Sports Cards

Brands: There are tons of brands of sports cards but I will be focusing on the 2 major ones with my investments. Panini for basketball and Topps for baseball. There can be exceptions to this though! This is just generally the case unless we are dealing with investing older cards from over 10 years ago.

Variations and Types of Cards: I’m going to be using Zion Williamson as an example to start off, but this applies with all players. Zion Williamson probably has well over 1000 completely different rookie cards between all the brands and “variations.” This can be tough for some people to understand and it really takes a while to grasp. For example Panini doesn’t have just one line of Panini Basketball Cards even though the majority of the time i’ll be posting the same type of card for each basketball player which i’ll get to in a little bit. There’s then variations of the same cards whether it’s sparkly, the border color is different, etc. Now I understand this is all complicated and I don’t expect people to understand it easily as it will take time. When buying graded cards I recommend though you won’t need to know the differences as it says all the information on the label! Below I linked similar cards that have a big price difference to show you types of examples. Pay attention to the label on both of them! You’ll see the slight difference.

Zion Prizm Base: https://imgur.com/a/ZdGw15p

Zion Prizm Silver: https://imgur.com/a/75bSFfw

Basketball Investments: My basketball investments will be focused on 2 types of cards Panini makes. Panini’s 4 main cards they produce are called panini prizm, panini donruss, panini donruss optic, panini contenders. I will be focusing on Panini Prizm and Panini Donruss Optic. Prizm is considered the main rookie card to invest in but lately Optic is catching up to it in basketball.

Baseball Investments: My baseball investments will be focused on one brand only which is Topps. The community usually considers the “Topps Update” rookie as the main rookie for players but not all players have a Topps Update rookie. For example, my posts on Pete Alonso investments have always been his regular base Topps card because that’s just what’s considered his main rookie. Yes, it’s weird and hard to understand sometimes.

What is a Graded Card: People send cards in to companies that assign the card a grade based on its condition, centering, edges, corners, etc. They get a grade from 1-10 and the market has different values for each grade and a 10 holds a lot bigger value which I'll get to.

Grading Companies: There are 3 reliable grading companies and all other ones are worthless in value and you’re better off having the card ungraded usually. The 3 companies are PSA, BGS, and SGC. I will be recommending only PSA usually because it’s the go to grading company and holds the most value.

PSA Cards: PSA assigns cards a grade from 1-10 with half grades as well like 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 etc….Except there is no such thing as a 9.5 for a reason that I don’t know without researching. When submitting new age cards (not vintage) you’re pretty much always aiming for a 10 grade. The difference between a 9 and a 10 is so small that most of the time you can’t tell why the card received a 9 and not a 10. But the market and for investing, people usually go straight to the PSA 10 and it holds significant more value.

Graded Cards: I probably recommend graded cards 70% of the time. The reason for this is because you know what you are getting and graded cards hold the most value. Also the prices are consistent and you can see market patterns with graded cards a lot easier than nongraded (raw) cards.

Buying Ungraded Cards: When buying ungraded cards you want to check the description and look yourself at the card’s condition including scratches on card, corners are sharp, edges look normal, and the border is equal on the sides (centering). There is lots of money to be made with buying raw cards, submitting to be graded, and selling.

How to Know Market Prices on Cards: Ebay Sold listings. (a filter on ebay to look at past sales)

Population Definition: I’ll often refer to the population of graded cards. Population is just how many there are in existence. So if I say the population of Michael Jordan rookies in a PSA 10 are 50, that means there are 50 of them in existence according to PSA.

PSA Website: https://www.psacard.com/

PSA Population: https://www.psacard.com/pop/

-zmead#1305