The Sports Card Market Sucks: 7 Tips for How to Approach a Bad Market

Let’s call it how it is. The market sucks right now.

We’re coming out of the strongest card market of all time in 2020 and 2021. The market experienced a major pullback in early 2022. In late 2022 and early 2023, we’ve seen the impact of inflation and economic downturn continue to hold back the card market.

So what do we do? Is it time to give up and start using our graded card slabs as coasters?

Nah. It’s not time to quit – it’s time to get smarter. There are still opportunities to profit from sports cards even in a bad market.

We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, however. We need to adjust our behaviors if we want to be successful. Doing what we did two years ago won’t work today. We need to be more strategic to ensure our buying and selling decisions match the current state of the market.

Let’s talk about how.

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Tips for How to Approach a Bad Market

This is not financial advice. We want to provide some perspective on what works – and what doesn’t – in a tough economy & card market. Here are 7 key tips:

Tip #1: Forget About the Pandemic Card Market

This is a tough one for those who’ve been around the past couple years, but we’ll say what needs to be said. It’s time to forget about how great the card market was during the pandemic. Pretend it didn’t exist. It’s gone. Comps from the pandemic years aren’t relevant anymore and those over-inflated values are not coming back.

It’s also financially irresponsible, because while you wait for your failed investment to rebound – and you’ll be waiting a long time – you’re missing opportunities to make money elsewhere. We cover this in-depth in Opportunity Cost and Sports Cards.

In short, don’t let “what you paid” stop you from doing what’s right. If the only reason you’re not selling something is because you don’t want to take a loss, it’s time to reconsider. What you paid is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is where the card’s value is going moving forward.

Is holding that card the best way to make money?
Or should you cash out and put the money into a different card that’s actively rising in value instead?

Don’t let your ego and fear of taking a loss get in the way of making far more money on something else.

It’s also critical to remember that just because something sold for $X in the past, doesn’t mean it will ever sell for $X again.

Summary: The pandemic prices are gone. Stop costing yourself money by waiting for them to return and go find something that you can make money on right now. Every day you hold a dead asset is another day you’re missing out on potential gains elsewhere!

Tip #2: Don’t be Greedy!

The way the card market worked during the pandemic made it easy to get greedy. Values climbed and climbed and never seemed to fall, so sellers often passed on reasonable profits to hold for even bigger gains.

Here’s the kicker: it worked the past couple years.

The problem is, it doesn’t work like that anymore. Values have come back to earth, and we aren’t seeing things double and triple in a matter of weeks for no reason.

Even if you didn’t experience the card market during the pandemic, it’s still important in a bad market to avoid greed. We have to be ready to take profits when they’re available instead of hoping for a massive payday on every single card we buy. The profit that’s available today might not be available tomorrow.

Don’t be Uncle Scrooge. Set your sell targets when you buy something. If it gets there, be ready to sell and move onto the next one.

Tip #3: Stop Buying Boring Cards

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but someone definitely does: it’s time to stop buying boring, non-rare garbage cards.

Only buy base cards if they’re all you can afford or if you’re buying them raw to grade and flip. Otherwise, it’s time to graduate to something better because rarity matters.

– Rare cards sell for more than common base cards – why is that? Because lots of people want them and there are a limited quantity.

– What about high grade cards? They sell for more than raw or low grade cards – why? Because lots of people want them and there are a limited quantity.

– Why do the values of rare cards often change at a more rapid pace than common base or low grade cards? Because lots of people want them and there are a limited quantity.

Are we recognizing the theme yet? Here it is if you haven’t picked up on it yet:

Base cards are not exciting.

If everyone has a copy of a certain card, then is it really special in any way? Or valuable? No, it isn’t.

Instead, we prefer to target cards that are serial numbered, autographed, high grade with a low pop report (more on this below), and/or otherwise differentiated from other cards of the player.

Rarity gives us the opportunity to have more influence over a card’s sale price. If we want to sell a card serial numbered to 25, and it’s the only one that has surfaced in years, don’t you think we might be able to ask for more than current market value? If someone wants it, they have no choice but to pay your price.

We’d like to see you try the same strategy with the base version of the same card. When 10-50 copies get auctioned every single week, you have zero influence on value. You’re at the mercy of “what the last one sold for.”

And in a bad economy and bad card market, having to price at “what the last one sold for” in order to move your card gives you virtually zero control. We need to have some control if we’re going to consistently win.

There’s also virtually always a buyer for rare cards – even of lesser players. That means even if you’re wrong about a player, you’ll at least have a much better chance to get your money back when you decide to sell.

Choose rare cards over base cards and you will find it easier to move your inventory while having more influence over value.

Tip #4: Data Is Your Friend

This is simple. If we’re better informed, we will make smarter decisions as buyers and sellers. There are multiple sites that offer sold listing data. Use them.

If you haven’t already, bookmark eBay Research for a year of eBay sales data. For more in-depth data and analytics, we prefer Card Ladder, which pulls multiple years of data from eBay, multiple auction houses, and other sports card buy/sell sites.

Use data to your advantage and pay close attention to the market. Things change rapidly and we need to be ready to respond.

Tip #5: Reevaluate Who You’re Buying

In a strong economy and card market, money is typically spread into far more players and cards. In a bad market, it’s the opposite. Most players’ values may suffer, but it’s the mid and low end players who take the biggest hit.

Who typically deals more in low and mid end cards? It’s usually the people with less disposable income who are forced to reprioritize their spending in a bad economy. Money is taken out of cards to pay for things like groceries and gas. The low and mid end markets take a hit as result.

On one hand, we could view this as a buy-low opportunity if we expect the market to rebound. In the short term, however, continuing to pour money into second and third tier players is foolish.

Sure, there will be outliers and money can be made on anything, but if we look at the big picture, many of the mid-tier players who may have been excellent investment candidates a year or two ago are no longer good buys. Don’t put your money into a sinking ship.

Instead, focus on the key players people actually want and high upside rising stars. Those guys have widespread demand, time to figure it out, or both. This means we give ourselves a better chance to win.

He’s not a steal, he’s irrelevant

Please note that continuing to buy a low or mid end player whose cards we didn’t sell at much higher values a year or two ago because “now he’s a steal” is a really lousy strategy. He’s not a steal, he’s irrelevant. And to put more money into his cards expecting a strong return is a long shot unless the market rebounds or the player outperforms expectations.

Even if he plays well, there aren’t enough buyers out there supporting the low and middle segments of the market right now for you to make big money. The easier play is to move on and focus on a player who is in demand!

Apologies to those holding guys like Rui Hachimura, Darius Bazley, and Grayson Allen cards hoping for a boom, but we just don’t see it happening. Looking at their cards on eBay may make them seem cheap relative to how high they’ve sold in the past, but that doesn’t make them a good buy. It just means nobody cares and most people have given up on them.

In a strong market, we can often make a case for the top 25%-35% of players to be decent investments. In a bad market, we need to tighten our buying criteria and focus mostly on the top 5-10% of players. That’s where most of the money is being funneled. As the market rebounds (it always does), we can start to expand our player pool again.

In the meantime, it may be time to change up your saved searches if we’re still looking at players we thought were good buys two years ago. Are they still good buys? Or is it time to move on? Don’t get tunnel vision and forget how many other great opportunities are out there.

Tip #6 Quit Ignoring the Pop Report

The pop report is the public record of how many of each card have been graded as each grade. Here’s PSA’s Pop Report, for example.

On the surface, certain cards may seem like a good investment. You find a good player and pick a key RC graded as a PSA 10 – great! But when you dig into the numbers, some cards simply aren’t rare, even as 10s.

Luka Doncic has made plenty of money for investors the past few years, and he is probably one of the safer long term investments. His key RC is his 2018 Panini Prizm RC (see on eBay).

The only problem is they are so overproduced and so easy to grade that there are almost 20,000 PSA 10s. With a pop like that, it’s very difficult for a card to rise in value. In a bad market where cash becomes more important than cards to a lot of folks, too many people are happy to auction cards like this and take what they get. That means we’re always at the mercy of “what the last one sold for” when trying to sell our own.

18,000+ PSA 10s also means supply is very high, meaning we need even higher demand for values to rise. Doncic is an incredibly good player, but that’s a lot to ask.

The pop report matters, especially in the long run and especially in a bad market. Similar to avoiding base cards, we want to avoid high pop counts and focus on cards that are harder to find in high grade slabs.

Tip #7: Grade, Grade, Grade Some More

In a bad market, cards are often slower to rise than normal – even when a player performs at a high level. This means we need to find other more predictable and consistent ways to make money.

Our favorite method is to focus more resources toward grading raw cards. Grading can create immediate profit margins if we successfully get the grades we need. It removes the need to wait for a value increase caused by a player over-performing, etc.

PSA pricing and turnaround times are both back within reason, so there’s no longer a reason not to grade.

Grading is one of the easiest and most repeatable ways to make money with sports cards, especially in a bad market. Use it as a way to jumpstart your card venture and create your own profits while so many cards are stagnant.

If you need help, see our full guide to Grading Sports Cards. And for an outline of other money-making strategies, see our guide: How to Make Money with Sports Cards.

Where do we go from here?

We believe in the future of the sports card market. The market has survived for over a century. We’ve seen the market fall in the past, and it always comes back. If you believe, then don’t be fearful.

It’s ok to be patient.

It’s ok to pull back on your buying if you’re not comfortable and want to limit risk.

Alternatively, it’s also ok to look at the current market like a prime opportunity to buy, as long as we’re focused on the right kind of players and the right kind of cards.

Sell if you need to, and buy if you want to.

The most important thing is that we don’t panic. Panic leads to irrational, emotion-driven decisions, and that’s where we can get in trouble. If we keep a level head, we’ll be ok.

Our Strategy

This is not financial advice. The market is volatile, which means there’s a lot of risk with investing anything right now. Only you can decide what’s right for you.

We do want to keep it real and share exactly what we’ve tried to do over the past few months in this lousy market.

Things we’ve moved

The overarching theme has been to try to is “trim the fat” out of our inventory.

That means moving things like base cards and non rare parallels. It means selling some duplicates to free up cash. We looked at what we felt like the cards that would be impacted the most by a bad market and moved as many as we could.

Another important step we’ve taken is to analyze certain players (here’s another shameless plug for Card Ladder – their data is truly so valuable) to decide whether or not we still believe in their upside. While doing this, we’ve been extremely conservative with expectations of where values can go in the short term.

Things we’ve kept and continued buying

We’ve also kept perspective and continue to look at the big picture. That means holding many of the key rare cards that can’t be easily replaced, as their values are typically going to be far more “bad market proof” than common cards.

On top of this, we’ve put a greater focus on buying more rare cards at values we believe will feel like huge discounts in the future. Timing the exact exact bottom (or peak) of a market is virtually impossible, but we’re comfortable buying as long as we’re focused on rarity and the right kind of players.

All the while, we’ve increased our grading activity. As discussed above, grading is a simple way to create a profit margin regardless of a bad market.

It’s all about making smart, calculated decisions. Remember that more millionaires are made during recessions than any other time, so it’s not impossible to profit right now. We need to remove emotion from the equation as much as possible so we can make the right decisions, and we will turn out just fine.

Will the market return?

The market will be back – it always rebounds. If the economy was booming and the card market was falling off a cliff, maybe we’d feel differently. But because most markets are hurting right now with recession fears abound, we feel there’s reason for optimism the card market will turn – just like we expect the economy as a whole will.

In the meantime, let’s stay level-headed, leave outdated strategies & bad habits behind, and adjust our behaviors so we can continue to profit even in a bad market.

If you enjoyed this content, see Cardboard Philosophy for more sports card strategy.

Disclaimer

Cardboard Profit LLC operates this site and offers the content of this site for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content of this website is not financial advice, investment advice, or any kind of advice. Cardboard Profit is in no way responsible for any kind of loss you may endure, financial or otherwise. Cardboard Profit has a strong track record of success, but past performance does not guarantee future results. The sports card market can be volatile, which means there is risk associated with buying cards. You are 100% responsible for your own finances, decisions, and actions. You are also fully responsible for any possible loss that results from your decisions or actions. Please act responsibly.