Sports Card Investing Targets - NBA Cards To Target Now
NBA is getting closer and with the return will give us a better grasp on players to target. This week I’m going to compare NBA players across brands. 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 – NBA Players To Target Now
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Lonzo Ball – Zion leaving the bubble for a family emergency isn’t great news for Lonzo but all reports are saying that Zion will be back for the first game so I’m not too worried. Lonzo and Zion have shown to be a great pairing when on the court together. The Pelicans have a 114.6 offensive rating and a 99.4 defensive rating when they are sharing the court. That ranks 5th in the Western Conference. The Pelicans also have one of the easiest schedules remaining and are +300 to claim the 8th seed. If the Pelicans do get hot and jump to the 8th seed then I think Lonzo and Zion will be a big reason why and there will be plenty of Lonzo to Zion alley oop highlights flooding ESPN and Youtube. Lonzo’s Prizm rookie has made a big leap over the last month but his Optic card hasn’t seen the same spike at a much lower population. I’m a big fan of the Optic brand and the Rated Rookie imagery so I think Lonzo’s Optic rookie is an especially good buy right now.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2017 Lonzo Ball Donruss Optic Basketball Base PSA 10 | Target Under $75 |
 | 2017 Lonzo Ball Donruss Optic Basketball Base PSA 9 | Target Under $30 |
 | 2017 Lonzo Ball Donruss Optic Basketball Base Raw | Target Under $5 |
RJ Barrett – It’s crazy to think that a number 3 pick in the draft could be a sleeper pick but I really love RJ’s upside and he really isn’t getting a lot of love in the hobby so far. Just two years ago he was the number one recruit in the country and heading to Duke only to be overshadowed by his teammate Zion. He still had a very good freshman season at Duke and landed in the Knicks lap at number 3. His struggles this season were somewhat predictable for a 19 year old kid. The Knicks force fed him major minutes as the primary initiator of the offense when he is better suited as a scorer/slasher type. He was clearly fatigued as the season went on and he struggled with his shooting percentages. Even so, he was still only 19 and the only player to play more minutes at the age of 19 was Lebron James. If the Knicks as an organization can just get out of their own way and hire a good coach to implement any semblance of a winning scheme then I think RJ has immense upside. Just imagine what his card prices could do if the Knicks turn it around to become a top 3-5 team in the East over the next few seasons with RJ being their star player in the biggest media market in the world. The sky is the limit.
Chart Courtesy of SportsCardInvestor.com
| Sports Card | Description | Target Price |
 | 2019 RJ Barrett Donruss Optic Basketball HOLO PSA 10 | Target Under $300 |
 | 2019 RJ Barrett Donruss Optic Basketball HOLO PSA 9 | Target Under $125 |
 | 2019 RJ Barrett Donruss Optic Basketball HOLO Raw | Target Under $50 |
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 a new bonus in our articles, we are going to list all the 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:
