How Sports Card Prices Work

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]If you collect sports cards or you're trying to figure out why certain cards randomly skyrocket in prices while others barely move, this video is for you because sports card prices are not nearly as random as people think. I've been buying and selling sports cards full-time since 2015. And over the years, I've seen cards explode in value, crash, and everything in between. And in this video, I'm going to break down exactly what happens, what actually moves the market, and how sports card prices really work. If you're new here, my name is Eric Michael, and since 2020, I've helped thousands of people learn how to do the same as I do, buy and sell sports cards. I also put together a free PDF down below in the description so you can follow along. Let's get into it.

[00:00:33]Number one, supply and demand. This is pretty simple. When a card or a product of a card first comes out, it starts out really high for two reasons. People are excited. Hype is high. People pay more.

[00:00:44]Two, supply is low. If you just think about it really logically, let's say a Jackson Dart Silver Prism. Let's say there's a thousand of these cards that exist. There's none in existence. And by week two, let's say there's 20 in existence. And then by week three, there's another 20 and so on. So, as more supply comes into the market, demand goes down because that's just how it works. And the hype also dies a little bit, which means the prices go down. That's why you see new products go down in value. It's just simple supply and demand. Number two, and a lot of this is based off of hype, timing. So, the way cards work is people get really excited when cards first come out, like Jackson Dart, Shidor Sanders. They overpay for these things. And as the season gets closer, like the NFL season for example, these cards actually tend to go down in value. Also, a lot of these guys like Dart and Shador and Tyler Shuck, they don't perform up to expectations. Not cuz they're not good players, but because people expect them to be the next Patrick Mahomes, but that never happens. And prices go down. For example, I've bought a lot of Boon Knicks, Jaden Daniels, Michael Pennix in the past few months through January, February, March of 2026. And I've seen these values go up a lot because I was buying, or in other words, I was zigging while others were zagging. So, that's kind of how sports cards works. You want to buy when it's not hot, sell when it's hot, because the hype just follows the new guys. And if you can just do something else while everyone's doing this other thing, it tends to work out.

[00:02:03]Number three, you can look at previous years to indicate what a card will do.

[00:02:07]So, let me give you an example. I'm looking to buy some LaMelo Ball right now, and his cards are like five or 6 years old. So, I don't know how they're going to react in the next four, five, 6 months of the NBA offseason. But what I did is I looked back a year prior and his value jumped about 20 to 25% last year's offseason. Now I expect the Hornets to pick up some guys on really good so I could see that being a little bit more. So I look back at previous years to give me an indication of what is going to happen this year. Number four, condition of a card. So you could have a card that's worth $100, but people will pay more if the card is in good condition. So if you notice yourself losing auctions all the time, this might be one of the reasons why. I, for example, if a card's worth $100 and a PSA 10, let's say it's 400, I have no problem paying 110, 120, 130 depending on the card because I am willing to pay more at the potential upside. And the same thing works if a card is in bad condition. If the card's in bad condition, you're going to see it go for less. People will pay stronger for RAW cards with the idea that this card could possibly get a PSA 10. That's also one of the other reasons why new products get a lot of hype. It sells for a lot of money, cuz the product is new. It hasn't been graded yet. People are buying these cards to grade them and sell them. And as the product gets older and older and older, there's less gradable cards out there naturally push the prices down.

[00:03:21]Number five, people prefer original colors. Blue, orange, gold are some of the staple colors in sports cards. So, if you look at cards and you see orange shimmer that's numbered out of 25 and a regular orange, you'll notice the regular orange will sell for double if not more sometimes than the orange shimmer. People prefer the original bold colors. These are the original colors because back in the day when bowing chrome started to produce colors, the original colors was a blue was at a 150, a gold was at a 50, orange was at a 25, red was out of five, there was the super fractor, then there was the base. That was it. And the original collectors who are the ones with a lot of money still prefer those colors to this day. People prefer those colors, which why sometimes the numbering of a car doesn't make sense. A good example of this, if you ever look at Bowman Chrome, the blue out of 150 will always sell for more than the green out of 99. It doesn't make any sense because the green there's 99, the blue there's 150. You would think there the green would sell for more because there's less of them. Just not how it works with people for those original colors. Number six, sports cards is kind of like stocks in a way with players being younger and older. Let's take a stock of Apple or Disney. These are seasoned companies. These stocks don't move a lot. They'll go up a few percent, down a few%, but if you take a company that's 6 months old and it had a good quarter, you could see it skyrocket up.

[00:04:37]Then they had a bad quarter and it'll skyrocket down. Same thing with sports cards. Jackson Dar, Dor Sanders, these new football players or Cooper Flag or Conanuple, these newer guys. One game could dramatically impact their performance up or down. But god forbid if Nola Joic got injured, it really wouldn't affect his value maybe a little bit because people know he's already great. God forbid Cooper Flag got injured next year, you would see his value go down a ton more than Jokic's.

[00:05:03]Not cuz one player is better than the other. One is proven, one is not. And the last thing, the way you look at sales of cards is just by looking at recent sales. All the other things I talked about up until this point are referring to why sports card values are what they are and how it works. When you're looking at the value of a card, just simply look at the recent sales on eBay. That's it. You can use softwares like Card Ladder. I believe it costs $20 a month. Market Movers, which is a little bit more expensive, or 130point.com, which is free, and I'm sure there's other softwares out there as well. just using recent sales. That's how you know what a card is worth. There are some nuances to it, right? Where like if a card hasn't sold in 5 months, that player's value could have been affected up or down in the past 5 months. And you might want to look at other cards to see, hey, is this player worth more or less in the past 5 months?

[00:05:48]Be careful. Don't just look at a card from 5 months ago, assume that last sale is what the card's worth, cuz a lot could happen in sports cards in 5 months. But those are seven ways and how's why sports card values are what they are. Hopefully this video gave you guys a little bit of value. I'll see you in the next