Sports Card Investing Targets - Finding Value In Graded Cards
The NBA and MLB seasons have resumed and I’ve got a few potentially undervalued cards to target. This week I’m going to compare NBA and MLB players across brands and grades and use the new Market Movers ratio data to see if we can find some value in Zion Williamson rookie cards. You can sign up for your own Market Movers Subscription to access the data on your own and by using the promo code GRINDERS you will get 20% off your first payment on any subscription. You will want to sign up for Market Movers specifically in order to access the great tools and data, and if you sign up for the annual Market Movers subscription, you will save you 20% on the entire year instead of just the first month. I’ll be adding additional targets at the end of the article from previous articles so you can see if you can still find the cards within the target range.
We will generally target Panini brands for football and basketball as they own exclusive NFL and NBA rights for sports cards. Just like DFS, be sure to manage your bankroll and don’t spend more than what your budget allows. Make sure you pay attention to the grading when looking at targets. Grading makes a huge difference in price, so price targets will be based on grading. An ungraded card is referred to as “Raw”. When targeting a Raw card, try to find one with the best centering, corners and edges (and surface if you can tell) as that is a card that might be worth sending in for grading. We’ll use SportsCardInvestor’s Market Movers data to evaluate current-market price targets based on what people have been paying most recently. Go above/below that market rate based on your convictions and confidence levels by player.
Sports Card Investing Targets – Finding Value In Comparing Cards
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Juan Soto – First up we’ll take a look at this week’s MLB player, Juan Soto. As you can see from the chart, Soto’s 2018 Topps Chrome Update PSA 9 and 10 cards are diverging a bit which is what we like to see when we’re hunting for value in those PSA 9 cards. If we look back to July 12th, the PSA 9 ($59) held about 44% of the PSA 10 price ($135.26). Currently selling for $54, the PSA 9 only holds about 32% of the PSA 10 value ($168.32) leaving us with about 37% upside if the PSA 9 can make a run to catch back up to that recent price difference.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2018 Juan Soto Topps Chrome Update Base PSA 9 | Target Under $55 |
 | 2018 Juan Soto Topps Chrome Update Base PSA 10 | Target Under $160 |
Anthony Davis – The Lakers are the favorites to win it all this season and Anthony Davis is positioned perfectly for a bump from increased attention on his rookie cards. Taking a look at his 2012 Hoops rookie cards, we can see some value in his BGS 9.5 cards if we compare them to their PSA 10 counterparts. If we look back on July 12th the BGS 9.5 ($189) was worth 53% of the value of a PSA 10 ($355). Since then the prices on the PSA 10 have shot through the roof currently selling for $1,162 whereas the BGS 9.5 is going for 32% of the value at $375. That leaves room for 66% upside on the BGS 9.5 if it is able to move back closer to 53% of the PSA 10 value from a few weeks ago.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2012 Anthony Davis Hoops BGS 9.5 | Target Under $375 |
 | 2012 Anthony Davis Hoops PSA 10 | Target Under $1000 |
LeBron James – Next up we’ll take a look at LeBron James’ 2019 Prizm cards. These are the first Prizms with LeBron in his Lakers uniform and they are experiencing a price spike as the Lakers have continued their mission to win a championship. If we compare historic prices between the PSA 9 and PSA 10 versions of the card we can see that back on July 3rd the PSA 9s ($50) held about 27% of the value of their PSA 10 ($185) counterparts. Currently at $192.41, the PSA 9 holds 24% of the PSA 10 ($802.33) upside leaving around 13% upside on those PSA 9s to catch up to the earlier discrepancy and potentially a lot more than that if the Lakers fulfill their championship dreams this season.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2019 Lebron James Prizm PSA 9 | Target Under $195 |
 | 2019 Lebron James Prizm PSA 10 | Target Under $750 |
Donovan Mitchell – Donovan Mitchell’s 2017 Prizm Base PSA 10 cards have had a recent surge as the Jazz march towards the playoffs. Utah has already clinched a spot in the playoffs which means Donovan has plenty of room for catalysts to propel his cards even higher. His 2017 Optic Base PSA 10 counterparts have been lagging behind presenting us with an opportunity to buy low in anticipation of an upward move similar to the PSA 10s. As recently as July 10th, the Optic ($130) held 64% of the value of a Prizm ($202.50). Currently the Optic sells for $155 which is only 40% of the value of the most recent Prizm price ($389.99). That gives us about 60% upside on the 2017 Optic PSA 10 if we use that recent precedent for price differential.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2017 Donovan Mitchell Optic Base PSA 10 | Target Under $155 |
 | 2017 Donovan Mitchell Prizm Base PSA 10 | Target Under $340 |
Zion Williamson – Finally, we’ll take a look at Zion Williamson’s rookie cards by using the new Market Movers “Ratio” feature where we can compare price ratios between similar cards to see if we can find value at current levels. If we look at the chart below running ratio comparisons between graded 2019 Optic and Prizm cards we can see for the most part they are pretty consistent. The Optic Holo PSA 10, for example, is valued at 7.01X the price of the base card vs the Prizm Silver PSA 10 being 6.36X more valuable than the Prizm base version. But I do recognize a pretty significant difference when we compare the 5.08 ratio between Optic Holo PSA 9 and 10 cards vs just 3.75X for the Prizm Silver PSA 9 and 10 cards. This leads me to believe that the Prizm Silver PSA 10 might be undervalued compared to the Optic Holo PSA 10. “Undervalued” seems like a strange thing to say when looking at a $4,875 Zion rookie card, but it is also possible that the Holo PSA 9 cards could be undervalued at just $446 which seems more likely.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2019 Zion Williamson Prizm Silver PSA 10 | Target Under $4,900 |
 | 2019 Zion Williamson Optic Holo PSA 9 | Target Under $450 |
As always you can sign up for your own Market Movers Subscription to access the data on your own and by using the promo code GRINDERS you will get 20% off your first payment on any subscription.
As our weekly bonus in our articles, here is a list of cards from recent articles that you can check out to see if you can still buy at the target prices. Just click right on the links next to the cards to get to the eBay searches. Here are the additional targets we’ve recently featured in our articles:
