Sports Card Investing 101: "What cards should I buy?"

if you are a new sports card collector or investor the number one thought you probably have is what cards should i buy there are literally tens of thousands of different cards out there and they look super cool i'd love to buy them all but i know i shouldn't most cards out there are just shiny objects they are overpriced they're going to be losing money in the long run and so in this video i want to save you as much time effort and money as possible by sharing with you what my fundamentals are when looking at sports cards and at the end of the video i'll also share with you some of my best resources different youtube stations and websites to check out so you could really speed up your learning curve because the sooner you learn this stuff the more money you'll make and the less money you will waste so welcome back now let's get to work all right the first thing you need to understand is that if you want to be a collector and not really make money in this hobby there are no rules you can pay whatever you want for whatever card you would like because it is for you it is something for you to enjoy so don't you don't care about what anyone else says it's worth or what they think of the card but if you want to make money in this hobby you've got to adopt an investor mentality and you got to know the difference between the two and it's pretty much if you're a collector only you're going to be emotional you like a card for whatever reason you buy it you pay whatever you can afford that's cool if you want to be an investor on the other hand you've got to use logic over emotion and this is a very it's a simple principle to say but it's very tough in practice because sports and sports cards are very emotional we have our favorite teams we have our favorite players we have our favorite cards and we think we'll be buying a card logically when in reality it's an emotional purchase and that's always dangerous because we got to be able to separate the two now i will say this the majority of us in the hobby are i would say a combination collectors and investors we each have cards that we care a lot about it's very hard to give up we don't want to sell at any cost unless it's like a ridiculous price and then there are cards that we don't care too much about but we see a potential for profit in so we can roll that over we could pay our bills we could scale up and buy higher end and rare cards for our personal collection just understand how important it is to remove emotions from logic if you want to make money in this hobby now that we got that out of the way the first tip in developing a logical approach to making money is to start with what you know the best and what excites you the most and that's because a lot of people out there are going to be saying you got to be in pokemon cards you got to be in soccer you know you have to do basketball you can't really make money unless you're in basketball and the truth is that you're going to make money in the areas that excite you the most and what you're going to do the most research into because the deeper you can go into a certain sport a certain division a certain team a certain player the more of an advantage you'll have and when you focus on what excites you the most you'll go deeper and deeper into that research and it'll be enjoyable it won't be a chore also remember that your in-depth knowledge of a certain team or a certain player or a certain division is your competitive advantage and that means you'll know more than 99 of others about that so why squander it so now let's move on to what cards and variations to focus on and look there's a lot of different cards out there there's a lot of different parallels we've got pink and rainbow and sparkly and mosaic and all sorts of stuff and it's very confusing especially at first but let's make it simple if you are interested in basketball and football cards panini like the damn sandwich maker panini is the name of the manufacturer of nfl and nba cards uh from 2012 on up so the sets that you really want to focus on are number one prism prism is like the most common most popular card definitely not the cheapest but everyone knows prism and they have a lot of different parallels and variations but silver is the most liquid it's a rare version it's shinier on the back of the card it'll actually say prism and even though they have all these other parallels in green and blah blah blah blah that's just harder and harder to understand so remember that if you're looking to flip cards if you're looking to invest and sell in the future if you stick to just prism bass and silver it's easier to understand the values and that's just the way it is if you have some sort of rare green pink whatever a lot of people don't really understand how much it's worth and how easy it is for them to liquidate so prism and prism silver and then the next set i would focus on is optic and optic holo donoris makes a paper version as well but optic is like the the chrome or shinier version and then optic hollow would be the rarer version of that same card and then the next one i would say is select and select is a hobby only box it's not something you'll find in stores but it's a very good looking card it's been around since 2012 it's my favorite card and select has a couple variations but just remember select and select silver and you'll be good right there now going further remember there are other sets there is donors paper there's also hoops in the nba and these are cheaper sets so that might be something worth looking into and then in the nfl you also have the donrest paper as well but i wouldn't get wrapped up in revolution and phoenix and chronicles and all this other stuff because most investors and collectors just don't value those sets now if you're interested in baseball tops is the manufacturer of the baseball cards i don't do baseball so i know that tops tops chrome bowman bowman chrome those are the sets i'm most familiar with if you are a seasoned baseball investor and collector please comment below any other sets worth considering but i just don't touch it because that's not a sport that interests me and if you're into hockey upper deck is the manufacturer of hockey cards the only card i really consider buying is upper deck and young guns is the name of the rookie card series because hockey is niche i don't want to expand too far out just because uh the the more niche the sport the more i want to stick to the basics and and the tried and true next up you want to focus on only buying the rookie cards of a player and that's because as collectors and investors we value that first card of that player in their professional jersey more than any other for the most part i mean there might be rarer cards out there but there's something really special about a rookie card because a player like lebron james can be in the league for 20 years but why would you care about his eighth year card or his 13th year card when there's only one rookie card rookie cards are kind of like your baby picture you plop out of your mom you're crying there you're like covered in goo you're like that picture that very first picture is very special to your mom and dad and it's going to be more special than six months old or a year or two years or three years because that was the moment you were born so that's kind of like the thought process behind rookie cards if that's not enough to take in let's talk about grading and there are lots of grading companies out there most of them suck there's like hma and vma and cma and pretty much if there's an award show out there there's going to be an equivalent grading company with the same acronyms the only three grading companies to focus on at first are psa bgs and sgc they are the three that have been uh i guess well respected or well received in the community and there might be like this little uh jostle of power over the next couple of years to see who's going to take over and who's going to get that number two spot because psa is pretty much the number one spot for most of us but it gets really confusing when you consider buying other cards created by other companies because they're just not very easy to to liquidate and a lot of times if you sell cards that are a rated nine or rated 10 in some other company you're not going to get more than what it would be if you just sold the card raw without any grading at all so what about raw cards and personally i love them i love raw cards because they're more versatile to me and it's because i can buy them at a certain price sell them as is or have the option to send them off to one of these grading companies and hopefully get a 9 or a 10 because if i get a 9 more than likely i'll get more than what i paid for the grading service to be done back as a as a positive profit but if it's a 10 i could really make some good profit there now it's tricky though raw cards are tricky because if you're buying online there are like people can take good pictures but they can still miss a little ding of a corner or a little dent in the surface like a little dimple in the surface of the card and when you get that card in person it needs to be looking amazing to even be considered to be sent to one of these grading companies if there's a scratch or if there's a ding corner or even if the card is off center as in if the left border is a lot fatter than the right one you could lose your whole opportunity of getting a perfect mint grade right then and there so my rule of thumb is that if you're looking at raw cards for one sites like star stock and com c are great for getting started with these lower end cards but also i will only pay for the equivalent of a psa 8 of a raw card i see online even if it looks perfectly centered the corners are crisp there's no issues from the pictures there's a lot of them and i'm trying to really piece it together a psa 8 whatever that price is is the most i will pay for a raw card just because i don't want to get that card in person and have paid a premium for it only to be disappointed that there was a micro scratch i didn't see or on the back it was off center and the picture online was only on the front now that you have a rough idea of the players and the cards to focus on let's talk about finding deals and this is really important because this is where a lot of newbies screw up and end up losing a lot of money so for me there are two ways to make a good investment and the first way is to buy cards that are on sale and usually cards are on sale just because one platform a seller is selling the card for 50 bucks and on another platform the card is being sold at 75 or 100 and you see that difference so you could literally use arbitrage or buying from one to sell to another and i did that for a couple months going on beckett marketplace and finding all these really cheap cards that we're selling for more on comp c but the majority of your investing is probably going to be buying at current market value and using enough research and logic and just upside potential to believe that that card is going to go up in the future so what what a lot of new investors and collectors do wrong is that they look at the player and they buy into the hype they buy when the card is already really high and there's not much upside left but there is a lot of downside and we saw this back in august where cards were just doubling and doubling and doubling in price and it wasn't based off of any sense there was no principles behind it it was literally just i bought it for 500 today because it was 300 last week and i'll sell it for a thousand next week and that's not a principle that's literally just speculation in another video i go over 21 different upsides in which a card or a player can go up in value so that you can minimize your risk and maximize your reward now the one principle i've really got to explain in depth is value and this is where a lot of people mess up because they buy a certain player they buy a certain card but they don't really pay attention to how much they're paying for it they just believe that card will go up from there and it's vital that we look at the prices of that card and compare it to other cards because for example coming into this nfl season everyone was all over patrick mahomes his cards had shot up through the roof and look he came he was coming off of a super bowl win he's a great young talented quarterback and all signs are pointing to him having a great year but when i was doing a price compare i was looking at russell wilson and the fact that he had less cards of his rookie card out there in circulation he had less of a pop report so there's less of them you could actually buy can you pound that like button please and yet his tops chrome i believe his tops chrome psa 10 rookie cards were like a fifth of the price of patrick mahomes and i said you know what patrick mahomes might have a brighter future than russell wilson he might he might have more super bowl wins when it's all said and done but the price difference was so ridiculous that russell wilson was obviously the better value another big tip is i highly recommend you to not buy a single card for at least three weeks into getting into this hobby and that's because your emotions will be at its highest once you're in i mean the novelty is there the excitement everything looks flashy everything's cool i want this i want this and buying on ebay is incredibly easy you literally click a few buttons and there's thousands of dollars just gone and when you're new to this you're gonna make mistakes you're gonna have to learn a lot so if you can learn as much as possible for the first three weeks while building that muscle of patience and overcoming your emotions it's going to take you a long way and a couple other great youtube stations to check out are sports card investor psa collector the hobby box personal finance ad vegas fine 777 and the fantasy football card quest if you're into football cards watch all of them gather some perspectives some different opinions some similarities go on instagram look up tips there obviously you can follow garyvee as well but the point is to really immerse yourself in all of the hobby there's also great forms online cardboard connection blowout forms etc however you'd like to learn but learn first avoid the mistakes and then after three weeks of pure absorption you can go and start small and build a good foundation for investing now if you'd like to learn how warren buffett would invest in sports cards based on how he invest in the stock market click this video up here and i'll see you over there

Channel: The Comeback Card Investor

Views: 153,557

Rating: 4.908546 out of 5

Keywords: sports card investing for beginners, how to flip sports cards, how to flip sports cards for beginners, flipping sports cards on ebay, flipping sports cards 2020, what sports cards, what sports cards to invest in, what sports cards to buy, what sports cards should i buy, what basketball cards to invest in, what basketball card packs to buy, sports card investing 101, sports card investing, sports card investors, sports cards to invest in 2020, basketball cards to invest in 2020

Id: BUN_vajNt8Q

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020