Modern Sports Card Investing 101

my name is Jeff Wilson by day I invest in tech companies and at night I invest in sports parties join me on my journey to profit from the hobby we all love [Music] well hello and welcome to another episode of sports card investor I'm Jeff Wilson and today a special edition episode this is sports card investing 101 today we are doing a special episode for people who are newer in sports card investing people who have maybe never invested before or they've just started to get into sports card investing and today we're gonna cover some of the fundamentals and some of the basics you see most of the videos that I've created up until now had a presumption that you've done some sports card investing in the past they had a presumption that you knew for example what the difference was between a PS a 10 or a B GS 9.5 they had a presumption that you knew what an RPA was and perhaps you knew what the most popular brands of cards were within each sport that you should be investing in but this hobby is growing quickly and there are a lot of people that are getting into sports card investing for the first time and therefore I wanted to create an episode that covered all of the basics and fundamentals of sports card investing now if you've been doing sports card investing for awhile this episode may not be for you you may want to skip buy it and that's okay if that's the case because I've got a lot of new content that's gonna be coming out for you soon but maybe you're you be willing to share this episode with some friends of yours who are newer into the arena of sports cards that's what I'm hoping and if you are new first into sports cards or sports card investing then this is going to be the perfect introduction for you to watch so we've got a lot of fundamentals to cover today let's get right to it the first question what brands of cards are the best to buy for investment so before I can answer this question let me set up the landscape a little bit there each of the major sports has an exclusive deal with a particular manufacturer we top with a baseball its tops tops create baseball cards now tops is the only manufacturer because they have this exclusive deal that is allowed to use the major-league team logos on their cards and from an investment standpoint that's a really big deal you only want to be buying cards that have the official logo on the card or otherwise they're not going to be worth as much for basketball and for football the only manufacturer that can do that is panini and for hockey the manufacturer where the exclusivity is up or deque now soccer is a little bit different soccer doesn't have the same type of universal exclusivity so you actually have both panini and tops playing in soccer knowing who has the exclusivity is very important but each of these manufacturers creates a whole bunch of different brands or sets of cards so for example panini who has the exclusive for basketball they create more than 20 different sets of basketball cards each year you'll see cards like optic and noir and flawless and national treasures and Prizm and even some you know even some old favorites like don roose a brand you might recognize or score these are cards that panini actually bought the licenses to and they create cards with those brand names on them as well but they're all owned by panini so the fact that Pitino owns all of them is you know simple from the fact that there's only one manufacturer but it doesn't help with the complication of the fact that they create more than 20 different sub brands of basketball cards and again more than 20 different sub brands of football cards and tops does the same for baseball and upper deck does the same for hockey so that brings you to the next stage of the question which which of these now that we know the manufacturers that create the different types of cards for each sports what are the particular brands that these manufacturers creates that are the ones you should be buying from an investment standpoint and this is a very important question and a very important question for you to know the answer to and the reason why is when it comes to sports card investing my strong recommendation is that you focus in on only a few key brands don't cut out the noise there's there's so much noise you know there's so many different brands of cards let's say for example you want to collect a Lucca Don jacquard you want to invest in Lucca well there are you know more than 20 different brands of Lucca cards because panini has made that many basketball cards for the last year and then with each within each of those brands there are tons of different variations and different card types and inserts and parallels we're gonna be talking about all of that but what it means is there's easily over 100 probably at least a few hundred different Lucca dodge' cards that you could buy not all of them are created the same not all of them are going to hold the same value over time and it is my strong opinion that when looking for brands of cards to invest in you only want to invest in a few key brands that are the ones that are most popular the ones that are most that have been around for a little while that are not new and the ones that are most likely to hold their value for the long term those are the brands you want to concentrate on so what are those brands for baseball it is Bowman Chrome for prospects so Bowman chrome is the brand within baseball that has the key card for for the prospects in baseball and specifically the cards that you want to get within Bowman chrome are the ones that are numbered first Bowman so they'll have a first one st first Bowman on those cards those are really the key cards you want to get for rookie cards now rookie cards are when the player in baseball has already made it to the major leagues and has played in the major leagues for rookie cards the key set for those is tops chrome tops chrome that is the set that's going to have the players rookie card with the RC logo the RC logo to specify rookie card there are other good sets in baseball as well some others to look at include tops chrome update Bowman draft and then there are also some higher-end products but I would concentrate on those that I just mentioned and specifically Bowman chrome and tops chrome are great places to start now you heard me talk about at first prospect logo or the rookie card logo that is so important buying the key rookie card or the key prospect card with that logo on it is really important and it's confusing because there are a ton of different inserts there's a ton of different variations of every player within a set so even in a Bowman Chrome or tops Chrome or or different sets of basketball or football cards you can find several variations of the same players card with different looks and different styles and and they're they're gonna be different variations but it's really that core rookie card or that core first prospect card is the one you're gonna want to zero in on and any reef actors or parallels of that card which are color variations of that card are going to be very important to collect we're gonna talk more about that in a minute let's talk about basketball with basketball your two key sets your your most important sets in my opinion are prism for a for kind of an average you know mid tier set or national treasures for a high end expensive set those are going to be the two brands within basketball I would concentrate on there are some other good ones as well contenders does well within basketball optic is kind of an up-and-coming brand within basketball and then a lot of people also like to collect some of the higher end product immaculate and Noir have also become quite popular in basketball too so though that's what you're looking for in basketball but really prism and national treasures is where I would first focus and then perhaps move on to some of those other brands I just mentioned football for football you're really looking at contenders as you're kind of your everyday brand your easy entry price brand to collect in football and then on the high end national treasures where you're trying to go after like a really expensive key rookie card for a player you would look at national treasures for that other good brands to collect or invest in in football include Prizm select and optic those are some others that I would look at at football but first and foremost contenders and national treasures is where I would look for football and then hockey for hockey you're gonna want first and foremost to look at upper deck series 1 and series 2 series 1 and series 2 the key rookie cards in those series are called the young guns those are the key rookie cards for various players that's where you're gonna want to look first in addition to that SP authentic is another good brand with an upper deck SP authentic and they have the future watch Auto cards which are good good cards for up-and-coming players and then on the high end in hockey you can collect the cup the cup is going to be your high end you know rookie cards for your players so those are the key sets in each sport that I would focus my attention on collecting the next question then is when do these sets come out and the answer is all over the year all different times throughout the course of the year in fact to give you an example I'm currently recording this episode in August the you know the NBA season has been over now for a few months but there are still sets coming out now and will be for the next month or two from last NBA season at this same time the first set for next NBA season comes out next week so literally over the course of the calendar year there are sets coming out all the time it kind of never ends and the same is true for baseball the same is true for football the same is true for hockey there are sets coming out throughout the course of the year you can anticipate when these sets are coming out there's there are release calendars online a great source for looking at release calendars is to go to cardboard connection calm that is a great a great source and they and they give you the release calendars of what sets are coming up in the next few weeks and they'll also tell you about each set and what type of cards are included in each set so we talked about these different sets different brands of cards within these sets and brands what are the types of cards you should buy so first and foremost for investment card purposes look only to rookie cards or in the case of baseball the first prospect cards those are the cards that you want to be collecting there in my opinion is very little point from an investment standpoint in buying a car that is not a rookie card or not a player's first prospect card and let me explain why scarcity is a really key concept when it comes to investing in sports cards you want to buy cards that are rare you want to buy cards that are scarce the less of a card that's available the more valuable it's going to be so let's think about a player's career let's say you there's a star player who might play for 15 years in whatever his respective sport is that means that one year will be his rookie cards the very first year he plays there will be a release which contains his rookie cards all of the different card brands that year will contain that player's rookie cards for the next 14 years that player will have additional cards created every single year and none of those cards will be his rookie cards so if you buy a player's card in year three that a very similar car to that player will come out in year four your five year six year 70 or 80 or nine year ten etc and by the time his careers over all of those cards are gonna be somewhat devalued and watered down by the sheer fact that there are so many of them whereas his rookie card there was only one year of his rookie card ever released his rookie cards only came out for a one-year period of time so that's why rookie cards are really important to collect from a scarcity standpoint they're gonna hold their value the best they're the cards that everybody wants to get so look to rookie cards or first prospect cards as the card you want to get now as you buy these sets you'll notice that in a lot of sets there are numbered cards so there are base cards which are typically your cards that are not numbered not serial numbered and then there are numbered cards these are cards that might be numbered to 99 so if you look at the back of the card it might show that you have card three of 99 or you might have another card it might be number two 250 you might have card you know 140 out of 200 five 50 in general the serial number cards are going to be worth more than the base cards that are not serial numbered in general that's not always the case and there are some exceptions to the rule like for example in basketball prism which is the key set to collect in basketball the prism Silver's which are not numbered are really really key rookie cards to collect and they are actually worth more often than let's say the prism blues which are number two I think 199 right so sometimes you find that the non number cards can be worth a little bit more but most of the time the number cards are worth more and most of the time the lower the number the better the lower the number the better so a car that is a 1 of 1 is going to be more valuable than a car that's a 1 out of 10 and that's gonna be more valuable then a card that's a 1 out of 50 and there are by the way a wide variety of these types of cards so if you let's take for example boom in chrome in baseball in Bowman chrome you're gonna find bass cards for a particular player base cards are your standard non-numbered run-of-the-mill cards they're your typical cards but then you're also gonna find what are called a factors or parallels and a refractor card or a parallel card is the same design as the base card except that it's a different color and it is serial numbered so in Bowman all of the different cards all of the different base cards are also available in a whole range of ref actors to give you an example they have a standard refactor that is serial number to 409 and 99 a purple refactor serial number to 250 abloom factor serial number to 150 a choice or factor serial number to 150 a green serial number to 99 a green atomic serial number to 99 a gold serial number to 50 a gold shimmer serial number to 50 an orange serial number to 25 in orange wave serial number to 25 a red serial number to 10 a red wave serial number to 5 a black mojo which is a serial number to 1 meaning there's only ever one produced every year were the only one produced ever of that particular card in that variation and then finally the super fraktur which is the most valuable of all the cards also only number two one the super fraktur only one of those for every player printed in that set only one in the whole world ever printed for you know of that particular player that particular year tons of variations prism and basketball and prism and football as well as optic and basketball and football have a similar list of you know variations like that color variations and again typically the lower the number the more valuable not always the case to know if that's the case by the way you need to check the historical prices of card sales that's the way to navigate the you know whether a particular card that's number 250 is going to be more or less valuable than another car that's numbered to let's say 100 check historical car prices we're gonna talk about how to do that a little bit later in this show but that gives you the rundown of the different types of cards again you always want to collect rookie cards you always want to collect first prospect cards and look for those logos and here's another important point within each set they will come out with several cards of the same player so let's say in prison basketball last year you had your your Luca dodge ik rookie card but then there's also what's called an insert set where there is a Luca dodge ik emergent card the emergent card is an insert means it is its own kind of set within the set it's its own variation of the main cards and you can kind of collect the insert cards just like you can collect the larger set but inserts are typically not going to be worth nearly as much and that Luca Don check emergent card is worth nowhere near as much as the main traditional luca dhansak rookie card look for that RC logo because that's going to be the key one you want to collect the emergent card is not going to have that RC logo on it in some sets there are multiple cards with the Arts logo for example national treasures will do multiple variations of their rookie patch Auto cards are pas they'll do a horizontal variation and they'll do a vertical variation and the they will have in some cases rookie card logos on multiple variations but they are not all worth the same price and in fact national treasures the vertical which is number 299 with the rookie card logo is worth more than the horizontal which is number 249 with a rookie card logo explain that one to me but that is just traditionally the you know the cards that the collectors have valued they have valued the number 299 they consider that vertical card to be the true rookie card it can be confusing knowing what card variation is worth what when there are multiple card variations of the same player within the same brand or the same sets and again the best way to figure that out is to look at historical price data for what these cards have sold for in the past on eBay and to use that as a judge as to whether one particular car type is better than another particular car type in terms of price and in terms of investment value also if you're trying to buy the cards of a key player a an easy way to get a jump start on this is to Google the players name and then add to that rookie card checklist so for example if you were to Google Lucca dhansak rookie card checklist you will find you will find articles often on cardboard connection or Beckett that will actually list every single one of Lucca Don Chicks rookie cards and in some cases they will rank them Beckett does this they will rank them from least valuable to most valuable and that's a really good guy that will show you visually what his key rookie cards are in each set what the ones you want to collect are not the inserts not the you know not the ones that are really not considered his true rookie cards so if you Google a player's name and and you add to that the rookie card checklist you'll find your way to these articles about that player and it will show you visually what all of his rookie cards look like you will notice that as you start buying higher-end cards a lot of cards will have autographs on them a lot of cards will have patches of the players jersey in general getting a player's autograph adds a little bit of money to the value of the card getting a patch of the player's Jersey may or may not if it's a if it's a patch that is a nice sized patch and maybe contains multiple colors on the patch then it probably is adding some value people who collect cards with patches on them there is actually the quality of the patch and the number of colors on the patch actually affects the value of the car tremendously so if you are buying a card with a large patch on it you want to try to look for a car that has a nice patch maybe a letter from the players Jersey and/or multiple colors those are going to be the cards that are going to command a premium value from a collecting standpoint but patches and autos don't always add a ton of value what adds more value is finding the key rookie card for a particular player the one that all the investors are looking to get in the case of national treasures because I've mentioned them for basketball and football the rookie patch Auto cards and national treasures where you have a patch a big patch of the players Jersey plus an autograph plus the rookie card logo that is your key rookie card for that for that particular player and those ones are gonna really command the most value in those particular sports if you're going after autograph cards you ideally want what is called on card autos and not sticker autos so the difference is that a sticker Auto is when a player when a player has signed a clear transparent sticker like a label they've signed a sheet of these labels and then the card manufacturer peeled the labels off and put the label on the car now of course they designed the cards to be able to take these labels so that the label is you know not noticeable so that you know you can see it a little bit but they try to make it as as you know least noticeable as possible but it's still a sticker on the card the player didn't sign the actual card and on card Auto is where the player physically signed the card on card autos are always preferable they're always more valuable so if the if a set has multiple types of autos the on card ones are gonna be typically the ones you're gonna go for it and in general the higher end of the product the more you're willing to pay for a particular set of cards the more likelihood that you're going to get an actual on card Auto so for example national treasures most of the cards almost all the cards in national treasures you're getting nice on card autos whereas with Prizm which is another very very collectible set but not as valuable as national treasures you're getting sticker autos in most cases so that's a you know that's kind of a big difference between between sets like that okay so we've talked a lot about different types of cards different brands and different sets of cards how do you know what a good deal is how do you cut through the noise and know if you're first of all buying the right card like am I is this actually the player's key card and then what is a good deal what price should I be bidding or paying for for that card the best way to find that information is to look at historical price data specifically what that same exact card has sold for in the past on eBay now there's a couple of different ways to do that the most simple approach is if you simply go on eBay and you do a search for a particular players card like for example if you search Lucca dodge ik prism silver and maybe you want it graded so maybe you search Luka dodge chick prism silver PSA 10 put the Year in there so 2018 Lucca Don check prism silver PSA 10 it's going to show you all of those cards that are currently for sale on eBay on the left-hand side of the screen if you scroll down there's the there's a check box that gives you option to show completed items and sold items and if you check those boxes it will change the search to actually show you items of that exact card that have sold in the last three months that is one way you can now look at historical prices now it will not tell you if a card was a Buy It Now and somebody made an offer on the buy it now at a lower price it won't tell you what the offer was but there there are other ways to get that information which I'll tell you about in a second but what it will do is it will tell you any card that was a Buy It Now or the person paid the Buy Now price and will also tell you what auctions completed at for that for that particular card that is a great way to understand the historical value of a particular card very important way especially if you're looking at buying a variation so let's say you're trying to buy a Lucca dawn chick that's number 250 in the prism set what you would do is you would search for you know 20 18 Lucca dhansak prism / 50 and that will show you cards that have sold that were serial number 250 and of course if you know the color variation you could also search by the name of the color blue or red white and blue silver which is gonna be your most popular you know rookie card to collect or gold if you want to go for a really high-end hard to find because golds are only number 210 in the prism set etc and then look at what those have sold for over time and if you cannot find a recent sale sometimes it's hard like if you're trying to buy let's say a car that's only serial number to ten sometimes it's hard to find a recent sale of that particular player of that card it may not have sold in the last few months but what you can do as a trick is you can then start looking for other players that are of a similar stature so if you cannot find if you cannot find you know let's say che gilja's Alexander's rookie card number to ten because none have sold then maybe search for Kevin Knox number to 10 or maybe search for Mitchel Robinson number to ten because those might be players within his draft glass that are around a similar type of price point Michael Porter jr. number 210 you know and then you could kind of maybe one of those who sold and then you can draw an equivalency over to say well Michael Porter jr. sold for ten sold if his out of ten sold for a thousand bucks and Michael Porter Jr's silver is selling for a hundred bucks I'm making up numbers here but I think they're about right and Shay Gil just Alexander's silver is selling for 80 bucks then maybe his gold is worth 800 bucks right comparatively - what - what Michael Porter Jr's gold would have sold for so that gives you a way that you can kind of compare prices on more rare cards and know what a fair price would be for a particular card so that's how you can look up historical price information on eBay there's actually a couple other tools I want to mention that are really helpful one is the PWC see marketplace pwc see is kind of a big name in the card industry they gotten some bad publicity recently they're a big auction house but they on their website offer a really nice free tool called a market price research tool and it will show you historical eBay sales data but instead of being limited to the last three months worth of sales like eBay is there a market price research tool goes back about 10 years so you can go backwards way deep in a time and look at what cards have sold for which is really nice if you're either trying to buy a rare card or if you're trying to buy a card that's not from this year you may want to go back in time and look at what it's sold for over the course of time it's a free tool you just have to register for a free account on P WCC's website another tool to look at his card snoop com card snoop will actually tell you what people paid for the buy it now on eBay when ebay itself won't give you that buy it now information and by the way going back to the PW CC tool the market price research tool when searching in that tool make sure only to search for auctions only to search for completed auctions search for fixed-price because right now the PWC see market price research tool will only be able to pull in what the cards were listed at at their original Buy It Now price not what people actually paid for which is completely unhelpful information in fact you know it's not it's not even good for you to see because that those numbers aren't even real in terms of what people paid actually paid but carts neucom will tell you what people actually paid for any completed auction on eBay that was a Buy It Now auction so that's how you can figure out on a Buy It Now what somebody paid for a card so definitely use these tools to understand the market around the price of a card before you make an offer before you make a bid before you go to buy a card on your own it is very important to be successful as a sports card investor to be well researched on the historical price of a particular card that you want to buy to make sure that you're getting a good deal so we've talked a lot about we've talked a lot about these different you know different types of cards what about what about boxes right it's it's fun to go buy a box of cards and to rip open the box go buy a box of prism or or a box of a Bowman Chrome or or tops Chrome or if you really want to splurge maybe you wanna go buy a box of national treasures or immaculate or a product like that what is the best variation of box to buy because if you start to go buy these boxes you'll find that for a lot of products there's different types of boxes there's hobby boxes there are specialty boxes like hometown advantage boxes in baseball that Tops puts out there's retail boxes blaster boxes hanger boxes sell a boxes if you walk into your local Walmart or Target you'll see all of those what are the what is the best type of these to buy from an investment standpoint well first of all from an investment standpoint none of these are particularly good to buy and we'll talk about why in a minute but if you're going to buy boxes of cards the answer is it depends hobby boxes are typically the most expensive type of box it typically is going to guarantee you the most hits now a hit is a big card that you're pulling out of a box a valuable card something like an autograph card or a serial numbered card that would be considered to be a hit and typically the hobby boxes will guarantee you a certain number of hits in the box a certain number of autographs or a certain number of the parallels or were factors some of the other products like retail boxes and blaster ba boxes they too will guarantee you a certain number of hits but it will be a lot lower number hobbie boxes guarantee you a lot more but Hobbie boxes are also a lot more expensive you may easily pay a few hundred bucks for a hobby box where you can walk into you know Target or Walmart to buy a blaster box from the same set for like 20 bucks so which is the better deal the answer is it really depends on the set and often times there's not necessarily one that is that much of a better deal you would think that hobby boxes are the better deal because they're the more premium product and so you would get maybe more bang for your buck and I would generally think that's true but that is not always the case in fact I read a really good analysis of prism basketball last year that actually suggested that the blaster box is that you can buy it at Target and Walmart for 19 bucks you're better off buying many of those than a single hobby box for the same amount of money and you'll actually end up with more hits buying several blaster boxes than a single Hobby box so it just it depends on the particular set now what you don't want to buy is you don't want to buy individual packs especially in a retail environment like Walmart or Target because there are people who go to those stores and they will actually weigh the packs of cards no knowing that autograph cards and particularly memorabilia cards are going to be a little bit heavier so they will sit there and they will weigh the different packs and pull the packs out that they think are going to have the big hits in them so do not buy individual packs of cards buy boxes buying boxes is a little bit safer even in a retail environment make sure there are sealed boxes so nobody's tampered with them factory sealed with the fact logo on the seal those are the types of boxes that you want to buy and of course if you go online a lot of the big online retailers can carry all these different types of boxes from hobby boxes to retail boxes and all the different variations thereof and if you're curious what's included in a certain in a certain box you know the number of hits that you're guaranteed the number of autos you're guaranteed it often says on the box but you can also go to a website like cardboard connection com and it's gonna contain a complete rundown for every product so let's say for for a tops Chrome or a Bowman Chrome or a prism basketball you can go onto cardboard connection and look at that product and it will tell you all of the different variations of boxes and what's contained in each box in terms of the numbers of hits so that's a good way to get educated on that so our buying box is a good investment the answer is that if you're buying boxes to take them home and rip them open and you know try to find valuable cards in the boxes no they are almost never a good investment unfortunately because buying boxes is a lot of fun and I love ripping boxes open it is a thrill but the truth of the matter is it is very similar to a slot machine pull in Vegas most of the time you're gonna bust open a box and you're gonna end up with not as much value in that box is what you paid for the box so if you for example were to open up a box take all the cards out of it and then immediately go sell all those cards on eBay most of the time you would end up getting less money by selling all those cards than what you paid for the box you know originally and a lot of times a lot less money very much like a slot machine pool in Las Vegas most of the time you're gonna put money in and pull the pullet and not be able to take that much money out of the machine however just like a slot machine pool in Las Vegas you will sometimes hit it big and boxes give you the opportunity to hit a jackpot card a really really big hit you can buy a $20 box at Walmart and end up with a card in that $20 box that is worth a few hundred dollars or more that happens it does happen it happens all the time so it's a bit of a slot machine pull but you have to get really lucky to get that type of return on a box so in general boxes are not good investments even though they're a lot of fun so if you want to just open one for fun by all means buy boxes and open them even though I invest in sports cards I still love buying boxes and opening them but when I do it I know that I'm not doing it from an investment standpoint I'm doing it for fun I that said there are some people that will buy boxes and not open the boxes keep them sealed and hold on to those boxes as an investment and then sell the boxes down the road in the future that can actually be a pretty good investment strategy but whether that's going to be successful or not all depends on how well the rookies from that year pan out if you happen to buy boxes from a year where there's a really strong rookie class and in a few years those rookies have started to go on to do really really big things then your boxes are probably going to go up in value but if you happen to buy boxes from a year where they're really big rookies that year really don't pan out and they kind of fizzle out then your boxes are probably going to go down in value so boxes can be an investment but it's really predicated on the rook on that year's rookie class as to whether they turn into a good investment for you or not so we've talked a lot about cards we've talked a lot about boxes what is the best way to buy cards and boxes so let's start with cards the king of buying cards online is eBay eBay is a great source to buy cards online because they have so much inventory auctions on eBay you know you typically will get a fair price in an auction although you have to watch out for she'll bid shil bidding she'll bidding is where the person who has the item up for auction will also be bidding on his or her own item for the purpose of driving the price up the way to combat shill bidding is to not bid early and to wait until the very last second to bid like it is ideal to not bid at all until there's like a second or two left in the auction and then bid and that gives you some protection against shill bidding from occurring there are by the way some services if you search for bid sniping services sniping is what this is called sniping is when you bid in the very last second of an eBay auction if you search for sniping services there are some websites that you can sign up for that will actually go to an auction and bid on your behalf on eBay when there's a second or two left and that's a good way to do it because it's obviously hard for you to sit in front of the computer all day and wait for that auction to get down to the very very end and place a bit at the very last second if you're gonna use Buy It Now on eBay most Buy It Now listings on eBay are pretty bad deals most things on eBay that are buy it now are listed way too high for what the card is worth you always want to make an offer and often times you know you want to come in at an offer that's like 50% or sometimes even less than what the Buy It Now is because typically the buy it now is are pretty outrageous but you should know your prices you should have done the historical price research to know what that particular card has sold for in the past and then make an offer that is maybe perhaps around or slightly below what that card has recently sold for to have you know to have a good chance of potentially getting your offer accepted don't get discouraged if you place a lot of offers and a lot of them don't get accepted there are a lot of people who put their cards in eBay and put insanely high prices on them and just keep them up there and just are waiting for some sucker to come along and pay that price so don't be that sucker and don't get incur don't get discouraged if a lot of your efforts offers get rejected because you're holding out to try to find a good deal for yourself that's perfectly fine other websites check out my cards see OMC calm has a nice inventory of cards sometimes it's hard to find a good deal there but they've got a good inventory so that's definitely a website to check out the pit and stock ex are two websites that have kind of a unique method for buying and selling cards you actually go into those websites and specify what card you want to buy and then set a price that you're willing to pay and then somebody else has to agree to sell it to you at that price so it's kind of a little bit of a backwards you know type a site in that you as a seller specify a price or rather us excuse me you is that the buyer specified the price instead of the seller specifying the price the pit has a lot of movement Ori that way stock X is just getting into the game stock X was the big sneaker trading website and they were just getting into sports cards and operating using that same model and then of course there are other ways to buy cards in person there's card shows right you hopefully have a local card show to you that's a great way to go and look at cards there's also the national which is an amazing card show that happens once a year it's the National Sports collectors convention next year it is in Atlantic City in 2020 in in July and if you can get there that is an amazing way to just millions and millions of cards for you to check out and buy and then of course local card shops hopefully hopefully you have a local card shop in your area and they're going to have an inventory of cards as well in terms of buying boxes you can buy boxes through some of those places that I just mentioned as well you know you can buy boxes on eBay you can buy boxes of card shows you can buy boxes from your local card shops there are also some major online retailers which typically offer the best prices on boxes Dave and Adams card world blow out cards and Steel City are the big three that I have used in the past and have had good experience with so I would recommend them and then one final aspect of buying cards is card breakers so card breaking breakers is a phenomenon that started about 10 years ago where dealers or breakers will buy these boxes of cards unopened and then instead of selling the you know selling the box to people they'll sell a part of the box to a bunch of people and then they will open the box live typically on a streaming service like YouTube live you can buy a slot in that card break so you can buy one particular slot and then that means that you get a piece of that card break a piece of whatever there about it open so typically card breaks are sold by I the team or the player so you could buy a particular team so for example if I'm if I'm you know they're breaking a box of tops chrome I'm gonna buy the Yankees and therefore any Yankees card that comes out of that box is mine sometimes the random team so you just buy in and they will randomly give you a team you know sometimes you buy a particular player so I want to buy Aaron judge and any Aaron judge cards that come out of the box at tops chrome are mine sometimes they're by serial number where you get a particular number and if that serial number happens to be pulled out that's your card breaking is a lot of fun it's a good way to collect cards it's particularly a good way that if you're a particular if you're going after a particular team it gives you an opportunity to do that efficiently does breaking offer a better investment if you buy into a break than if you buy a box on your own in most cases know there may be some opportunities to find a little bit of a better deal by buying into a card break for example if you're buying into a card break where you're buying cards by the team and maybe they have a particular team a little bit undervalued maybe in basketball they have you know the the Phoenix Suns undervalued but you really think that certain players on the Suns like Aiden are gonna go on to have really good careers and that their cards are a little undervalued right now you may want to buy the Suns because you think you could get a particularly good value on them so that's one way that buying into card breaks can be perhaps a decent investment but in general it's it's a lot like buying into a box that you're taking a chance you're taking a risk you're hoping to get a big hits and oftentimes you won't get your value back but there's certainly there's certainly a lot of fun to do let's talk about graded cards for a couple of minutes because card grading is hugely important to sports card investors so what is grading grading didn't exist first of all in the late 80s when I was you know big into sports cards the first time around grading is where you can take a card ideally a card that looks to be in perfect condition and you can mail it to a grading company or give it to them in person out of cards they're gonna be out of card show that you're at the major grading companies are called PSA and Becket's which they're modern car grading service is called BG s you mail them or you give them the card and then they will actually grade that card on a scale of one to ten with ten being the best and they will then put that card in a protective holder that's tamper proof and stamp the grade that they gave that card on it the reason why grading is really important is it gives you a consistent understanding of the quality of the card which when you're buying cards online for investment purposes I highly recommend buying graded cards and only buying graded cards if you're gonna buy cards online for investment because that's the only way you can know for sure that you're getting a really good quality card because sometimes the pictures of a card online don't show if the card has a scratch or some sort of defect to it that that you can't tell until you actually physically look at that card so card bruk grading gives you a a sense of fairness now card grading is a little bit complicated the PSA grades on a scale of one to ten with ten being the best and by the way in order for grading to really matter and to add value you have to get a ten a PSA nine typically sells for not much more money than what an ungraded card would sell for often they sell for around the same amount of money so having a PSA nine for a modern card doesn't add a lot of value now for an older card for a car that's twenty or thirty or more years old then a PSA nine still may be very valuable compared to an ungraded card but for a car that came out in the last few years a PSA nine is really not much better than having the card ungraded so you have to get a PSA ten in order for it to be really valuable now BG s grades slightly differently BG s nine point five is considered to be the equivalent of a PSA ten meaning a BG s nine point five is gem mint just like a PSA ten is gem mint but BG s has grades beyond a nine point five they also have a ten also have a black label those are extremely difficult to get a B G s10 which is called pristine is extremely rare I think only something like maybe one out of every 40 cards that are a BG s 9.5 qualify then to be a BG s10 and then a Black Label which means it is the most perfect in every way is even rarer than a BG s10 or BG s 9.5 a Black Label is something like one in a hundred or actually even more extreme than that I think you know one in one and a few hundreds so a Black Label is is very hard to get but because there is a BG s ten and a BG a Black Label the BG s 9.5 s are not quite as valuable as a result so for modern cards typically a PSA 10 is going to command maybe about 20 to 25 percent more value more money than a BG s 9.5 will command however a BG s 10 or a BG s black label are going to be several times more valuable than a PSA 10 so you know it's a matter of opinion as to whether you are better off getting PSA cards if you're submitting cards for grading it's a matter of opinion are you better submitting it to PSA to PSA and hoping for a PSA 10 or you better submitting to BG s where there's a likelihood a big likelihood you'll get a BG s 9.5 which will not be as valuable as a PSA 10 but there's a small likelihood that you'll get a BG s 10 or Black Label which will be much more valuable than a PSA 10 in my opinion PSA because the odds are really remote on you getting a BG s 10 or black label so I think Oh PSA hope to go for the PSA 10 that's what I like - if I'm submitting cards for grading I like to go PSA if I'm buying cards as an investor it doesn't really matter PSA 10 BG s 9.5 they're they're good cards to buy I'm gonna pay a little bit of a premium for PSA 10 / BG s 9.5 but either of those cards would be fine for me to buy as an investor I will not buy most of the time I will not buy cards that are graded below that very often as an investor but I will be looking for tens and 9.5 and be happy with those as an investor now some people will buy cards raw meaning ungraded raw means an ungraded card and then submit it for grading with the plan that it will score as a ten or nine point five and therefore be worth a lot more than what they paid for it raw that is a strategy that can be successful but it is a it is a tricky strategy to employ because it is hard to tell exactly what the grading companies are going to give a card and sometimes you'll have a car that you think is gonna be a ten and you submit it and it comes back as a PSA nine and now what you've done is paid a lot of money to submit a card and you get the card back and it's not really worth anything more than it was before you submitted it by the way how much does it cost to grade if you're gonna send a bunch of cards in in bulk like fifty or more cards at a time it can be as little as eight dollars a card to grade if you're gonna send them in and lesser quantities it's typically twenty dollars or sometimes a little bit more than that to send them in for grading so there is definitely expense in sending a card in for grading and therefore you're only going to get your get a good return on it if your card is able to qualify for a PSA ten grade or a bgs 9.5 grade now the final thing I'll say about grading is there are there has been quite a bit of controversy recently about grading and trim cards that had gotten graded with good grades even though they have been trimmed or altered that is an unfortunate a very unfortunate black stain on the industry however however I am still a big believer in card grading I am a big believer that PSA and bgs will find better methods for evaluating and grading cards to prevent some of that type of thing from happening in the future and I still think that grading is very important to the Hobby and it's very important for how you buy cards particularly online so I'm still a big advocate in investing in graded cards despite that scandal going on so finally for today how can I learn more about cards well first and foremost I would encourage you to subscribe to my channel sports card investor on YouTube hit the subscribe button and then hit the little bell icon next to the subscribe button I'm putting out episodes routinely telling you about how to do card investing so subscribing you'll get lots of great content that way if you're listening on the podcast you can subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify or any podcast network as well to be notified of my new episodes also I have a website sports card investor calm and I have set up a discord chat server this is a free chat server for you to join where you can chat with others in the Hobby you can go in and you can ask questions about sports card investor you can get to my free discord chat server by clicking on the link in the show notes for the show or by going to my website sports card investor calm but I am not the only source of information when it comes to sports card investing I recommend a breaker culture breaker culture is another great podcast and blog that you can check out for sports card investing I also recommend the blowout forums the blowout forums are in a big big online message board community that the online store blowout cards put together lots of great discussion in there and then of course there are many great people you can follow on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram who will bring you a lots of information about cards and card investing so I hope this was a great episode for you I hope you learned a lot please share this with anyone else new who you know is getting into sports card investing would love to share this content with them and would love to have you watch future episodes to continue to learn more about sports card investing and all of the great things that are happening in the sports card world thank you very much for joining us see you again soon you

Channel: Sports Card Investor

Views: 351,161

Keywords: sports card investor, sports card investing, investing in sports cards, baseball card investing, investing in baseball cards, baseball card investor, card collecting, card collecting 101, baseball card collecting, football card investing, football card investor, football card collecting, basketball card investing, basketball card collecting, basketball card investor, soccer card investing, hockey card investing, baseball cards 101, basketball cards 101, football cards 101

Id: cZBYfgdwaSQ

Length: 52min 46sec (3166 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 07 2019