THE BEST SPORTS CARDS TO INVEST IN 2021: BEST BASKETBALL CARD BUYS — JULY 2021

HIGHLIGHTING THE BEST SPORTS CARD INVESTMENTS — UNDERVALUED BASKETBALL CARDS WITH HUGE UPSIDE POTENTIAL FOR JULY

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The Air Jordan Collection

6 min readAug 1, 2021

The Best Sports Cards to Invest in 2021: Investment Outlook — The Best Sports Cards to Buy in 2021. Highlighting the hottest basketball cards to buy — our July “best buys” list.

BEST BUYS FOR JULY 2021

Welcome back sports card collectors, investors and hobbyists to another one of our “best buys”articles. In this article we highlight several different basketball cards that we feel are undervalued and/or solid buys for the month of July 2021.

In our last article we recommended picking up some of the undervalued Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony & LeBron James rookies cards & refractors, some of which are still in buying range. The ones that haven’t seen a significant price increase, make our list again. There’s still ample opportunity to pick up some of these at a significant discount.

In one of our “best buys” prior to that — we highlighted some of the Michael Jordan refractor basketball cards. In just 3 months since we published the article — Jordan refractors are now up over 500%. That’s during the past several months where we’ve seen a significant sell off in the sports card market as a whole, and a significant decrease from market highs over the past year.

Hopefully some of our readers were able to pick up a few before they began their ascent. At a bare minimum, we hope some went on to follow the recommendations on paper. By following a some of our recommendations before making the decision to step into the market — you’ll hopefully gain some confidence in our card picks, and also begin to see that we may just know a “thing or two” about what we’re talking about.

We certainly don’t claim to be the “sports card guru” but we do have a proven track record of success — winning picks that have sold 10X even 20X the value at time of recommendation. These include some of the highest % gains on card picks in our niche. We stick to what we know best — and that is the basketball card market.

In another one of our “best buys” articles before that, we recommended the 1996 Flair Showcase Kobe Bryant Rows 0, 1 & 2. For those of you that are new to our blog, the article can be found HERE.

Long story short, we were able to pick the Kobe Bryant Rows 0–3 for just under $1300 at auction. Then went on to sell them on eBay a few months later for $30,100. Please understand, we aren’t your typical card flippers looking solely to make a quick buck.

We’re collectors first and foremost and most of the cards we recommend (and purchase) are long term holds. But, occasionally the market starts to offer a premium that’s just too good to pass up- as was the case with the Flair Showcase Kobe Bryant Rows 0–2.

BEST BASKETBALL CARD “BUYS”

In this edition, our “best buys” for July 2021–we list several cards that (in our opinion) are extremely undervalued. There is ample opportunity right now to pick up some of these excellent collector’s pieces at a steep discount. Whether your goal is to add to your personal collection (PC), to buy low and sell at a profit or just purchasing a few for someone else like a son or daughter — these are the cards that we believe are great buys right now. Cards that we feel are worth several times more in the future than they are right now.

WORD TO THE WISE

Please understand that card collecting is speculative in general. The market could crash tomorrow. Selloffs happen in any market, and especially so in speculative markets like the sports card market.

Never spend or invest more than you cannot comfortably afford to lose.

BASKETBALL CARD “BEST BUYS”

REFRACTORS, REFRACTORS, REFRACTORS

If you aren’t yet sold on basketball card refractors, repeat the above sentence daily until you are. Not only do most refractors have extremely low pop counts, they are visually appealing (eye appeal)

Refractors have outperformed their non refractor counterparts by more than 3–1 over a 5 year period and more than 10–1 over a 10 year period.

This is due in part, to both scarcity, and eye appeal. Simple factors that drive both supply and demand. When demand picks up, or as new investors come into the market, or seasoned collectors decide to add to personal collections — the more scarce and desirable cards tend to skyrocket. This is true even for some of the “non-refractors” that are similar in appearance to true refractor cards. Several of the “refractor like” cards have even outperformed.

2003 TOPPS CONTEMPORARY COLLECTION

The 2003 Topps Contemporary Collection is a great example of scarcity and eye appeal over time. The 2003–04 Topps Contempory Collection — upon it’s release, didn’t get anywhere near the respect that some of the more recognized sets like Topps Chrome for example received for the standout rookie class of 2003.

Keep in mind this was an incredible draft class that featured future Hall of Famer’s like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.

As a surprise to many — the 2003 Topps Contemporary Collection Lebron James #1 is currently worth more than the 2003 Topps Chrome LeBron James #111. Had you mentioned that this would be the case back in 2003, you probably would have been laughed out of the room by any other collectors.

But, due to both the extremely low pop count (scarcity) and it’s eye appeal (demand), the Topps Contemporay Collection LBJ Rookie card has surpassed the more widely known, recognized and definitely the more respected set — Topps Chrome.

The Topps Contemporary Collection #1 will only continue to increase the gap between the two rookie sets. And in time, in our opinion, will only continue to increase in value, being worth much more than the Topps Chrome Lebron James #111 Rookie card in the future.

SCARCITY + EYE APPEAL

Another great example of a set that saw increased demand due to both rarity and appeal was the1997–98 Skybox Metal Universe set. The foil-covered NBA parallels have seen considerable interest in recent years, making 1997–98 Skybox Metal Universe one of the most popular and valuable products from the 1990s.

A copy of the 1997–98 Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems Green Michael Jordan had made its way to eBay. And it didn’t take long for the card to pass the $100,000 threshold and sold for over $350,000. And this was a few years back! No telling what it would for now, easily over the million dollar mark.