So You Want To Invest In Sports Cards… Pt. 1

Lou Sugar
5 min readJul 31, 2020

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It was a cold summer day in San Francisco (July 2019 to be exact) and I had just met an old Sports Card collector from FaceBook Marketplace. He pulled up in a modest White X3 BMW by himself. Upon opening his trunk, he unveiled a few boxes of sports cards. I was in the market to purchase, so started thumbing through and picked out 5–7 cards (I think at the time it was Marvin Bagley Sneaker Spotlight, Saquon Barkley Flawless Rookie RPA, Dak Prescott Flawless 2/2 Rookie) and exchanged about $500 cash for the stack of cards.

After the initial purchase he kept pushing me to buy more… “take more” he said, almost as if he wanted to unload this stuff or he wouldn’t be allowed back home. (I’ll get more into this later, or perhaps my next article)

“How about this one?… Or this one…?” feverishly handing me each card to look over and throwing a price at me, slowly going lower, and lower, and lower. I didn’t know enough and was content with the stack of cards in my sweaty palms and decided to move on.

So, I went about my merry way and was A-OK with my purchase. Who was I kidding — spending $500 on some cardboard with athletes on them was a nice chunk of change for me and I still was nervous from completing a deal of this size.

A card from my first purchase. Anfernee Simons RPA 2/10 Rookie from National Treasures

As I got home, I took pictures of my purchase, sent them to my two brothers and had a rush of excitement come over me, similar to what I felt as a kid when I collected and would open a fresh pack of cards from Target (yes, this is still a thing and has been EXPLODING lately). Little did I know, this was the spark that got me back into collecting — now considered “investing” — in sports cards.

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It’s now been about one year since I got back into collecting and the Sports Card market has absolutely exploded. Cards are now looked at as “investments”. Gary Vee has full endorsed the hobby and has considered moving into Sports Card buying and selling as a full-time job. A recent Lebron James Rookie Card even sold for $1.8 MILLION. Yes, I said million. And the hobby is growing each and every day. But, you might ask yourself “Why now?”

I am going to get into some of the details on the recent explosion of Sports Card Collecting and some basics around entering the hobby.

1. Big name endorsements position Sports Cards as the“next big thing”

Some of the biggest cheerleaders for the hobby are influencer and entrepreneur names led by Gary Vee (founder of Vayner Media) and Josh Luber (Co-founder of StockX). Not only do they collect themselves, but they’ve also been touting the “flip” mentality to Sneakerheads as a way to supplement their income. Some of the positives that they talk about is the endless supply — which is hard forSneakerheads — and an “asset” (see what I did there?) that is tied to the performance of an athlete. This gives cards a huge upside if you can find an undervalued player who goes out and performs.

2. Sports meets Stocks

Millennials LOVE the rush of the Stock Market and many have a passion for Sports. So, imagine if you could connect those two passions? Well, Sports Cards do just that. If a player goes out and performs well, or wins a championship, their cards will spike yielding a nice ROI for the investor. Rookie cards usually hold the highest value (and grading, but that’s another article as well) since it’s the players first card in the market and of limited print. Why wouldn’t Sports fans want to double down on a specific player or team and have a tangible asset that they can buy and sell. Plus, they look pretty cool.

Trends of prices from SlabStox for some key cards in the modern day Sports Card market.

3. Disposable income + Nostalgia. Hello, Pokemon!

Plain and simple Millennials and Baby Boomers are both coming into making money in their careers or having a retirement fund. This allows them to spend disposable income on things that bring them joy. Majority of us collected something as a kid and for a lot of us that was either (1) sports cards/memorabilia or (2) Poke’mon/YuGiOh. Guess what? Both of those have been seeing huge spikes in value and for good reason.

4. The internet.

If I was to tell you that Instagram stars open thousands of dollars of sealed boxes (packs of Sports Cards) online each and every night with thousands of viewers would you believe me? Well that is the world we are currently living in. It’s officially called a “Break”. A handful of individuals all buy-in splitting the product that will be opened. Once all the spots are filled, the “breaker” then draws names (usually uses randomizers) to determine which team you get. The boxes are then opened and if a player from your team gets pulled, you get that card shipped to your doorstep.

Live “break” from Layton Sports Cards.

On top of that, thousands of FaceBook groups exists where trades and deals are made. Instagram is home to card accounts for collectors where they show off their collections. StockX has a “collectibles” section now. But, eBay (you can see the Mike Trout search I did)still reigns king for Sports Card buying and selling. As more and more consumers enter the space, competitors are popping up; Check Out My Cards, MySlabs and CardLadder come to mind. Oh, it also helps that we’ve all been trapped at home for the last 3 months with nothing else to watch or spend our money on.

5. Tangible Assets

Last but not least is the ability to actually hold something. So much of our lives (hell I know, I work in digital advertising) is in the digital world and having a piece of a jersey or an autographed card definitely holds some value. When friends come over, I’ll often times show them parts of my collection or their favorite player if I have a card. It’s like a painting but for sports. And you can’t really beat that.

A handful of some of the most sought after cards from each sport.

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Has the Sports Card market reached it’s peak? Will prices come back down like Bitcoin? It’s all really hard to tell at this point but one thing is true; I haven’t had this much fun collecting anything in my entire life and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon.

Lou

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Lou Sugar
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Digital advertising. Tech. Media. Sports cards.