Why Trading Cards Are A Booming Industry
First photo: Zach Myers
Second photo: From Flicker.com
10/24/23
Zach Myers, Contributing Writer
When you were younger, you may have been a fan of the Pokemon games, which may have led you to ask your parents for Pokemon cards. Back then, you wouldn’t have thought about the cost or worth of the cards. You may have asked your parents for them just so you could trade them with your friends at school or play the actual game that comes with them. But over 20 years, Pokemon and other types of trading cards have skyrocketed in popularity. The most prevalent of these are sports cards, since they are worth the most money.
While all cards can be worth money, many factors play into what a card may be worth. These range from the rarity of the card, who is depicted on the card, an autographed card, etc. There are even cards for TV shows like Game of Thrones and movies like Star Wars or another type of trading card game like Magic the Gathering or Yu Gi Oh!
As mentioned briefly, sports cards are the most popular type of trading card. The main sports are football and baseball but the types of sports can range from basketball to racing to soccer and beyond. Recently, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card, with a grade of SGC 9.5, sold at auction for 12.5 million dollars.
The average person may react to that news in utter shock but a card collector knows why it sold for that much. First off, Mickey Mantle is one of baseball’s all-time greatest players, having made 20 all-star games as well as hitting 536 home runs and making the Baseball Hall Of Fame. The card is also 71 years old and vintage cards are the most popular type of card because of the amount of time they have been around. They are also not widely around, which makes them rarer than your average modern card in which many are still in production.
If you are confused about the 9.5 mentioned about the card, I will explain. There are different grading companies, namely Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) and Sportscard Guaranty (SGC) who give grades to cards based on many different factors. This includes the corners and edges of the cards, how the card is centered, and the surface of the card. The company then issues a grade based on a combination of these factors, ranging from a 1 to a 10 or if you want, you can just get the card as “authentic” to prove that it is what the card claims it is.
Older cards in particular are hard to get good grades for varying reasons, with the main one being that those types of cards were not often handled well by people when they were bought. Originally, these cards were sold in packs of bubble gum or cigars for under a dollar and people mainly bought the pack for the gum or the cigars and didn’t care for the cards. Therefore, the card could’ve been majorly scratched up, the corners could have been bent, and the overall style of the card may have been ruined. To get a card of such a legendary player, from over 70 years ago, in a near-perfect grade with great eye appeal means that it is worth loads of money.
While vintage cards are the main target for some people, most people as of now are investors in cards of those who are currently playing. A base card often has the following characteristics: an image of the player in their sport, their name, and the brand of the card. The back of the card will have the player's statistics as well as a description of something random about them and the licensing and date info for the production company.
Topps and Panini are the main producers of cards in the hobby, with some of the prominent manufacturers owned by these companies being Bowman, Prizm, Mosaic, Donruss, and many others. While the base characteristics mentioned above add some value to the card, depending on the player the card may not be worth more than $1. While the vintage cards already have value on them even if they are the base cards, modern cards usually need some added stuff to make them more appealing.
A small start is adding a variation to the modern card. The typical base card normally has a white background or if it is an insert card, it has a cool design. To add more value to this, you need a color variation to a card. If you replace the white background of a card with any color of the rainbow, there is added value to the card because of the eye appeal of brighter colors. To add more value, companies make refractor cards. Companies like Prizm and Bowman make colored cards as well but they make it so the card lights up if you shine it under a flashlight. This also brings back the eye appeal conversation because if you saw a sports card light up under a light, you would think it looked cool and want to buy more, which is the target of these productions.
While the worth of these refractor cards on their own is high, if the card is serial-numbered, it skyrockets in value. This is because a company may make thousands of the base cards and colored cards, but may only make 100 of a certain refractor. This makes the card extremely rare to find as people open packs to attempt to find it. Another added value of these cards can either be if it is the first off the production line (marked with a 1/#) or the jersey number of the player on the card (marked as jersey #/#).
On top of the cool designs of the card, if the card has proof of the player who is on the card having handled the card there is more inherent value. The two examples include autographs and jersey patches. An autograph card means that the player on the card hand-signs the card, with the autograph either being directly on the card or on a sticker that is attached to the card. The reason autographed cards are so valuable is because having that signature is sometimes as close as a regular person would get to owning something previously held by their idols. There is some controversy related to autographs on stickers, as they can be misplaced on certain cards.
There was a Babe Ruth autographed card pulled from a card pack by a YouTube streamer. It was later found that the autograph on the card was actually from George Brett. While Brett himself is a Hall of Famer, Ruth is the most iconic baseball player of all time, being known for his pitching and hitting power. On top of this, the “Bambino” as he is known, has long passed away so an autographed anything of his can go upwards of 5-6 figures, while an autographed baseball of George Brett can fetch a mere $50-$100 at an auction.
A more recent case of controversial autos is of a man from North Carolina named Ed Yakich. According to WLFA8 News in Tampa, the man paid $34,000 for an autographed rookie card of Michael Jordan, who is one of the greatest and most well-known athletes in the world. The card was his rookie 1986 Fleer with his autograph in a PSA holder, showing the card as authentic with an autograph grade of 10. Even though the card came with a label from the company, PSA sent a letter to Yakich stating that the autograph on the card was fake. Now it’s not like Yakich bought the card from a guy in an alley, he bought the card from Goldin Auctions, which along with eBay is one of the most trusted sources for buying cards online. While PSA and Goldin said that Yakich would get a full refund for his purchase, it does not change the fact that there are hundreds of fake autograph cards out there, made by people attempting to take advantage of others.
Along with having an autograph of a player, having a game-used patch of a notable athlete often adds value to a card. For these cards, the patch will often be one color, probably the color of his or her team jersey, with the back of the card usually saying where the patch is from. The best jersey patch cards will say on the back that the patch is game-worn or player-worn used material.
Higher-end patch cards will have cooler card designs or feature other parts of the jersey, which may include a tag or part of the team logo on the jersey. What makes these cards so valuable to collectors is that if the player on the card is an all-star or hall-of-fame player, knowing the patch is guaranteed to have been worn by the player at some point in their career makes it nicer to display and sell to others. The lower-end patch cards often say that the patch is not from any specific game or event. This is not as valuable since we are not sure that the patch on the card was worn by the player in question when it could have been taken from a rug in the team clubhouse.
While investing or buying sports cards can make people substantial money, it is most certainly a risky investment. Similar to investing in the stock market, daily to monthly happenings can impact the value of a card drastically. It is often best to invest in cards when they are of a lower value because you are at a lower risk of losing money since the card has a greater chance of increasing in value. The best way to do this is to buy cards for athletes who are in their offseason, such as football or basketball cards in the summer or baseball cards in the late fall to early winter. Buying cards when they are high in value or are starting to rise in value is risky because they have a high chance of decreasing in value. By purchasing these “hot” value cards, you are banking on the card increasing in value as well as the athlete continuing to perform well in their sport.
Some of the potential risks of a card decreasing in value include injury to the player, bad performance by the player, and an overall decline in the market of sports cards. At one time in 2021, a Kobe Bryant 1996 Topps Finest Refractor Rookie Card in a PSA 10 grade was selling for upwards of 150,000 dollars. In a video by YouTuber Sports Card Investor, he traded several other cards for this Kobe card for a value of $30,000. While the person he traded the card for may not have bought the card for $150,000, it shows that the Kobe card in general decreased $120,000 in value. Now since Kobe retired in 2016 and sadly passed away in 2020, you would think that a card of his wouldn’t fluctuate as much in value.
The fact of the matter is that whenever the majority of sports cards in the market are down, even the ones that may not get affected as much take a serious dip.
