High-End Basketball Cards For Sale — The Best Places to Buy Sports Cards

The Best Places to Buy High-End, Refractor, Rare Parallel, Rookie & Base Basketball Cards — For Collectors All Budgets

AIR JORDAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

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The Air Jordan Collection

11 min readNov 11, 2021

THE BEST PLACES TO BUY SPORTS CARDS ONLINE

eBAY

The oldest and biggest online marketplace and auction site is a great place to start your search for whatever it is you’re looking for in terms of baseball cards, other sports cards, and sports memorabilia of all kinds.

With thousands and thousands of sellers, it’s usually pretty likely that you can find what you need in some form or another.

Drawbacks to buying on eBay include dealing with sellers yourself, especially if something goes wrong; sometimes hefty shipping and handling fees; hassles should you need to make a return; and difficulties finding really unusual items.

Still, all in all, eBay remains the #1 option when it comes to buying sports cards online.

Check out eBay basketball card listings here

CHECK OUT MY CARDS (COMC)

COMC is a clearing house of sort, allowing collectors and dealers with cards to sell to send them to a central location (yes, COMC), and for buyers to find the cards at that same location.

In between, COMC does a lot of the heavy lifting of cataloging, storing, grading, and listing the cards for sale. They also list cards sent to them on eBay, so sellers get double-dip exposure.

Because COMC draws from a wide swath of the hobby, you’ll find a huge variety of cards available for purchase, and dealing with one large entity gives you some recourse for disputes.

Check out COMC here.

Beckett Marketplace

The oldest and most trusted price guide makers in the hobby also provide one of the biggest online marketplaces for buying, selling, and trading sports cards across the spectrum — old and new, big four sports and more, all the manufacturers.

Check out the Beckett Marketplace here.

Instagram

Instagram may be the perfect platform for showcasing the cards you have for sale since the whole shebang is based on, you know, showing things with pictures. As with Facebook and Twitter, it didn’t take collectors and dealers long to figure out how to use Instagram for buying, selling, and trading cards.

You’re sure to find plenty of interesting cards, and plenty of cardboard eye candy, but again — be careful with your transactions initiated on any social media platform.

DEALER WEBSITES

Hundreds (or more!) of card dealers maintain their own websites and most of those allow you to buy cards online.

A simple Google search will turn up tons of these sites, but here are some of the best online dealers with the most trusted reviews and least negative customer experiences.

BEST PLACES TO BUY HIGH-END SPORTS CARDS

If you’re looking for sports trading card singles, your best best is most likely going to be on eBay.

But if you’re in the market for hobby/retail boxes or cases — then you’re probably going to want to purchase from one of the dealers mentioned below.

You don’t want to risk buying a hobby box that could have been tampered with by an individual seller.

For High-End Sports Cards — It’s better to go with an auction house or high-end seller to avoid paying a ridiculous amount in eBay fees. With that in mind, collectors looking to purchase sports cards over $5,000 — it makes more sense to deal with an auction house or High-End Sports card store. It’s much more safe than sending $5-10K+ to some random dude (or chick) on eBay.

Sellers should be aware that by using using an auction house to sell your cards, be prepared to pay hefty commissions. Another other draw back to buying from an auction house is that the wait to actually receive your purchase can be a pretty lengthy process.

For those unwilling to wait — purchase from a high-end seller.

BEST HIGH-END SPORTS CARD SELLERS

The Jordan Collection

The Jordan Collection is a High-End Basketball Card Dealer that boasts one of the largest selections of high-end and ultra premium basketball cards found online.

Here you’ll find an exclusive collection Limited Edition, Short-Print, SSP’s, Rare Refractors & Rookie Basketball Cards.

The Jordan Collection is home to some of the most rare and valuable cards from the 90’s to today’s players — including some 1 of 1’s that can’t be found anywhere else.

Many of the cards found here will be out of collector’s buying range and/or budgets. But for distinguished collectors with expensive taste and money to spend — The Jordan Collection is the #1 Seller of High-End Sports cards.

Shop High-End Sports Cards For Sale

TOP AUCTION HOUSES

PWCC

Why We Chose It: PWCC offers top-notch marketing and access to more than 250,000 bidders worldwide in monthly auctions, making it our top pick for selling your baseball cards.

Learn More

Heritage Auctions

Why We Chose It: Heritage Auctions is a trusted name in sports memorabilia and has sold some of the most valuable baseball cards ever at auction.

PROS & CONS

Pros

Live online auction broadcast worldwide
Over 1 million registered bidders
Handles consignment-to-settlement process
Free appraisals

Cons

10% seller’s fee for items under $2,500
45 days until payment

BEST PLACES TO BUY INTO SPORTS CARD BREAKS

With the popularity of card breaks, the types of breaks out there are almost anything you can dream up. For this discussion, I will give some basic breakdowns of the more popular variants out there:

PYT: The classic break is the Pick Your Team (PYT) break alluded to in the above example. You purchase a single team in the break and get all the cards that have that team on the card.

Random/Drafted Breaks: While the PYT is the more classic style of breaks, by far the most common type of break you will find are the non-PYT’s. Most times you will hear them just referred to generically as “breaks” if it is a single product (e.g. 3 boxes of Bowman Draft, etc.) or a “mixer” if it is a combination of products (e.g. 1 box of Bowman Draft, 1 box of Bowman Baseball, 1 box of Bowman Chrome).

Spots in these breaks are usually sold as a single team spot (30 spots) or a three-team spot (10 spots), although you will occasionally find other combinations. Since you are not buying a team but rather a spot, the way teams are determined for the spot purchasers is either through randomizing the teams or through a draft, usually snake style (spot purchasers are randomized for the draft order).

Personal Breaks: A fair amount of breakers offer the ability to purchase a box or multiple boxes all for yourself, referred to as a Personal break or just Personals. This is especially convenient when products are hard to come by for any number of reasons.

The breaker (a sports card dealer) opens all the packs in the box, typically live-streaming the opening, and every card goes to the purchaser. It’s a fun and exciting way of sharing a big hit (or disappointment) with an audience.

After spending well over $50,000 on personal live breaks, Dave & Adams and Layton Sports Cards are the only two i’ve never had an issue with. From the live break to receiving the cards in the same condition without any shady tactics or mistakes — these two sellers have been by far the best I’ve personally dealt with over the years.

BASKETBALL CARDS FOR SALE

THE LEGENDS — ROOKIE BASKETBALL CARDS OF THE NBA’S BEST PLAYERS

Shop High-End Basketball Cards of NBA Legends

MOST VALUABLE MICHAEL JORDAN BASKETBALL CARD REFRACTORS & INSERTS FROM THE 90'S

THE MOST VALUABLE KOBE BRYANT REFRACTORS & INSERT CARDS

LEBRON JAMES ROOKIES, REFRACTORS & INSERTS

SETH CURRY ROOKIES, REFRACTORS & INSERTS

NBA ROOKIE CARDS

2020–21 NBA DRAFT CLASS ROOKIE CARDS

2019–20 NBA DRAFT CLASS ROOKIE CARDS

2018–19 NBA DRAFT CLASS ROOKIE CARDS

2017–18 NBA DRAFT CLASS ROOKIE CARDS

2010–2016 NBA DRAFT CLASS ROOKIE CARDS

2000–2010 NBA ROOKIE CARDS

Shop High-End 2000–2010 NBA Rookie Cards

THE 2003 NBA DRAFT CLASS — ROOKIE CARDS

Shop High-End 2003–04 NBA Rookie Cards

THE LEGENDARY 1996 NBA DRAFT CLASS — ROOKIE CARDS

Shop High-End 1996 NBA Rookie Cards

PANINI SELECT BASKETBALL TO REPLACE PRIZM AS #1 PRODUCT FOR HIGH-END ROOKIE CARDS?

For years, the Prizm brand has stood tall as Panini’s flagship product in the basketball card market. Whether you ask a casual collector or an investor looking for the next best deal, Prizm cards are the gold standard to which everyone adheres to.

Introduced during the 2012–13 NBA season, Panini positioned the Prizm brand as its high-end offering in the card industry. The card’s chrome finish, coupled with the inclusion of the league’s best players, made the product an instant hit among consumers.

During the same season, Panini introduced another product to pair with their Prizm brand — Select. Like the former, this product also features chrome cards for its base set. In contrast, Select is only available in hobby format to differentiate it from Prizm, which can be purchased in hobby and retail boxes.

Over the years, Prizm would go on to dominate the market in terms of card value and population. Select, meanwhile, would carve out its own niche in the industry and gain a loyal following behind Prizm. Despite the Prizm brand’s solid perch atop the mainstream mountaintop of Panini’s NBA basketball cards, there are reasons to believe that Select could be the next big thing.

Clutchpoints tackles several reasons why Select can soon topple Prizm to become Panini’s flagship card set.

See: Why Panini Select is on Track to Take Over Panini Prizm as the Flagship Brand for Rookie Cards