re: Those of you into Card Collecting (non-vintage), be warned. It’s the junk-grading era.

- It's Zion
- that's one of Panini's first release sets with the Rookies NBA teams
- It's a hugely popular set
- it's pop report is pretty set for now, might move a ~1-2% higher after PSA moves through it's backlog

17k is quite a pop, but this is one of the most iconic players since LeBron. Just because there's a very high pop, you have to consider player demand, and Zion has the highest demand of any athlete ever right now

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In all seriousness, are
Griffey, Jr and McGuire rookies worth more than twenty bucks or so? Nongraded.

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The Griffey 1989 Upper Deck is

Here’s the thing, just like “your dad’s old Mickey Mantle cards his mom threw away after he chewed the gum,” you’re not gonna set real value for most baseball cards until decades later.

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The whole thing has become a straight hustle. I loathe Pokémon but if they’d be better off spending their dollars there

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I can't believe I missed this piece of gold.

You bitch and complain about these problems sports cards are having, and it's far worse for Pokemon.

What makes your foolish statement even better, Pokemon has even worse pull ratios then sports cards. Even if you get an ultra rare hit (1 in 5 packs) in modern Pokemon, it's likely only worth $0.70 as ultra rare prices have absolutely tanked from the $2 days of old.

Sports cards at least have the serial #'d cards to fall back on where as all the cards in a set of Pokemon are printed into oblivion

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thought the market basically died when there were 857 different brands by the early 2000s completely diluting the market.

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What killed it was there were so many brands that overproduced limited amount of product. Early 2000s there was the idea that if we have several lines, we could spur sales across multiple skews and encourage collecting in essentially tiers (premium and base). We could self correct the problem of over saturation.

As the market withered, the value became more centralized in memorabilia based low serialized numbered cards. The problem is you’ve got to create scarcity without diluting your product so thin for regular consumers to stay engaged (see the Pokémon problem mentioned above). So that’s when you started seeing all these old-vintage players being reincluded into sets (HoF, All-Stars, etc.). The inserts and parallels remained lower but with about 2-3X the available number of players. Now imagine that across 15-20 different box brands.

Who wants a 2021 Bill Russell auto 3/25? It’s just more filler for their product. Some of its over saturation but there’s also the dilution across many many different players now since it’s no longer limited to current era stars depending on which product. Prizm is out here still printing base cards of Jerry Rice, Brett Favre, etc.

Does an auto really matter if it’s multiplied 25 times across 20 lines per year? I don’t think so.

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watching tons of breaks

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This is the best way to cure any ideas you have about making a bunch of money from cards and memorabilia. Watch the breaks, see the trash that’s getting pulled, do some math and be glad you’re not the one throwing your money away. I’ve got a friend who works for a shop and along with a couple other people runs their breaks. I always laugh when it’s something like a full size Gold Rush helmet at $30 a spot and it ends up to be some piece of crap that the winner would struggle to even recoup his buy in.

I bought a box of basketball cards from target last year as a gift but never gave it or opened it. I guess I should find it

Anything that was produced to be collected, is not worth collecting. i learned that on Pawn Stars.


Thats why only the older cards are valuable, because not many people kept them. in the 70-s to present day, cards are made to be collected and wont hold their value because theyre overproduced and everybody keeps them. This new card craze is definitely a bubble that will burst. People are just joining in because its suddenly popular. If youre buying cards now, youre buying at the top of the market.

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Modern day cards are not an investment.

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Not long term, but you sure as hell can make a good profit flipping PSA 10s right now when players go on hot streaks.

I had a couple Collin Sexton 10s, when he had that 40 pt game including the last 20 of the game to beat the Nets his cards sky rocketed. Sold mine for 10x what I got them for.

Yes prices are dumb and return is not there for wax boxes, that’s always been a gamble. But with the insane secondary market, if you pay attention, you get some great short term flips. Kevin Porter Jr PSA 10 rookies spiked sky high from his 50 pt game too. I didn’t have any but I watched the price go up, it was crazy.

It doesn’t have to be rookies either, look out in the future for HOF announcements. Those always provide a spike to a veterans old rookie card. I think Brees is undervalued right now, grab some Brees PSA 10 rookies and sit on them until his HOF announcement then resell for profit.

I fully agree on a couple of these high priced young players being way overvalued. Herbert, Zion, Acuna, etc. Zion has injury issues it seems and Herbert will always be facing Mahomes keeping him from the SB, if you have a high priced card of them sell now. Zion could go the way of Blake Griffin and Herbert could be Sam Bradford, you just don’t know. Established stars and HOFers are safer long term.

I’ve not gotten into the weeds on individual game spikes but that’s an indicator the market isn’t stable or the hobby viable. That’s all short sighted speculation. Glad you can capitalize though. But if you’re trying to make some money you’re constantly gong to be chasing a monkey’s tail.

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That’s all short sighted speculation. Glad you can capitalize though. But if you’re trying to make some money you’re constantly gong to be chasing a monkey’s tail.

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I agree. The risk and time is not worth the small reward.

I feel bad for the backpack vendors and mom and pop shops once the market retraces back. The backpack vendors will be stuck with their inventory and have to take some big losses and the same with the mom and pop shops. It's crazy how many card shops are popping up right now. They're going to be the first to go once the retrace comes. The big box retailers will be fine and the scalpers will have made their money dumping on the ones being scalped. Only losers here will be the consumers and small shops