The card market spiked in late 2020/early 2021 for a variety of reasons!
The pandemic had people bored. Free government money gave people more expendable income. The Last Dance Jordan documentary took the world by storm.
In addition, you get lots of people who collected as kids in the 90s, stopped for awhile, and then came back when they saw this boom happening. They now have more disposable income!
Everything was roses. Almost all cards were going up like crazy. People sent in just about everything to be graded.
And then the inevitable happened.
We had a mini-crash.
Why?
- Many of the people who jumped in left when they realized they couldn’t retire off their old collection
- Cards that were rarer are now less rare because people coming back to the hobby unearthed them in their collection
- Similarly, graded card populations skyrocketed because everyone sent those in
- Card manufacturers printed CRAZY amounts of cards, lowering values of a lot of modern stuff.
And other reasons for sure.
But in the wake of this mini-crash, why is there confidence that the market will continue to go up?
7 Reasons Sports Cards Will Go Up in Value
1. Historically, Sports Cards Always Have Gone Up
Yes, we had a bit of a crash there, but I believe it was more of a correction than a crash. In all, most cards still carry more value than they did before the crazy spike.
With some cards going up 10x in value, and then “crashing” back down to only 4x what they were…that’s still an awesome gain!
The problem is people who jumped in at the height of the market (*raises hand*) just saw lots of prices drop in half or more. From that perspective, yes it seems like a crash.
Take a look at Card Ladder’s CL50 index, which is their measure of the overall value of the market:
Have things slowed? Absolutely.
Are they starting to hike back up? Also yes.
Currently, we’re a week away from the NBA season, and football is in full swing. I fully expect that graph to keep on rising.
Curiously, this chart looks a lot like the housing market:
We saw a crash in the housing markets. Those who waited it out are doing much better than ever before. I think we’ll see the same in the card market as well.
2. Sports Collecting is Getting More Popular Across the Board
Check out these eBay sales number for trading cards:
| Q1 Sales 2020 | Q1 Sales 2021 | % Increase | |
| Basketball | $98.2 million | $389 million | +296% |
| Football | $42.2 million | $197.2 million | +367% |
| Baseball | $80.4 million | $234.9 million | +192% |
That’s just eBay sales—it doesn’t take into account all the new platforms that have popped up such as StarStock and WhatNot (I know they’ve been around since 2019, but I’m sure they’ve seen even larger growth than eBay in card sales).
Right now, there’s no end in sight.
3. Big Sports Growing in International Popularity
The NFL has been playing games in Mexico City and London.
The NBA has recently done preseason games in China and saw a 30% jump in NBA League Pass subscriptions in Europe this past season.
Because baseball is by far the most “local” of these three (ie, tons of fans only watch their local team and nothing else), it may not have the international appeal (thus as you can see in the chart above that baseball hasn’t grown like basketball or football).
I can also say that anecdotally I’ve shipped lots of cards overseas, and there are lots of collectors in other countries in my Facebook groups.
I think in a lot of ways that we’re only seeing the beginning of this.
4. International/Secondary Sports Growing in US
I do like to focus on the big 3 sports (baseball, basketball, football), but we’re seeing new sports come out that are either growing like crazy or are seeing their first sports cards ever!
Earlier this year, Panini launched UFC cards for the first time.
We saw Topps launch F1 and Panini launch WNBA in 2020.
Soccer saw a 15 times increase in eBay sales from last year to this one!
Even if you’re not that interested in those sports, it’s still a great sign that the card market is healthy across the board!
5. More Grading Options
First, grading in general has gone absolutely nuts. Here’s an amazing chart I found at sportscardspro.com:
And here’s the crazy thing…that chart doesn’t even show the past couple of years where people have gone bonkers sending in new rookies.
People are grading, and the plethora of options has made collecting more fun!
You can get cards slabbed in custom labels with HGA.
You can get cards graded for cheap by CSG (a company with a long history of grading comic books, coins, and more)
You can go with PSA for the highest resale.
Or, pick BGS for a combination of resale, sub-grades, the prestigious black label, and auto grades.
And don’t forget SGC, who’s fast taking market share and moving up the ranks in popularity.
You can read my entire review of all these companies and which ones you should pick here:
=> Reviewing the Complete List of Sports Card Grading Companies
6. More Expensive Wax
Boxes and packs are going up in price. I could find data, but I don’t think you need anything to tell you that packs aren’t $1.99 anymore at the checkout stand.
Today they’re 5x that, and often unavailable because they sell out so fast.
A cheap hobby box these days is hundreds of dollars (NBA routinely has boxes at $500+ on the low end).
When this happens, it makes the cards inside more valuable.
Tons of people bemoan the fact that flippers snatch up cards, or breakers buy tons and overprice what they’re selling…making it more expensive and difficult to find boxes in the wild.
But…people are still buying those secondhand boxes from flippers. Tons of people buy religiously from breaks. Sure, it frustrates people with the rising prices, but it’s still indicative that overall we’re seeing a market in high demand (Unless we’re talking NBA Chronicles Draft Picks…lol)
7. More Notoriety for Retired Players Results in Rising Prices
This one is interesting to me.
Trying to figure out which hall of fame players are going to grow in value vs which ones fall into obscurity can be almost impossible to tell.
For example, why do more people care today about Kevin Garnett than Moses Malone, when the latter was obviously the superior player?
It’s this way in every sport. You can find hall of famers from decades ago with almost no hobby love. There’s lots of reasons for this (personality, style of play, market, etc.), but how visible someone stays after they retire is a big reason for it!
And today, ex-players are more active than ever.
I think it’s because of:
- Social Media
- More sports shows
- Podcasts
- More documentaries than before
- More announcing gigs
Tony Romo is already a legend of an announcer. You can bet his cards will have more staying power than other players of his caliber.
In fact, retired players are among some of the very best football cards you can buy for investing!