The Sports Card Market Has Changed... Here’s Where the Money Is Going

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Dallas Card show and what I saw all over the show floor was an exact representation of where the hobby has come and where the hobby is going. The sports card market is not what it was two years ago. Back then, the cards that would get the most attention at card shows were rookies and prospects. People were throwing money at upside and while there were certainly still many of those cards being offered for sale all over the Dallas card show floor, that's not where most of the attention was going. The biggest money in the sports card market has largely stopped chasing the newest prospect, the hottest rookie or the next speculative flip. Instead, it is now largely flowing into rare, iconic cards of the greatest athletes of all time. And the prices these collectors are paying is staggering. But they're willing to pay a premium for certainty. How long will this shift last and what does it mean for you? I'll break it all down now. The Jeff Wilson show is brought to you by Arena Club, the official home of slide SLAB packs. Now available every day, SLAB packs offer an exciting way to collect graded cards with confidence. Plus, every pack comes with an instant offer to buy your slab. Don't miss out. Explore the latest SLAB packs and more by downloading the Arena Club app. Just search Arena Club in the App Store and use promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. Hello. And here we go. Welcome to the Arena Club Studio Inside Cards hq. You know, it was, it was maybe a proud fatherly moment. It was certainly a retrospective moment when I was at the Dallas Card show and I saw what Reaves was buying. My 15 year old son, Reaves, you probably have seen him in a lot of videos over the course of the years and if you have, you certainly know that Reaves loves the Downtowns and the Kabooms and he loves whoever the hot young who quarterback is and he goes and chases, you know, the patch cards of Michael Penix and players, you know, players of that ilk, right, like trying to figure out which ones he can flip and what the hot name is going to be later in the year. But that's not what he was doing at the Dallas Card show. He wasn't doing that at all. He wasn't buying Michael Penix, he wasn't buying Ben Rice, he wasn't buying Ace Bailey, he was buying Kobe Bryant, he was flipping Tom Brady and he was trying to make moves on Steph Curry cards. It was a change, it was a little different. And by the way, he was extremely successful at it. Reeves had his best card show ever Ever in terms of profitability, more than he even made at the national last year when he was cooking. But his ability to flip and buy and sell and make profit at that card show was on the back of the goats, not on the back of the hot young rookie or prospect. And that is a shift for him, but it's indicative of a shift for the overall market. And if you think back to where the sports card market was during the pandemic during COVID during the boom period that many people cite, the biggest boom in the sports card market, 2020, everything takes off and goes to the moon, continues on into 2021. Well, a lot of the cards that really took off and started to go to the moon first were ultra modern rookie cards, prospect cards, particularly basketball players who hadn't won anything, players who maybe hadn't even played a professional game before. Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, they were the hottest things out there. Quarterbacks before they had done anything substantial on the field, baseball prospects before they'd even meet, met, you know, made it to the major league level. The hobby was all about the next big thing, hype cycle. People were pouring tons of money into serial numbered parallels of players with uncertain long term legacies or case hits of the newest rookie. The question people were asking is which guy is going to become the next LeBron, Brady, Mahomes, Trout or Jordan? They weren't asking themselves as much what LeBron, Brady, Mahomes, Trout or Jordan card should I buy? They were asking what cards of the next guy who might become them someday should I buy? That's what we saw a ton of during COVID And look, that period in sports card history was very exciting. I was caught up in it as well. If you go watch Sports card investor from 2019, from 2020 and a little bit less in 2021, but certainly for 2020 and 2019. A lot of our videos were about that. They were about which guy is up next, which guy should you buy today which could go on and you know, make big dollars tomorrow. And there's lots of funny clips of me saying things like Ben Simmons or Will Greer or, or Lonzo Ball as like, hey, this is a opportunity for investment right now, right? Looks silly today. Of course I also recommended at the same time guys like Shay, Gilgis, Alexander and Jokic. People don't clip those clips because they don't. That doesn't make the point. They want to clip the clips of me messing up. Not necessarily the clips of the ones I got right. And I got some right. But I also got a lot wrong. And at the time, that's what was working, though. And that's what's interesting now. When you look at, you know, those videos six years in retrospect, you're like, wow, why was I putting even a dollar into Lonzo Ball when I could have put a dollar into Michael Jordan? Why did I bother buying a single Ben Simmons card when I could have instead bought a Tom Brady card? Right, of course, of course that's easy to see today. But back then, the cards of the speculative guys were actually the ones that were moving up the quickest. They were the ones where all the hype was. They were the ones where, where the money movement and the ability to flip could occur quickly. I remember Trey Young. I had a, I had a large Trey Young collection in part because he's here in Atlanta and in part because I was speculating on some of his cards. And I remember he had one game, I forget it was 2020 or 2021, probably 2020. He had one game where he, you know, popped off for, I don't know, 40 points or, you know, some hit a bunch of threes, this whole thing. And his cards literally shot out of a cannon. Some of them, I think practically doubled overnight on the back of one game where he put up a record point number. That's what the market was back then. People were buying into hype, people were buying into speculation, and people were buying, literally prices were changing on the back of a one game performance. Now that still happens today. Some. You still see it in my top five cards that I do every week on the Sports Card Investor Channel. It hasn't gone away, but it is not nearly to the degree that it once was. People are not willing to put as much into those types of players and those types of speculative investments today as they were even a few years ago. All that hype made the market very exciting at the time, but also extremely fragile. And when performance disappointed, hype faded, or supply proved too high, those cards fell hard. The market learned a big lesson during COVID Potential is not the same thing as permanence. In fact, those are very, very different concepts. And I'm not saying that it's still not worth taking a chance on prospects. I mean, we saw the rise of Drake Mace cards last year when we saw the rise of Jaden Daniel's cards the year before. We saw the rise of Bo Nix's cards last year and Caleb Williams cards last year. And we saw the rise, even going back to the beginning of this baseball season, of players like Connor Griffin. Those are all young players that a lot of people are still taking a chance on. And there was opportunity to make money on the back of a lot of those players. And then in some cases watch that money fade away as Drake May faded after the super bowl and Connor Griffin has faded heading into this season. And to a degree, we're seeing the same pattern repeat itself right now with Wemby, with Victor Wembanyama. But I would argue that Victor Webanyama is in a little bit of a different class than some of those other guys and we'll talk about that. But as a whole, that type of prospect, prospecting behavior is a lot less today than it was. And instead the market has shifted to a different type of speculating, in a sense, a different type of flipping, a different type of investing. You're seeing the money go in to the all time greats, iconic cards, true rarity, historical importance, strong eye appeal, limited supply, broad collector demand, staying power across generations. That's who people are chasing today. It's the Michael Jordans, the LeBron James, the Kobe Bryants, it's the Tom Brady's, the Patrick Mahomes, the Joe Montanas, the Peyton Mannings, it's the Babe Ruth, the Mickey Mantles, the Willie Mays, the Hank Aarons, the Mike Trouts and even the Shohei Ohtanis. It's the Wayne Gretzky's, it's the Messi's, it's the Ronaldos. Even over in Pokemon. It's the vintage cards, it's the iconic cards, it's the scarce cards. The market wants cards that already matter, more so today than ever before. And if you were at the Dallas card show like I was, those were the cards that were getting the attention. Kobe Bryant cards, really nice Kobe Bryant cards. Exquisite, flawless national treasures autograph cards, low numbered cards, rare cards. They were being flipped all over the show floor. Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and of course Shohei Ohtani. Hot as could be. That's the cards that everybody was coming up and asking for. No one, well, I shouldn't say no one. A lot less people were asking about Jordan Love or Trevor Lawrence or whoever the next best thing is going to be. Those weren't the cards that were getting much attention at the card show. They were there and some dealers were selling them and there were absolutely some people still buying them and trading, trading them at trade nights and everything like that. But the emphasis that was being placed on the goats on the rare cards, on the iconic cards, on the 90s inserts, it was more than I've ever seen before. Now, one word of caution as we walk through this video. Let me say that this doesn't mean that investing in those goat level cards doesn't still have risk. It does. You could argue that the market for those cards might be a little bit overheated right now. And I think there is some decent argument for that. There's so much money that has gone into those names that I just mentioned, like Jordan and Kobe and Brady and their cards have gone so crazy over the course of the last year that I think it would be fair to say those cards are due for a softening period. And I think that that could be the case. I don't know if we're at the top yet, but I think that those cards could face a little bit of softening in the months or year ahead. But, but even if that happens over the course of the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, you're probably going to do really well on those cards. And it's worth noting that as the pandemic rise of cards started to soften in late 2021 and throughout 2022 and into 2023, there were a lot of cards of the goats that hit really big numbers in 2021 that then started to fall off. You saw Tom Brady cards that had sold for millions of dollars now only selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same exact card, for example, you know, between 2021 and like 2023, you saw, you saw big drops even in some of the Go cards. So those drops can occur. But the difference is that a lot of those cards have now come back and in many cases have even passed their all time highs during the COVID pandemic. What hasn't come back is Zion Williamson's market or Ja Morant's market or even to a degree, Luka Doncic's market. He was super hot during the pandemic as well. A lot of his cards fell and they haven't even come back the same to the same levels that they were at. But most Jordans have, most Kobe's have, most Brady's have, not every single one. But many of them are setting all time highs today. So even though those cards were overheated during the pandemic and dropped a lot after the pandemic, those were also the ones that rallied back. In fact, those were the best cards that you could have possibly bought back in 2023 when many of them were at low points compared to where they had been just a couple of years ago. Now they've rallied back to Those all time high prices in some cases have far surpassed those all time high prices. So even if we see another price correction, even if the market for some of those top guys is a little overheated right now and if some of those cards come down 20, 30% over the course of the next year or two, guess what? 10 years from now, if you're still holding that card, I bet it's worth a lot more than it is today, even if the market is a little bit overheated today. So I still love those cards for long term investment, no matter how hot the market is because I think that's where the money is going to go long term. And it should. It should. Why is this happening? Because collectors have been burned by speculation, myself included. I put a lot of money, very, very admitted it on the show, like made it made a very public spectacle about buying big cards of guys like Desmond Ritter. And I said at the time on the shows when I bought the cards, I said this is an extremely speculative, risky play. I'm aware that I might lose all the money that I'm putting into this card. I'm aware I might. And guess what? I did. I lost all my money that I put into that card. I've been burned by speculation gone wrong. I've had some wins too. I mentioned Shea Gilgius Alexander. I had a huge win on several of Shay Gilgis Alexander's cards that I bought back in 2019 that I sold for 5 or 10x more than I bought them for. So I've had wins as well on speculation. But I've also had big losses on speculation and a lot of collectors had big losses on speculation and now a lot of those collectors are more fearful about speculation. And look, myself included, I have put less and less money. I look, I bought a fair number of Michael Pennix cards because I'm always going to be excited about whoever the Atlanta Falcons quarterback is and I'm probably always going to speculate on that player a little bit because that's my hometown team. I put money into Pennix cards but I put less money into Penix than I did Ritter and I might get burnt on Michael Penix Jr. As well. It's not looking great right now. And whoever the next Falcons quarterback is a few years from now, if it's not Michael Penix Jr. I'll probably speculate on his cards as well. But probably a little bit less than I did in Penix and a little bit, a little bit less than I did in Desmond Ritter. It's okay to Speculate, I will speculate, but it's a better idea to put more money into the gray cards and the iconic cards. And I certainly have been doing a lot more of that over the course of the last five years than I have speculating. One of the best moves that I ever made in the sports card market was in 2023. I spent upwards of a million dollars investing in cards of the greats that had come down a lot since their Covid highs. And I felt like those cards were going to be really good long term investments. And I felt like they were at really low prices compared to where I thought they eventually could get to. So I bought a lot in 2023 and those bets have paid off massively for me, big time. And there's still opportunity for a lot of those cards to continue to go up. And as I said, I don't know if they will over the next year or two, I don't know, the market will come down a little bit. But over five years, over 10 years, over 20 years, I feel real good about a lot of those cards continuing to go up. The money is going there because a lot of people bought high on prospects, on ultra modern rookies and they learned painful lessons. They learned that not only does that player that you speculate on have to become great, but then they have to stay great and then they have to become historically important. Then the card itself still has to matter. That's a lot of things that have to go right. And your chances that that new Jackson Dart card that you just bought is going to check all of those boxes in 10 or 20 years. The chances of that are pretty small. So why buy the Jackson Dart? Why not just take the same amount of money and go buy the Tom Brady or the Patrick Mahomes or the John Elway or the Dan Marino and that's what a lot of people have shifted to doing. And look, I understand it is fun to speculate. I love to speculate. I am still going to buy Jackson Dart like cards. I'm still going to do it and it's perfectly fine to do. I get excited about the young prospects and their careers turning into something. But balance it out with buying a lot of the really good goat stuff too. Please, please do that. Make your collection diversified. You know, it's, it's not about buying the low numbered car to the player who might become the next Tom Brady. Just go buy Tom Brady. And that's what the market has been doing over the last couple of years. And that's where all the money is going and you're seeing it more than ever before. When you go to a card show like the Dallas card show. You know, with modern cards, there's so many parallels, there's so many value, you know, variations, there's so many inserts, there's so many different things. It's, it's, it's even hard for people to navigate. And it's hard for people to know which ones of those are going to stand up over time because not all of those are going to stand up over time. With a lot of cards of the, of the greats. If you go back to their rookies, they were from a little bit of a simpler time in the card market and that actually makes it a little bit easier to invest. You got less choices, there's more certainty about the cards that are going to be historically significant. And that means that your money is more likely to hold up properly in those cards. And you've got to understand we're at a point right now where sports cards are really being respected as an investment class. They're really being respected as a true alternative investment. You've got a lot of big outside money coming in. You've got investors, you got investment funds coming into the sports card market. And I think a lot of that money is here to stay. That money wants safety. That money doesn't want speculation. That money wants to invest in legacy and historical relevance and condition, scarcity and card importance and cultural significance. Because that money knows that that is going to lead to stable appreciation in the long term. And that's where that money wants to go. That money, money, that money doesn't want to ride on the speculative nature of some new prospect or some new rookie. That money wants to ride on what it believes is going to be a really good long term investment. It wants, that's where that money wants to go. And look, this does not mean that prospecting is dead and that speculating is dead. But I would suggest to you, if you want to speculate, if you want to prospect like I still like to do, I would say just do it with more selectivity and really ask yourself, is this player I'm investing in, could this player truly become generational? And am I buying, if they do, am I buying a recognized key card of theirs that's going to be desired 20 or 30 years from now? It's a respected brand, it's a respected card, it's a well known card. It's a car that's likely going to remain liquid and appreciate over time. If the player appreciates the way you are hoping, understand you're taking risk. It's risky, but when you think about like who those prospects are, that could become truly generational. That's where I look at a guy like Victor Wembanyama and I would say, look, if you want to put your money into a speculative play, he's still speculative. He hasn't won anything yet. But in terms of could this guy, the chance, the percentage chance that this guy could become an all time great, the percentage chance that he could is greater than just about any other speculative prospect bet you could make today. Maybe Cooper Flag too. But Wemby is out ahead of Cooper Flag for sure. If you're thinking about prospecting, I would, I would go for the best prospects, the guys who have that greatest chance of reading, of reaching goat level someday. It's still a big risk. But if you don't go for those guys, you're really taking a risk and it's a long shot that you're going to be better off putting your money there than you would have been just putting your money into the all time greats. Now I challenge you. As you're thinking about your card portfolio and you're thinking about how you want to put money into the sports card market, I challenge you to think about are you investing short term or long term? Because if you want to put money into those speculative plays, you got to think short term. You're playing a short term game. You're playing a. I'm going to play a. I'm going to buy a player thinking he's going to get hot this season or this playoffs or go up in the next two years. I'm going to flip it for 100% profit or 200% profit or 300% profit. There's nothing wrong with that. But just know that's a lot different mentality than long term. And if you're long term, that's where you got to go with the players who have the legacies, with the players whose cards are recognized by the market, with the cards that are truly limited, with the players that people are going to care about and the cards that people are going to care about in 10 or 20 years and who there will be a deep buyer base four, which by the way, that's a decreasing number of players as time goes on. What players do you really care about buying from the 90s or from the 80s or from the 70s? It's not a very big list for most collectors. And so the guys from the last 10 years, there are many players who are not going to be thought about or certainly having collectors spend money on them 20 years from now. You got to find the rare goat cards. You got to find the players that people are going to care about putting money into down the road. Now, once again, just because the market is going in this direction right now does not mean that the market could not drop for some of these cards. Some of the sales that I'm seeing for Kobe's and Jordans and some of these guys, I'm looking at going like, wow, is that your absolute best investment opportunity at this moment? I don't know. I think there's maybe some interesting auxiliary investments that are still involving the goats, that are still involving a lot of, you know, some of the incredible players. I mean, just to give you one that's certainly more in the speculative category, but as you guys know, I bought a huge signed Sports Illustrated magazine collection. A lot of those are still dirt cheap. But what about a Mickey Mantle first ever signed Sports Illustrated, or a Willie Mays first ever signed Sports Illustrated or the Tom Brady debut Sports Illustrated signed or the LeBron debut Sports Illustrated signed? I think those are kind of tricky investments right now because Brady's cards are in the stratosphere. So a lot of the really rare ones are right, as are Lebron's, as are a lot of these guys. So what other ways can you invest in them? Is it sign magazines? Is it game used? What other categories can you still buy the goats? But maybe that category hasn't matured yet and there's opportunity for that category to move up and your investment in the goat might move up along with it. Maybe it's NFTs, I don't know. A lot of people swear by Panini blockchain right now. NBA top shot. I'm not endorsing it. I'm not saying that's it by any means. I'm just saying you could look to categories like that. You could look to game use memorabilia, you could look to sign magazines for alternative ways of investing in the goats. Do so carefully, do all of this carefully, keep a pulse on where things are going, talk to collectors, go to card shows, get a feel for all of it. But at the end of the day, I suggest parking more of your money in the guys who you know are going to continue to remain great investments for decades to come and step back from a little bit of the speculating that drove so much of the sports card market over the last five plus years. And this does not mean that the hobby is getting any less exciting. I think it's more exciting than ever before. It's just the hobby getting more discerning. The hobby has become smarter about where the money wants to live. All right, guys, what did you think about the show? Curious to hear from you in the YouTube comments today. And if you enjoy the show, give it a Like and a subscribe. Don't forget to subscribe everywhere. The Jeff Wilson show channel on YouTube and also the Jeff Wilson show on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify. Subscribe to all of those spots so you can listen on the go. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon with my next one. Take care.