Card Characteristics

When you look at a card, the basic components are the year it’s from, the athlete or athletes pictured, the company that manufactured it, the number of the card if it’s a limited print run and any special characteristics like an autograph or a piece of equipment. If it’s been graded, you see what company graded it and what the grade is. But within each of these basic categories there are important distinctions.

The year it’s from is important because you can determine what era it fits into and it also helps you determine whether it’s a rookie card for the athlete. It’s obvious why the athlete matters, but there are cards, usually inserts or parallels that do feature multiple athletes and those cards are almost always less valuable than those with just a single athlete. A LeBron card or a Jordan card is generally more coveted than a card with both LeBron and Jordan. This is particularly true when the secondary athletes are not as desirable as the main athlete.

Certain brands of cards and certain sets within those brands are worth more, something that depends on what year the card is from, but for modern cards, it’s usually because of how expensive those packs and boxes were when originally sold. For example, for modern basketball and football, Panini National Treasures is the standard bearer and for modern baseball it’s Bowman Chrome.

For numbered cards in a limited print run, if the number corresponds to the player’s jersey number, particularly if it’s an iconic number (Jordan’s 23, Kobe’s 8), that card is more valuable. For example, the 2003-4 Exquisite LeBron James RPA numbered 23 of 99 sold for $2.46 million just weeks after a different one in the same grade without the jersey number sold for $1.3 million.

With autographs, the quality of the autograph is important so look at the clarity of the signature and whether it’s been smudged in any way (there is sometimes an autograph grade for a card as well). The autograph being straight on the card is much more desirable than if it’s on a sticker that is then affixed to a card because with an on-card autograph you know the athlete actually handled that card.

For equipment, usually it’s game-used by the athlete on the card, but sometimes it’s only just player-worn from a photo shoot and sometimes it’s neither, just a patch from a common jersey. Game-used is the most valuable, naturally. Also important is the quality of the patch which is usually determined by the number of colors shown - the more the better. The most valuable patches are unique, such as the NFL shield or the NBA logoman seen below.

Grading

If the card is raw (ungraded), the important factors are the centering, corners, edges, color and surface of the card, with centering usually the most important for eye appeal. If the card is graded, it’s important what company did the grading - the three major ones are Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Beckett Grading Services (BGS) and Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC). While the factors above are still what the companies look at when grading, all three have slightly different scales and different standards - here are PSA’s, BGS’s and SGC’s. Generally PSA is the most coveted by collectors, followed by BGS, followed by SGC. For example, a PSA 9 is generally better than a BGS 9 or SGC 9. However, because BGS gives half grades, they rarely give perfect 10s so BGS 10s are better than PSA 10s or SGC 10s. BGS also provides subgrades for centering, corners, edges and surface to get to an overall grade with a card receiving a perfect ten in all subcategories receiving the rare and highly coveted “black label”. All three companies also offer the option to grade the autograph on signed cards but it is not compulsory.

Keep in mind the grades are subjective and based on the opinions of a single grader within a company, so there are variations within grades - not all PSA 10s are created equal. Many collectors will "crack a slab" - meaning to open the plastic case a graded card is held within - and resubmit either to the same agency or a different one in hopes of getting a higher regrade.

How do you price sports cards?

As with most collectibles, the best way to determine market value for sports cards is by looking at comparable sales. Nearly all the major auction houses allow you to search through their past results:

Goldin, Heritage, PWCC, Lelands, Robert Edwards, Mile High, Memory Lane, SCP, Grey Flannel

EBay also has sales going back a few months but unfortunately it's harder to track down full results from there and the data can be less reliable, as there’s no way to track whether a sale was actually finalized.

There are several third-party sites that report sales data, most notably Cardladder, which was just bought by PSA, which also collects auction data on cards it has graded. Other sites include Alt (which is also a marketplace and holds auctions), Vintagecardprices and Sports Card Investor. Be aware that none of these sites has complete and accurate pricing and sales data on its own as there are so many different cards and sales that it’s easy for there to be gaps in the data. When doing your own research, be sure to double and triple check the data, ideally at the primary sources (auction houses) if something feels off.

It is also crucial to check the population reports of the three major grading companies - PSA, BGS and SGC. It is always important to know how many of a given card exist at every grade when evaluating how much a specific card is worth. Be sure to check all three companies - it’s easy to be fooled by a listing hyping a BGS 9.5 as the highest grade in a pop report when several PSA 10s or SGC 10s may also exist.

Often, particularly for vintage cards or parallels, there aren’t any recent sales to use as comps, and so the valuation will not be as precise. You should first look at trends in different grades since the last sale of the given grade. For example, if you are evaluating a PSA 10 and there hasn’t been a sale in the last year, look at how the PSA 9s have performed in that time period. If there are no cards of any grade as a comp, you can check other notable cards of that athlete to see how they have performed in that time period. This is not always going to be determinative but it does give you an idea of investor demand for that particular athlete and card.

You can also look to sales of lower grades or more common parallels to try and extrapolate valuations. It can be quite difficult though, as sometimes the multiplier between different grades can be 1.5x or 2x, and sometimes it can be 50x depending on the pop report. The difference between a /5 parallel and a /25 parallel might be 2x or 10x. Many times cards of the same grade will sell for different amounts because of a difference in eye appeal. It is always best to get as much data on whatever specific card you are pricing rather than try to rely on overall rules of thumb.

Conclusion

Ultimately, understand that there are no hard and fast rules and so much of what determines a card’s value is specific to that individual card - the sport, the year, the set, the athlete, the grade, the eye appeal - there are so many factors that go into it. There is no substitute for experience and the more cards you see and evaluate and the more sales data you read, the more comfortable you will be in pricing cards.

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