (before rising again pretty quickly).

What does it mean for this year?

Ok, so far we can say:

• Cards will be really expensive when they release

• They will drop down pretty quickly before starting to slowly rise again as the hype for next year picks up

• Predicting a preseason/mini-camp jump in value is fairly reliable (aka: buying in August is expensive)

So where are we with this year’s Prizm?

We first started seeing sales of Prizm singles in late December/early January. So right now, we’re about 2 months after the initial release.

Sure enough, if we look at four quarterback’s with a decent amount of hype (Stroud, Richardson, Young and Levis), all four are down since the release date.

Interestingly, Richardson’s cards don’t seem to have budged hardly at all from the release. He’s kind of an interesting example because he looked fantastic at the start of the season before getting injured (seems almost funny in retrospect, but at the time there were analysts writing about how he was looking like the best QB in the class at the time). So his hype wasn’t as high as someone like Stroud’s, but his performance was at a level that ensured a much higher floor than Young and Levis.

We may have actually already seen the floor on Prizm prices. If you look from January 21st (a month after release) until today, all of those cards (other than Stroud who had so much hype there was no place to go but down) are actually up in the last month.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here on out. If we really have already seen the floor, how high will these each end up by that preseason peek-hype moment? And who from this group is going to live up to those expectations and potentially continue to climb? (I’ve got my bets!)

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Brock Purdy had a mostly solid, unspectacular outing which of course lead to all sorts of very totally rational and definitely not over-the-top reactions on social media.

I saw a few people asking how “Purdy buyers” were feeling now and comparing his cards to what happened with the value of Jalen Hurts cards, and I thought that was actually a very interesting comparison that paints a very different picture depending on when you stop paying attention.

Building up to the 2023 Super Bowl

Last year, Hurts came through in a big way, having a huge year and leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl. As is typical, his card values ascended as a result. Here’s a look at his Silver Prizm rookie card (always a really good gauge of overall card value) from the middle of December (December 18th) right up to the Super Bowl (the game was February 12th, so we’ll stop at the 11th).1

The average sale price of Hurt’s Prizm Silver went up about 22% during that span as people started getting excited for the playoffs, and then the Super Bowl. Not a bad little jump and if you had Hurt’s cards, you were feeling pretty darn good.

Super Bowl Fallout

Hurts actually had a really solid game in the Super Bowl, but it wasn’t enough and Mahomes and the Chiefs got the win. The falloff for Hurts cards was steep and fast.

Up 22% just through that late season period, the value of his silver prizm dropped literally overnight, and continued to drop through April, bottoming out at 50% the average sales price as it had been the day before the Super Bowl.

Not a great time to be someone holding Hurts cards for sure. I suspect this is what the “look at what happened to the value of Hurts cards” folks were alluding to, because a 50% drop is definitely significant.

But if we stop here, we aren’t telling the full story.

Building up to the next season

Football has a quiet period there, after the Super Bowl and as all the focus gets pushed to baseball. But as the minicamp and preseason starts to appear on the horizon, and fantasy football draft season starts to heat up, so does football prices.

The Eagles played their first preseason game on August 12th. Between the end of April and that first preseason game, the Hurts Prizm Silver card shot back up, just as dramatically as it fell off.

That’s a 65% jump by the time preseason started, bringing the card even higher than it was at its pre-Super Bowl peak! Offseason hype is a real thing in any sport, with it being most dramatic in baseball and football, and this is a very familiar pattern.

The hype dies down

After the wild frenzy of mini-camps and preseason build-up, the card started to drop back down. Again, this is pretty typical. Barring an early season power-house performance, cards tend to cool off a bit mostly because off-season hype is so high that real-life rarely holds up.

Hurts actually had a good season, but it wasn’t a big enough step up from the year before to bring consistent hype, and as a result, we see the card drop by 41% over the next several months.

So what about Purdy?

Ok. So let’s return to our “how our Purdy buyers” feeling right now?

Well, if we’re using Hurts as our comparison point, the answer is probably not too bad if they’re looking out far enough. There will be offseason hype around Purdy as mini-camps and preseason roll around. He’s a young quarterback with a great story (haters gonna hate, but “last pick in the draft to starting Super Bowl quarterback” is some Disney-level story telling), on a team with a big fan base, surrounded by a lot of talent.

So it seems like it would be safe to expect some drop-off in value now in the next few months, followed by a climb as the new season rolls around.

It will also be interesting to see how significant the drop-off is, because Purdy’s card values have been on a different trajectory than Hurts. Purdy has few rookie cards because of his draft position, and that combined with his performances as he took over the starting job have resulted in a pretty steady and consistent climb in his value since then, with a few blips up and down along the way.

We actually don’t see the same dramatic “playoff hype” rise for him as we do for Hurts. In fact, his card was slightly down over a similar period this year leading up to the Super Bowl.

If I had to guess, I would expect a similar post-Super Bowl drop and preseason spike, but maybe just not as dramatic as we saw for Hurts.

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This month is kind of quiet for me. I’m not a huge fan of the football releases this month, and baseball is a little quiet outside of some of the high-end, pricier (riskier) releases. Basketball, my favorite to collect, has a couple nice releases, but it definitely feels a bit like the calm before the storm—March currently has three big 2023-24 releases I’m pumped for.

Still, there are a couple I’m watching.

February 7th: Prizm Basketball

This one is a bit of a weird one, because Prizm retail kind of came out of nowhere and started showing up on retail shelves last month, weeks ahead of the official release date. So…there’s a little bit of Prizm fatigue already to be honest. At least for me.

Still, it’s too big of a release not to be at least a little interested.

As usual with Prizm, the base design is a bit drab, so the appeal is in the parallels. The hobby only white in particular is going to look incredible.

I also think the Kaliedoscopic insert could look pretty sweet when seen in real life and I’m disappointed there’s no Wembanyama in that checklist.

As has been the case with all major Panini releases so far this season, there’s an animated/illustrated insert short print to chase. I’m…on the fence about it. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t think it’s as appealing as the Hoops Presentations insert or even the Donruss Animations.

Some people critiqued the large head—that’s not it for me. It’s the background. The long extended letters don’t do anything for me and actually makes the card look cheaper than a SP should look (at least based on pictures…we’ll see if this ends up being like the Donruss Night Moves insert which I was a bit ho-hum on from the scanned images, but are gorgeous once you have them in hand).

No one asked, but so far, here’s my ranking on the three animation style insert releases from 2023-24 basketball:

1. Hoops Presentations

2. Donruss Animations

3. Prizm Prizmania

Overall, I wish the inserts were a bit more aligned with the football release. There’s nothing quite as appealing as Manga or the Color Blasts, at least from what I’ve seen so far.

I’m hoping one of the inserts I haven’t seen images for surprises me, because the retail inserts were pretty uninspired (Deep Space was actually kind of nice, but nothing else was particularly noteworthy).

Rip/Break/Singles?

Prizm, as always, isn’t cheap. There’s a massive floor on ripping and breaking so that’s probably not going to be part of my approach here. I’m going to focus mostly on grabbing singles, focusing on Wembanyama, GG Jackson, Bilal Coulibaly, Brandon Miller and Cam Whitmore in particular.

February 14th: Topps Series 1 Baseball

The first 2024 baseball product release! I’m not a huge baseball guy, but still….it feels notable to get our first 2024 product.

I tend not to go for the straight up Topps paper release, and prefer waiting for the Chrome release, but I do kind of like the design this year.

The big ones for me are the inserts and parallels though. I couldn’t love the True Photo cards more! I'm a sucker for good photography on cards, and I love how these get everything out of the way so you can just appreciate the photo itself.

I also kind of like the Superstar Blueprint inserts. Nothing too flashy, but with paper-based cards, I tend to like inserts that lean into a more retro-y kind of look and feel and these fit the bill.

Rip/Break/Singles?

This is a cheap release and also not the most valuable. I think ripping is an option here—you can actually do it without breaking the bank, you just have to keep in mind the upside is more limited than with other releases.

I may rip a few for fun, but mostly I’ll be targeting singles of some of the inserts and parallels that I enjoy.

February 16th: Court Kings

I already talked about Court Kings last month, when it was originally intended to come out. My take is the same—as boring as I generally find Prizm, Court Kings is the polar opposite. It’s a gorgeous set of cards and I wish there were more products like it.

Rip/Break/Singles?

Last month I said I’d probably focus on singles and maybe some Pick Your Team style breaks if they’re appropriately priced. The only change here is that I ended up getting a great price on a case of these in a pre-sell. I haven’t decided how much of that I will rip and how much of that I will just sell still sealed, but at the price I got it at, it was too good of a deal to pass up and with how much I keep talking up the design of these cards, I don’t mind putting my money where my mouth is.

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It’s worth calling out that if you’re grading purely for PC purposes, most of the advice below doesn’t really apply. But if you’re grading with the hope to sell and earn a little bit of profit, a few minutes with data goes a long way towards making sure you’re grading the right cards.

Break-even grade

The first thing I figure out is what grade I need to break-even. Grading isn’t super cheap, and there’s always a shot that I won’t get the grade I was hoping for, so I need to know what the lowest possible grade is that I can get where I can still sell the card for at least the money I’ve got into it (grading fees plus purchase price).

For this, I use Market Movers.1

Let’s use Amon-Ra St. Brown’s 2021 Optic Blue Scope #228 as an example, because he’s fantastic and the card is pretty gorgeous.

The first thing I do is look up the raw value of a card to see what it’s going for right now. For any card I’m considering purchasing, this helps me figure out a reasonable expectation for cost. For any card in my collection already, it helps me identify how much I could potentially be getting for that card if I sold it raw.

Looking at this, I can see that the last sales was $12.50, and the 30-day average is $9.58, so anything between $10-$13 is a reasonable purchase price.

Next up, I need to see at what point I would break-even if I bought one of these and tried to grade it.

Market Movers has a really handy “duplicate this card” button you can click to instantly add the card in other grades. If I add the PSA 9 and PSA 10, I can get a sense for what those are going for in graded condition.

A PSA 9 is getting around $30 and a PSA 10 should get around $75 (obviously there’s some wiggle room up and down for both, but this is a good guideline).

Grading at a Value Bulk level is going to cost about $20 with a membership and after shipping, so if I can buy the card at $12, and grade it at $20, I’d have $32 into the card. That’s pretty close to the PSA 9 price point (when you factor in selling fees we’d lose a little), so we can call the PSA 9 our break-even point.

Grading Rates

Now that we have our break-even point, the next thing I like to look at is what percentage of that card has received that break-even grade or higher. There’s a lot of focus on gem rate, and that’s important to as it helps us figure in upside, but I would argue the break-even grade level is more important as it lets us see how much wiggle room we have in the grade. Gem rate may give you upside, but your break-even grade helps you assess the risk.

For this, I use GemRate’s Universal Search.

If I pull up data for this card, I can see how it has graded across PSA, SGC, BGS and CGC.

Based on the data here, we can see that, at PSA, this card gem’s 41.6% of the time. That’s not great, though probably about middle of the road for modern releases (it should be higher, but man, some of the sets that get released have truly awful quality control…don’t get me started on the nightmare that is finding grade-able Prizm cards).

However, we know that while our aim is a 10, a 9 still let’s us break-even. It looks like 219 of the 541 cards graded by PSA got a 9, bringing the rate of 9’s to 40.5%. So if we do the math, we end up at 82.1% of this card that have been graded hit our break-even point our higher.

That’s a much nicer number, and it tells us that as long as we can keep our initial purchase price down, this is a reasonable card for us to to look for in good raw condition to attempt to grade. Even if we sent in 5 and we only hit that 41% gem rate, we would still come out ahead because we don’t lose much at a 9 and our odds are very high that we’re going to get one of those two grades (again, assuming it’s a decent quality card).

Volume as a caveat

There’s one less data point that we can’t overlook: volume, both in sales and grades.

The more often a card has sold, the more predictable the sales value is going to be. If we aren’t seeing it sell a lot, there’s a strong likelihood that we may have to be very patient to make the sale, or that we may have to expect higher variability in the sales price.

This card is actually a great example of sales volume cautioning us a bit.

Going back to Market Movers, we can see that there’s actually only been one PSA 10 sale in the past 30 days. In fact, there has only been 4 PSA 10 sales in the past 90 days, and the latest was the highest.

Seeing this, we might want to have a bit more caution before diving in full-steam ahead on trying to buy a bunch of this card to grade and sell. It doesn’t mean there’s not still potential upside in this card, but it does mean we should probably move with a bit more caution as our sales price may not be as predictable as we would hope.

Another thing you need to be cautious of is newer releases. Newer releases that haven’t had time to be graded a ton make our grading results a bit less reliable, and newer releases also tend to sell at much higher prices right after release and right after the first graded versions start to hit. So if you are looking at potentially picking up a few cards to grade and you see those first few PSA 10’s selling at a really high value, you may want to expect that the actual price you could sell at when your graded cards come back could be quite a bit lower. Those Victor Wembanyama Hoops PSA 10’s were getting $175-$200 when the first graded versions started to hit eBay, and now you can get them for less than $75.

Safer Grading with Data

Grading takes time and money, and most of us don’t have tons of money to just throw around at a bunch of stuff—if we’re grading a card we want to sell later, we want to make sure that we’re coming out ahead.

A little data diving can go a long way towards helping us understand a card’s risk and ceiling, and let us make more informed decisions about which cards to try to grade in the first place.

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Yesterday, the posted a series of tweets as a “2023 Grading Year in Review”, and there’s some interesting stuff in there for sure.

Grading growth

Grading continues to be a major part of the hobby, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Each of the four grading services GemRate reports on (PSA, CGC, SGC and Beckett) saw year over year growth, with SGC (up 29%) and PSA (up 21%) leading the way.

The fact that Beckett only increased 3% compared to the big growth for PSA and SGC is…not a great sign for them. Hopefully they can turn it around because they do have some good things going for them (I love that they provide sub grades for each of the four grading criteria).

Most of the growth comes from non-sport cards, which is probably not surprising if you’ve been watching the TCG stuff at all. In fact, SGC is the only service that saw growth in graded sports cards.

Down 24% and 56%, respectively, Beckett and CGC are basically dropping out of the race of contenders for sports grading (CGC saw a 58% increase in TCG & Non-sport so they’re carving out a solid space there).

It’s interesting to see SGC capturing more space. They’ve got a solid reputation, and decent slabs (a lot of collector’s like the slabs, but personally I feel like the label looks cheap…like someone designed it in Microsoft Word or something). The actual value of SGC cards still hasn’t caught up to PSA, but maybe that will come if they can continue to carve out more market space.

Overall, this leads to probably what you would expect. PSA dominates market share, with SGC a distant second.

Gem rates

It’s the second part of that image, the gem rate, that has sparked some interesting discussion that I’ve seen. At a glance, the fact that 43% of PSA cards gem (second only to Beckett, which has a reputation for easy grading) seems to suggest that PSA is more lenient with those gem grades.

I think there’s more to it than that though.

SGC tends to be really popular with vintage collector’s. It’s the first space they carved out in the market. If you look at the items graded by era, you can see this play out. PSA’s lowest graded era’s are basically anything from the 1970’s or earlier, whereas SGC does very well with those (the 1950’s and earlier are it’s second most common graded era, and the 1960’s are it’s third).

Obviously, we would expect the gem rate for those early era cards to be incredibly low, and that’s exactly what we see.

Already, that explains some of the gap in the number of PSA gems to SGC gems. With vintage cards being a larger percentage of what SGC grades, the overall gem rate would decrease.

Even by era, we can see PSA leading the way in the gem rate for each individual era. I think there may be an explanation for that as well.

Right now, the value of PSA cards is higher than the value of the same grade in any other grading provider. You just fetch more money with that PSA slab. That leads to a lot of people sending their best stuff into PSA.

I know a popular approach for people who grade particularly hot and timely cards, for example, is to pull out their best to send to PSA to get those high grades, and then send the rest in bulk to SGC because SGC has a much faster turnaround. This lets them get first to market with the SGC cards and get some profit, while waiting for the PSA’s to come back to give them their biggest bang for their grading buck. This would also explain some of that gap.

Beckett and CGC sports cards are worth even less than SGC, so if you want to maximize your money, you’re certainly not sending your best cards to either of them at the moment, so they’re lower gem rates make a ton of sense to me.

I mean, look, it’s entirely possible PSA is more lenient with their grades. But because each grading service grades independently, we have to be careful to not draw those types of conclusions based on data alone.

Conclusion

It’s really great to see this data from GemRate—they’re such a valuable resource for this community.

Clearly grading isn’t going anywhere, and while we’re seeing some SGC growth, PSA continues to be the dominant player both in terms of market share, and in terms of overall value of graded cards.

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January 3rd: Prizm Football

Look…if we’re talking the visual appeal of base cards, Prizm is super low on my list personally. Like, very near the bottom.

But I do really like the cracked ice variations, and from a collectibility and investment standpoint, Prizm Silver rookie cards are the rookie cards to own.

Prizm also has some pretty nice inserts to chase…I’m a sucker for both the Color Blast’s and Manga’s.

I also like the look of whatever these are (if anyone knows, let me know and I’ll update the post).

Rip/Break/Singles?

Prizm Hobby boxes are not cheap, so there’s virtually no chance I get any of those to rip. I will definitely grab some retail when those come out (I have a few blasters pre-ordered) but for this release, my primary focus is going to be on grabbing singles, particularly of rookies like Richardson, Young, Levis, Bijan and, of course, Stroud.

January 17th: 2023-2024 Court Kings Basketball

Update: Panini has since pushed back the release on this product to February 16th.

As boring as I find Prizm base cards, Court Kings is the polar opposite. What a gorgeous product!

There are four “levels” of rookies, each level being increasingly rare. I’ll be honest, looking at the designs, my immediate bias is for the level 2 rookies despite the fact that they’re a bit easier to find, but we’ll see if that changes seeing them in person.

And how amazing are these State of the Art inserts!

Or these Blank Slate SSP inserts!

Rip/Break/Singles?

The boxes are pricey—looks like $250 for only 10 cards—and definitely not the kind I’m willing to rip personally because the risk is so high. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of more reasonably priced retail product either.

But I do keep thinking about how amazing a Wembanyama State of the Art, or Blank Slate would look (haven’t seen an official checklist, so don’t know if he’s in those inserts). I just love how different this set is compared to just about every other product out there. It’s fresh, artistic, creative…I wish there were more products with fresh designs like this.

This is going to be a product I’ll look at singles of, though Pick Your Team style breaks are always an option for me on every 2023-24 basketball release if the price is reasonable enough to provide a safe floor. I’m doubting that will be the case for this product, but here’s hoping I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

January 17th: 2023 Panini Absolute Football

Panini Absolute is the epitome of a set where the base cards couldn’t possibly matter less, but the insert chase game is very strong.

The Kaboom! is a staple chase in the hobby for good reason.

And I really liked the Explosive insert as well.

There’s a bunch of autographs and memorability to chase in here too, but of course you always have to tread a bit carefully with any set where the appeal is all in the case cards. Good fun, definitely, but also a quick way to set your wallet on fire if you’re not careful.

Rip/Break/Singles?

The hobby boxes look like they’re pre-selling around $425. Each box comes with a Rookie Premier Materials Autograph, 2 more autos and 2 memorabilia cards. That’s not a bad floor compared to a lot of other products out there. Toss in the upside of a Kaboom! and you’ve got a pretty high ceiling as well.

I’m probably not ripping this, though I’ll watch the retail release very closely. If they do anything like what Donruss did (a guaranteed auto per mega box) while still providing a shot at a Kaboom!, I think that’ll be the buy for me.

I’m probably not doing much for singles here though, unless it’s a great price on one of those case hit style inserts.

January 24th: 2023-24 Donruss Basketball

Update: Panini has since pushed back the release on this product two days until January 26th.

I’m all about the 2023-24 basketball releases this year. I’m a lifelong Spurs fan, and I’m having a blast chasing Wembanyama for both the PC and for investing.

Donruss is not one of the higher end basketball release to be sure, but in this year, that just means it has a really high and safe floor. Every new Wembanyama card is going to have a period of time where it’s going to sell at well, at a price that immediately recoups a good percentage of the cost of ripping a product.

Take Hoops for example. If you pulled one Wembanyma in a blaster and sold it raw, it paid for the price of the blaster. If you graded it and sold it, it paid for the blaster and probably 4-5 more.

Donruss, I think, will be similar.

The Rated Rookie’s are somewhat iconic (though Optic is the better bet for long-term value) and there are always some slick looking parallel’s.

Donruss also has some great looking inserts. I’ve really liked past versions of Net Marvels, so I’m expecting more goodness there. I’m also really curious to see what they do with this year’s version of Unleashed and Crunch Time.

The Animation hobby-only inserts are going to be fun and I’m watching for the official checklist release in hopes that I’ll see a Wembanyama in these.

I think it’s going to be a pretty fun rip and with Wembanyama rookie cards lurking about, it will offer a stronger floor than usual.

Rip/Break/Singles?

This is the one and only release this month where I might end up doing a little bit of everything.

I’ve already pre-ordered some of the mega boxes for when those come out, and I may grab a Hobby box or two depending on the final pricing and the final checklist.

I also plan on buying into a few of the larger (half or full case) Pick Your Team breaks to nab a bunch of Wembanyama’s, and will be keeping an eye on the singles of him as well. I went really aggressive on getting Wembanyama Hoops cards, and I don’t think I’ll go quite as aggressive with this set, but only because Prizm is coming up just a couple weeks after so I’ve got to pace it out a bit.

January 31: 2023 Stadium Club Baseball

This is one of the very rare releases where I’m all about that base. Stadium Club consistently showcases some incredible photography, and they mostly let the design get out of the way so the photo can do all the heavy lifting. I’m a big fan of that, personally.

Honestly, I find the parallels pretty boring and not worth chasing. None of their inserts are super impressive to me either. The Beam Team’s are ok but I think more interesting because of the history attached to the insert than due to their recent incarnations (though this year’s version does look like a step up from last year), and the Triumvirates are kind of fun to pair together, but not jaw-dropping or anything like that.

Outside of the base, the other big appeal for me with Stadium Club is all the on-card autographs. I don’t get too into the whole “on-card vs sticker” discussion, but I do think an on-card autograph hits different. Pair that with the big focus on high quality photography and you get a winning combination.

Rip/Break/Singles?

This one is a pretty affordable rip. Hobby boxes are pre-selling for $120 and each Hobby box comes with 2 autographs. There’s a solid autograph checklist with a mix of present players and legends (though someone somewhere needs to explain what Wander Franco’s name is still doing on that checklist).

They’re not the highest end product or most highly sought after, so I’m not going to chase the singles on this one. But there’s always a couple base cards that, when graded, sell pretty well simply because high quality photography on a card looks great in a slab, so I’ve had good success recouping any cost for ripping.

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One of the best things about predicting the future is that we all have a chance to look back on those predictions later and laugh about how bad most of them were. I figured why should I miss on the fun?

I’m going to take a stab, a few months into the season, at predicting the top five rookies in terms of future collectibility.

There’s an important distinction there. I’m not saying these are the best rookies so far. I think there are some rookies off to an great start that I’m not as sold on long-term, and some rookies off to really rough starts who I still think have future star potential.

I’m also not saying they’re the five best players in the future. Some players are really good, but just don’t get the kind of love from the hobby they likely deserve. Case in point, Kevin Durant. I’m not a huge fan of his, but the guy is one of the best scorers we’ve seen and has been one of the top couple players in the league for most of his career. He’s a sure-fire, first-ballot hall of famer, but in terms of collectibility, he doesn’t get a ton of love.

The way I’m thinking about this list is, in five years, which of these rookies are the most likely to be the ones where we all wish we had hung onto their rookie cards when they were cheap.

I’ll probably adjust as time goes on, and if nothing else, it might be pretty funny to look back at this list in a couple of years and see how wrong I was.

Here goes.

1. Victor Wembanyama

This one is pretty easy, I think. While you can make a really strong argument for Chet Holmgren as the Rookie of the Year so far, Wemby is still the easy pick for the most likely to be a hobby darling.

He came in with the (admittedly overused) “generational talent” tag and an incredible amount of hype, and while the Spurs themselves have been miserable, he has been incredible.

Through his first 24 games, Wemby is averaging:

• 19.0 points per game (1st among rookies)

• 11.0 rebounds (1st among rookies)

• 2.7 assists (3rd among rookies)

• 1.3 steals (1st among rookies)

• 3.0 blocks (1st among rookies)

To put those numbers in perspective, here’s what LeBron’s stats were through his first 24 games:

• 18.1 points per game

• 6.3 rebounds

• 6.2 assists

• 1.3 steals

• 0.7 blocks

Or Durant’s, maybe a little more similar comparison in playing style:

• 20.3 points per game

• 4.5 rebounds

• 1.9 assists

• 1.0 steals

• 1.2 blocks

I’m not saying he’s better than or as good as those players (silly disclaimer, but I’ve seen people interpret this kind of data that way). I just bring it up to point out his rookie year is really good.

He’s got some efficiency concerns for sure. He’s shooting only 44% from the field and 28% from three. But efficiency concerns are to be expected from a 19 year old who is already the focal point of a struggling and young offense. Efficiency concerns and rookies basically go hand in hand. Through 24 games, LeBron shot 41% from the field (29% from three) and Durant shot 39.7% from the field (30.7% from three).

Basically, we were told he was really, really good and he’s been really, really good. We’ve seen some ridiculous stuff sequences from him that just make you laugh at the absurdity of it. One of my favorite things to watch has been the reactions of other players mid-game as Wemby does his thing.

The one knock I could potentially see keeping him from being a hobby darling is that his personality is…well…he seems every bit the classic Spur. So far he’s been very modest, level-headed, not very flashy—that’s not a class recipe for super-stardom (just ask those extremely undervalued Tim Duncan cards).

But the attention on him is unlikely to fade anytime soon and as bad as the Spurs are today, they are stacked with draft picks and salary cap room so it would be surprising to not see them contending in the not so far off future which always provides a hobby boost.

His shot will get better and start to fall more. With experience, he’ll learn to be a little more aggressive attacking rather than settling. And the Spurs will start to build that roster around him. Considering his age and what he’s already doing, his upside is through the roof.

2. Chet Holmgren

I mentioned Chet a bit above, and I know this isn’t his draft class, but he’s a rookie in the eyes of the NBA, so I’m counting him in this group.

In just about any other year, Wemby’s numbers would put him so far out in front of the crowd that there would be no discussion to have at all about who would be Rookie of the Year. But this year, Chet’s around, and he’s been everything he was promised as well.

Chet has already had more than his fair share of “did I really just see that” moments. Like Wemby, he’s breaks the mold of what we expect from big men. He’s athletic, with a good shooting touch. He’s a terror around the basket, blocking 2.8 shots a game. And while his efficiency has dipped after a scorching start to the year, he’s still shooting it at a really nice clip (52% from the field, 37% from behind the arc).

Chet’s easily the most polished player in my top five, which kind of makes sense given that he’s also the oldest rookie on the list (ever so slightly older than my #5 choice, and a few years older than everyone else). Chet certainly looks like a superstar waiting to happen. He’s also on a team that, if they can keep that core of SGA, Chet, and Jalen Williams (another guy I’m really high on long-term) together, should

I think Chet is going to be phenomenal for a long-time, and if I was the NBA, I’d be marketing the heck out of the him and Wemby to build up some of that classic head-to-head drama we all love.

As a fan, I’m sitting back and enjoying the show as we see two incredible rookie seasons. As a collector, I’m going after Chet’s rookie cards almost as aggressively as I am Wembanyama’s.

3. Scoot Henderson

First, let me be clear: there is a massive drop after Wemby and Chet in terms of my confidence in my picks. I’m being aggressive chasing Wemby and Chet rookie cards. Everyone else on this list I’m being a lot more cautious with.

Coming into the season, Scoot was the probably the most hyped rookie outside of Wembanyama, with more than a few folks saying he would have been the #1 pick most years.

Then he was bad. Like, really bad.

His horrendous start to the season let a lot of the steam out of his hype train, but so far in December we’re seeing him start to flash the upside.

Through the nine games he played in October/November, Scott was averaging:

• 8.3 points per game

• 4.3 assists

• 67% free-throws

• 19.4% 3PT

• 33.3% FG

In the 8 games in December, he’s averaging:

• 13.9 points per game

• 4.6 assists

• 89% FT

• 25.9% 3PT

• 40.7% FG

That’s a significant turnaround, and hints at some of the upside he has. He’s fairly fresh off a 23 point, 10 assist game against the Jazz. We’ve also seen the type of scoring upside he possesses in his G-League performances.

Scoot, like Bilal and Wemby, is only 19. He’s rough, but has plenty of time to polish his skills. He’s still my favorite rookie card chase after Wemby and Chet.

4. Bilal Coulibaly

This pick might be a bit surprising to some, but I think Bilal has shown really significant upside and a playing style that will appeal to many. I’m pretty sold on him as a future star in this league.

The pre-draft assessment of Bilal was that he was a raw offensive prospect with elite defensive upside. We’ve seen the defensive upside, but so far he hasn’t looked all that raw on the other end of the floor.

He’s shooting just under 42% from behind the arc. That number is probably not sustainable—he’s only attempting three shots from behind the arc a game so the sample size is small, and he hasn’t been very good on three-pointers where he’s covered—but that doesn’t matter too much at this point. Even expecting some regression, you can see the potential.

I always like to look for sequences in games where a player has flashes a brief flurry of that potential to take over, and Bilal has given us a few moments like that already. He’s athletic and when he attacks the basket, highlights ensue.

He’s also only 19 years old, so there is so much room for further development.

5. Brandon Miller

Brandon Miller rounds out my top five “most likely to be collectible” rookies so far in the season. While more than a few (myself included), questioned the Hornets taking Miller over Scoot with the #2 pick, so far it’s hard to argue with the early returns.

Miller is (somewhat) quietly putting up some really strong numbers. Through 23 games, he’s averaging:

• 14.8 points

• 4.0 rebounds

• 2.2 assists

• 0.7 steals

• 43% FG

• 37.8% 3PT

Those are really strong numbers. He’s also been pretty consistent, scoring in double figures in 21 of his first 23 games.

He’s flashed both the ability to shoot from outside, and to attack the basket off the dribble. Collectors love prolific scorers, and Miller has all the tools to be one for a very long time.

Honorable Mention

While I’m not chasing the following players cards quite yet, I think that, so far, they’re the most likely to make me regret that in the future and I’m watching them pretty closely:

• Dereck Lively II. He’s been great, I’m just not sure yet how high I think his ceiling actually is. He still feels more like a really solid starter than a future super star to me.

• Ausar Thompson. Again, Ausar has been fantastic. I think part of his outstanding play is just being in a perfect position for him right now. I wouldn’t be surprised to find myself regretting not having more of his cards in the future though.

• Brandin Podziemski. He’s got that basketball instinct, and a style of play that is going to quickly build up a fanbase.

• Jaime Jaquez Jr. What a perfect fit he’s been for the Heat! I don’t think his upside is anywhere near as high as everyone else on this list, but I have been known to be wrong before.

• Keyonte George. The kid can score for sure and, as I said earlier, collector’s love scorers.

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I always find the little spikes and valleys in card values fascinating.

Through the first 7 games of Aidan O’Connell’s career, he hadn’t flashed much in the way of big potential. He’s a rookie quarterback, and that’s a tough position to play well right out of the gate. He had a decent, if unspectacular, game in week 12 against the Chiefs, but coming into last night’s game, O’Connell had yet to through multiple touchdown’s in any game. Pair that with his low draft capital (round four) and collector’s didn’t have much interest.

Last night, however, Aidan threw four touchdown’s in the first half against the Chargers. The impact on both the value and sales volume for his cards was immediate.

Here are the total number of sales, and sales price for his Mosaic Base and Mosaic Silver on the 13th

• Mosaic Base: 1 sale, $0.99

• Mosaic Silver: 1 sale, $4.24

Here are the total number of sales and sales price for each card on the 14th (keep in mind this was a night game):

• Mosaic Base: 3 sales, $2.41 average (144% increase)

• Mosaic Silver: 13 sales, $9.33 average (120% increase)

The chart1 since the start of the week is um….pretty dramatic (particularly for the silver).

I do think in general we’re a bit too quick to write off young players, so we’ll see how long this interest, and Aidan’s starting role, sticks.

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As is usually the case when big news breaks, card values shift almost immediately.

Here’s a chart showing the average sale price of Soto’s 2018 Topps Update and 2018 Topps Chrome Update cards over the past seven days.1 I’ve added a pink line to highlight when the trade news officially broke.

As of the time I’m writing this, over the past 7 day period, the average sale price of Soto’s Topps card is up 37.5% and the sale price of his Chrome card is up 65%. That’s quite the jump. It appears there was a little build up on the 5th already, as the rumors heated up, and then the big jump after the news hit.

It wasn’t just the average sales price that jumped, it was the sales volume as well. Here’s a look at the total sales in dollars for December 1 through the 6th when the trade was announced.

On the 6th, there were 48 recorded sales of the Topps Update card and 24 recorded sales of the Topps Chrome Update. In the rest of December up to that point, there were 28 recorded sales of those cards combined.

That’s….a really big jump.

Charts are always fun for a geek like me, but this is really just basic stuff for the most part: big news means a spike in hype and a spike in hype means more buyers willing to pay more.

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I’m actually not a huge Prizm fan. At least not the base. I like some of the parallels, but I find Prizm’s chrome borders a bit underwhelming. I prefer the look of the Optic base, or some of the more off the beaten path sets.

But I’m a sucker for iconic photographs in card format, and this one fits the bill. It’s such a great shot of one of the greatest to ever play the game, and it’s got a good story behind it too.

If you run into this card for sale, you’ll often see it mentioned as a “Kobe tribute” and it is, kind of, though it wasn’t intentional.

When Kobe and his daughter were among the 9 passengers who passed away in a tragic helicopter crash on January 26, 2020, the news shook the world. Kobe wasn’t merely one of the best to play the game—he was one of the very few whose popularity lead him to transcend the sport.

Twelve days later, the Lakers were playing the Rockets in Los Angeles. In the third quarter, LeBron got free for a breakaway dunk.

Photograph Andrew Bernstein was ready, with five different remote cameras setup at different locations. As LeBron leaped into the air, Bernstein used a button to remotely trigger the photo, trying his best to time it as well as he could. While Bernstein himself noted that it’s hard to get the timing right and often the photos are just a hair earlier or later than the ideal moment, he nailed this one.

The result was, in my opinion, one of the greatest basketball photos ever taken.

It actually wasn’t LeBron’s intent to mimic Kobe. In fact, most folks didn’t even recognize the unintentional tribute until later that evening. Someone on Reddit commented that they thought Kobe had done that same dunk many times, and then combed through the footage to prove it. You can see side-by-side’s of his dunk all over YouTube now.

The resemblance is uncanny. Even LeBron was a bit blown away by it.

“I just jumped and kinda figured it out. It’s crazy how it’s the same exact dunk on the same exact hoop that Kobe did they say, what, 19 years ago or something like that. That was nuts.

….

For that to now be a part of my history, that correlation between me and Kobe and that play, I think it’s pretty awesome, and I’m glad I did it in a Laker uniform on that side of the floor.”

The comparisons went viral online in the days following the game, and what was already an amazing photograph became iconic.

Panini chose to not just use the photo on its Prizm card, but to feature it in a glorious horizontal layout on the first card in their 2020 set.

While I prefer some of the variations (the Silver and Gold Wave’s are both nice, and the Gold Prizm is stunning…if expensive), the result is a gorgeous card that, in its base form at least, won’t break the bank.

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The same thing is very true with new sports card releases. A new release is immediately followed by a period of massive hype. Everyone starts seeing the new hot rookies, the fresh take on inserts, and they want a piece. Breakers start to post breaks that all grab premium prices. And folks lucky enough to have product in the first few days get to enjoy massive bidding wars to obtain it.

But chasing a new release really only makes sense if you can be one of the very first to be able to sell that product.

Let’s look at a few recent examples by zeroing in on some Victor Wembanyama (a player that, as a lifelong Spurs fan, I am all in on) releases. They’re a great example because right now, any new release means new Wembanyama rookies and those are going to be big chase cards across the industry.

Example 1: Hoops Wembanyama

We’ll start with the most recent release: NBA Hoops. The Hoops product was officially released on November 22nd and they feature quite a few Wembanyama’s to pull, including his first true rookie card of him in a Spurs uniform, and another base “tribute” subset.

If you look at the average sales prices on eBay for the two cards (I like Market Mover for this, you can try it free for 14 days here if you’re keen using code “EVERYCARD”), you can see they start off very hot, but have seen a sharp and steady decline since. I added a vertical pink line to signify the date of release.

From November 18th, when the first cards started showing up on eBay from sellers lucky enough to have the product early, until November 30th, the true rookie (#277) has seen a 69% decrease in the average sale price, while the tribute subset (#298) has decreased by 74%. That’s a pretty hefty drop. For the price you may have paid in that first few days, you could grab 3+ cards today.

In fact, the bulk of the initial spike in prices occurred before the initial release officially happened and most people could actually get their hands on it.

During the period before the official release (November 18-November 21), the base rookie averaged $42.81 per sale and the subset averaged $33.31. In the period after the release, the base has averaged $22.14 per sale and the tribute has averaged $18.18. If you’re not in as a seller in that first few days, then there’s really no need to rush and in fact, trying to rush to get the first few probably backfired on you.

Example #2: 2023 Mosaic Silver Quarterbacks

In case you thought this was just a Hoops or Wembanyama thing, let’s take a look at the 2023 Mosaic Football cards, which have been out a little longer. 2023 Mosaic saw an official release date of September 22nd. As always with football, the rookie quarterback’s are a hot commodity, so we’ll focus on the Silver variations of both Anthony Richardson and CJ Stroud.

We can start with the first month or so after the product was released (in the case of Mosaic, no registered sales hit the market before the release date).

This chart’s pattern should look pretty familiar. Right around the initial release, both cards came out really hot. But by the end of October, the Richardson silver was down 57% and the CJ Stroud was down 59%.

CJ Stroud is actually a really interesting example, and I think you could see a similar thing play out with Wembanyama. While Richardson got injured for the season, Stroud has been sensational and looks like the easy favorite to be the rookie of the year. So while his cards did see the usual post release dip, they’ve also seen a slow rise since.

Let’s zoom out to see the full time period between the initial release and today for his Mosaic Silver.

Two things jump out.

First, despite his hot start, his cards declined sharply until bottoming out in early November. That’s the post-release hype cycle in action. As the market started to get saturated with this card, the supply and demand evens out and the value goes down.

Second, even though he’s been phenomenal, this card still hasn’t fully recovered to its initial release levels.

Once again, there was a lot of value in waiting, rather than chasing.

Good things come to those that wait

I want to be clear about one thing here, in case anyone mistakes what I’m trying to say. I like both CJ Stroud and Wembanyama long-term. They’ve both been sensational, and both look like they have the potential to be very, very good for a very long time.

I didn’t pick these two examples to pick on the players, but because if anyone in either sport should be able to break from the normal post-release hype cycle, it feels like it should have been these two.

But instead, we see that usual pattern. Hype drives initial price up, as the product gets out supply goes up and the values plummet, then eventually, if the player is playing well, they start to rebound.

So what to do with this information?

If you want the best bang for your buck, don’t chase initial releases. Simple as that.

Now, if you do like to rip, your best shot at getting your money back on a box is if you rip early, and sell early. If you’re buying your boxes or packs at a reasonable cost (eBay sales are usually quite a bit more expensive on day one than buying from the manufacturer or a retailer), and if you sell the ones you don’t want ASAP, you can get a bit more for each card in that early period than you might later on. But you’ll have to move fast.

On the flip side, you don’t want to move fast on buying individual cards. If you want to grab individual cards—whether for your PC or to sell later—don’t feel like you need to rush out on day one and snatch them up. The initial prices will be much higher. If you’re patient and sit for a couple of weeks, you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck.

I wouldn’t worry too much about trying to be super precise with your timing.

Stroud’s card bottomed out around 5 weeks after release, but he’s been phenomenal. Richardson, however, got injured, so his card is still declining. Wembanyama’s Hoops release is too early to tell, but his Prizm Draft Picks card is still dropping in value about a month after his initial release. It’ll bottom out and start to creep back up at some point if he keeps playing like he is—if he nets an All-Star appearance, goes on a little tear in the mid-season, etc it’ll spike—but when exactly that’s going to happen is hard to tell and there’s a lot of variability involved (how well he plays, impending basketball card releases, etc).

What we do know, is that your best bet for new product—whether as a collector or someone hoping to sell later at a profit—is to wait at least a few weeks before trying to buy heavily.

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