So wait.. We're NOT in a new junk wax era..?

[hauntedcomputer]

Cards are ultimately a zero-sum game. They don't create value on their own and don't pay dividends and are only a store of value in the speculative sense. Which is fine, because so is gold--besides some industrial uses and jewelry, gold's valuable because we agree that it's valuable.

For every aftermarket card sale, someone has to be out some money they may not get all back. So I cringe at the word "investment" (although I use it to explain to my wife why I need to pay four figures for a card...) knowing cards are a speculative asset, albeit with a pretty decent track record. I sold some muni bonds paying 1.5 percent to buy a bunch of cards. The cards will probably earn more and if not are at least interesting to own.

Now excuse me, I think I have a few 100-count bricks of Mo Vaughn Score rookies to dig out of the attic.

[Looking4Luka]

This is what Bitcoin was in late 2017. I'm going to be laughing until my belly buss when market come down bhai

[Akphillips86]

Ok, we need to stop comparing cards to currency. They are a COLLECTIBLE. Yes, mercenary style investors treat them as currency and admittedly have influenced the market, but cards are highly desirable collectibles that people who love sports gravitate towards. This isn’t new.

Don’t forget, cards are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now that we all refer to eBay sales rather than antiquated Beckett magazines for value, the market moves faster than ever. Rises tend to be meteoric, drops are usually more subtle. Many are waiting for a drop that is never going to happen. A market correction? Perhaps...until the next surge.

Not all cards will appreciate, but many will. Discernment is essential. I think rare inserts, RC on card autos, and low serial numbered parallels are going to see a nice bump over the years whereas non-iconic graded base will slow (personal prediction). I think the 90’s insert renaissance should be a lesson learned here. That stuff is fire.

The card market ain’t going anywhere. Sports trading card and memorabilia sales are a HUGE portion of eBay transactions and that isn’t artificially generated interest. I used to do antique auctions and consign through dealers. I know it’s strange, but there is a MASSIVE amount of collectors of all sorts of things. People love to collect things by nature.

The card market is probably the strongest of all collectible markets because trading cards tend to be the niche for sports fans (Guess what? There’s a lot of them). On top of that, accessibility and shipping are incredibly easy when you compare cards to other collectibles where it would cost an arm and a leg to ship them across the U.S. Art is a huge market for example, but 98 percent of people are immediately priced out of owning great art. Not so with trading cards.

Ultimately, what I’m getting at is that the value of trading cards on the surface, seems very illogical. When you dig a little deeper, it actually starts to make a little sense. Not perfect sense, but let’s face it, how logical are human beings in the first place??


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[CB Nostalgia]

Originally Posted by Akphillips86

Ok, we need to stop comparing cards to currency. They are a COLLECTIBLE. Yes, mercenary style investors treat them as currency and admittedly have influenced the market, but cards are highly desirable collectibles that people who love sports gravitate towards. This isn’t new.

Don’t forget, cards are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now that we all refer to eBay sales rather than antiquated Beckett magazines for value, the market moves faster than ever. Rises tend to be meteoric, drops are usually more subtle. Many are waiting for a drop that is never going to happen. A market correction? Perhaps...until the next surge.

Not all cards will appreciate, but many will. Discernment is essential. I think rare inserts, RC on card autos, and low serial numbered parallels are going to see a nice bump over the years whereas non-iconic graded base will slow (personal prediction). I think the 90’s insert renaissance should be a lesson learned here. That stuff is fire.

The card market ain’t going anywhere. Sports trading card and memorabilia sales are a HUGE portion of eBay transactions and that isn’t artificially generated interest. I used to do antique auctions and consign through dealers. I know it’s strange, but there is a MASSIVE amount of collectors of all sorts of things. People love to collect things by nature.

The card market is probably the strongest of all collectible markets because trading cards tend to be the niche for sports fans (Guess what? There’s a lot of them). On top of that, accessibility and shipping are incredibly easy when you compare cards to other collectibles where it would cost an arm and a leg to ship them across the U.S. Art is a huge market for example, but 98 percent of people are immediately priced out of owning great art. Not so with trading cards.

Ultimately, what I’m getting at is that the value of trading cards on the surface, seems very illogical. When you dig a little deeper, it actually starts to make a little sense. Not perfect sense, but let’s face it, how logical are human beings in the first place??


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Bitcoin is currently as much currency as a Luka RC is currency. Any place that would accept either of them as payment would ultimately end up using BitPay/eBay or another service to change the crypto/card into cash.

Both crypto and sports cards are speculative assets. There is no underlying value besides what the market will pay for the card.

[Akphillips86]

Originally Posted by CB Nostalgia

Bitcoin is currently as much currency as a Luka RC is currency. Any place that would accept either of them as payment would ultimately end up using BitPay/eBay or another service to change the crypto/card into cash.

Both crypto and sports cards are speculative assets. There is no underlying value besides what the market will pay for the card.

An item can be worth money without being currency. Assets are not currency. You can liquidate assets in order to obtain currency, but I can’t walk in on Taco Tuesday and pay for my meal with Prizm cards. Even a PSA 10 Giannis Silver would get me exactly 0 tacos if I handed a bewildered employee a card encased in a slab of plastic.

Yes, cards are worth exactly what the market is willing to pay for them at a given time and that can quite literally change by the hour. The value of a card, no matter how many times it has been traded, will always be variable never fixed.

This is kind of beside the point. What I’m getting at is that a card is worth what it is because enough people desire that card to command the particular price. Now can demand be artificially manipulated? Yes, which is why I’m not clamoring for just any graded base at the moment. However, if you believe that one day everyone in the world is going to stop buying cards and the market is going to collapse I think you are greatly mistaken.

Remember EVERYTHING is worth what people are willing to pay for it, not just cards. Diamonds, pieces of art, rare stamps, fine china, comic books, antique cars, ancient artifacts, Coca Cola memorabilia, and the list goes on forever...

None of above have any inherent value. Their value is backed by desirability.


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[Looking4Luka]

Sports cards are non productive assets backed by speculation, man's hunter/gatherer mentality and nostalgia.

[Akphillips86]

Originally Posted by Looking4Luka

Sports cards are non productive assets backed by speculation, man's hunter/gatherer mentality and nostalgia.

And also desirability, like all collectibles...cards are not an outlier. It helps to have a wider scope on the issue.


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[icollectrookies]

Originally Posted by mindcycle

The reasoning people throw around to claim that we're not currently in junk wax era 2.0 is pretty comical to me. Stuff like "Well.. if it's not in every gas station and drugstore then it's not like the 90's." Or.. "It's not all base cards anymore, so it can't be considered junk wax". Panini is selling a ton of product online so they really don't need to put product in every store anymore like the 90's manufacturers did. I'm sure if they thought it would be profitable they would, but not really necessary in the modern age. And just because a card has a serial number doesn't mean it can automatically be excluded from the "junk wax" designation (look at totals below). So instead of trying to defend a more or less educated guess on my part every time this topic comes up, I decided to gather some data.

The point of this post is not to say that collecting isn't fun, or that you should stop collecting modern cards. I still enjoy putting Nuggets team sets together for various products each year and i'm still doing that. It's simply meant to provide some factual data for some healthy conversation (or not, whatever floats your boat.. ) on the topic. Maybe also help some of the new collectors, or returning collectors, visually see what is happening right now so they can come to their own conclusions.

I've used Beckett's website to sort data for some of the hottest rookies from past and present. The first search for each player is the total number of "products". This really equates to total cards featuring that player from their rookie year. This includes parallels, so that must be taken into account as well. I then filter by RC designation, which essentially gives us what Beckett deems a true RC and not an insert. I'm not sure if the RC filter is entirely meaningful in later years when we have things like memorabilia cards (think RPA's) possibly being excluded. But I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

I also filtered these results by NBA cards only. For example, I didn't include Scoreboard or Classic cards for Shaq since those were college licensed. Or for Zion i've filtering out South Bay and only included Panini manufactured cards. It honestly doesn't make a huge difference to the total number, but I felt stuff like that needed to be excluded so the data is more accurate. Also keep in mind we're still not fully through Zion's rookie year so not all "products" are listed yet. There also isn't a RC filter for Zion yet so I don't have a way to provide that data at this time. I will edit this post if I find a way to do that.

So here we go..

1992 Shaq cards
51 Total Cards
7 RC's



1997 Tim Duncan cards
137 total cards
18 RC's



2003 LeBron cards
633 total cards
62 RC's



2018 Luka Doncic cards
1270 total cards
27 RC's



2019 Zion cards
1519 total cards
RC's unknown at this time


So there you go. I think it's worth noting again that as we've moved more into the modern age, parallel and serial number cards have become more common place, and thus cause a pretty large uptick in the total "products", or total card count. But to me, this just makes it even harder to determine what a truly desirable card is going to be in the future since we now have 1,500+ different cards to choose from..

Thank you for making this thread. I remember back in March I try to discuss the same topic.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1359503

I remember also back then you had several good points. I had fun reading all the pages and comments in this thread. Good job OP.

[Looking4Luka]

Originally Posted by icollectrookies

Thank you for making this thread. I remember back in March I try to discuss the same topic.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1359503

I remember also back then you had several good points. I had fun reading all the pages and comments in this thread. Good job OP.

That is one of the best post I've read on here and look at the backlash you received by the sheep. Slaughterhouse coming soon for the mass produced market. Keep listening to Gary Vee and Geoff from YouTube guys lol

[LeonfromNC]

Originally Posted by Looking4Luka

That is one of the best post I've read on here and look at the backlash you received by the sheep. Slaughterhouse coming soon for the mass produced market. Keep listening to Gary Vee and Geoff from YouTube guys lol

Gary V had also actually helped me make a lot of money.

So dislike him all you want, but dude is a genius.

[SHowley2003]

Originally Posted by LeonfromNC

Gary V had also actually helped me make a lot of money.

So dislike him all you want, but dude is a genius.

When it come to cards Gary Vee is not a genius. He just has a ton of money, carries “influencer” status and has a gigantic herd of sheep that will do blindly do exactly what he says.

[Jmsiak13]

All of this year's prizm parallels(only Panini prizm 19-20)....quite a few

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