Thread: My first investment write-up for l4p on sportscards

I figure its a rainy day and I have nothing better to do, why not write this up for you guys. That great thing is that most people have collected or have old cards in their possession that could be worth thousands. I really hope you guys have some gems as a lot of people have very valuable pieces and not even know it!

My background: Did you know that the most expensive sports card was sold at auction for over $3m? At this point, bells went off in my head, and I knew that there can be money to be made. I started really tracking the nature of the cards many months ago, understanding the "lingo", and let me tell you that there is hugeeeee market for this. BUT, when I say a huge market, I mean that there are specific cards that fetch a huge demand, but on the same token, many that do not. However, the good news is that they have been made for over a hundred years, so there is a good amount that are worth a lot of money.

General terms and understandings: The general rule of thumb is that the older, the more expensive... That being said, not every old card is worth a lot, and not every new card is junk.
* Generally speaking, rookie cards, and limited editions of well known people have the monetary value. Most "normal" cards are not worth anything. And generally speaking most cards across the board are not worth a whole lot until the 70's and earlier. There are always exceptions though. Michael Jordan's rookie is worth thousands
*Book value is not accurate! Do not think that you are getting a good deal if someone says "the book value is $100 but I'll sell it for $20". The value is directly related to the demand(Econ 101). If you want to find the true value, look it up on ebay(no joke).
* Older, well known player's rookie cards are usually very high in demand. For example I have seen Mickey Mantle's rookie card sell from anywhere between $900- $120k depending on the grade(I will get in to that later). His rookie card I believe was from 1952.
* Probably the biggest factor that goes into the monetary value is the grade. Now what is the grade? The grade is a numerical value given to the card depending on the condition by a grading company. The most popular being PSA or Beckett. What goes into a grade is the corners, if there are any tears or stains, the centering, and the coloring just to name a few. The condition of the card(10 being the highest) will either make or break the sale price. The grading from highest to lowest is Gem Mint or Mint +, Mint, Near mint, Excellent, very good, good, fair, poor. "+" are also used with some grading companies. If you look at some ebay posting, you will see NM, EX, VG... this is the designation for the grade.
* Watch out like the fvcking plague for Reprints. Reprints, or RP is exactly what it sounds like, a reprint of a older card. These are worth crap. Now the tricky part is that some reprints do not say anything on the card, so be cautious from who you are buying from. These tend to fetch no demand and are not worth the paper they are printed on.
* When a card is listed, some of them will say PSA/DNA. Remember PSA the grading company? Well they can also authenticate a signature . It is the same process where you send it in to their company, they analyze the autograph, and determine it is authentic. DO NOT BUY any autographed cards that are not from an autograph series, or do not have some sort of authentication.

The Lingo:
I had to learn all of this, so now I can teach it to you guys and it is really helpful.
*Auto= Autographed. This will usually be backed up by saying DNA/COA
*BV or Bookvalue= The "value" or the card which is complete bs. Do not be fooled tha book value is the actual value.
*COA= Certificate of authenticity
*Pop= Population. This is only for really high graded cards, the selling might put this as a selling point that only 3 cards or something like that has the same grade, or only 1 card has a higher grade. This does not not really apply to lower graded cards
*OC= Off centered. This is unfortunate because it could be from the company like this, but the card is off centered, which will make the grade less.

Examples:
Here are some examples of cards that I have personally sold

This card was graded by beckett and received a rating of 3, or very good. The card can be looked up through the beckett site with the number below the "3".


The card was 101 years old!! It received a 1 rating probably because it had a tiny hole in it.


Joe Montana's rookie card. This card has a layout of what parts of the card got what rating. In this case, it was highly graded and got a 7.5 Near Mint+.

Just to give you a layout of some $, the first card sold for $50, the second I believe $20(One example of the grading killing the value. If it was graded a 10 it would be in the thousands), and the third for around $100.

Conclusion:
This is just an opener as I hope you all try and look for some gems. If you guys want some more in depth info, I can write some more, I just don't know if anyone is interested in this stuff.

I do do some brokering and can help you determine the price and sell them and what not but I am not a sponsor, so if you have any more questions PM me.

I think my best card is a Brett Hull O'PeeChee rookie, unfortunately I don't think it's mint.. I should really grab that box from my folks place .

Thanks for the write up!

I still wish I hadn't spent every cent I got from 1994-95 on basketball cards...All I have now is a big box of crap that no one wants.

my FAVORITE cards of all time (when i was a kid)

No way that is a real car with **** Face on the bat... no way...

Yep, the Bill Ripken is a classic!

Did you actually have that card?!

Originally Posted by Kustom

No way that is a real car with **** Face on the bat... no way...

It is real


I used to collect sports cards. My best ones were a Frank Thomas Fleer rookie card and a Jerry Rice rookie card as well.

+1 MTK. I loved JC and griffeys rookies. The upperdeck series was great in the early days.
I had a pretty serious collection that I unloaded several years ago. Had several mantle cards, a ton of 70's and 80's rookies as well as complete sets.
The BJ FB/BB was one of my all time favorites!

i'm a big Brett Favre fan and have every rookie car made including the misprinted stadium club Brett "Farve" card... next time i'm home i'll have to look at what else I have

locally where would you suggest taking a large batch of cards in to be appraised...most of my stuff is from the 80s and as far as I can tell no less than 5 rookie cards are probably worth the effort to spend the time if they're in decent condition...