Selling Baseball Cards – Part IV – How Not To Invest

If you will be purchasing cards to sell later at a higher value, you are investing in baseball cards.  Some may say you are trading, but you are investing.  Before you go ahead and invest, first know that you will make some mistakes in your investments.  It happens to everyone.  You can minimize them though.  

As a general rule, do not buy hobby or blaster (retail) boxes as investments.  Buying these boxes, while it can be very fun, is pretty much the same as gambling. If you spend $100 on a hobby box of Allen and Ginter cards, and wind up with an autograph of a rookie who doesn’t make it to the major leagues, a jersey swatch of a mid-level veteran, and a box full of commons, then you have not made a wise investment. Yes, on occassion you will see someone pull a card valued at $750 from a $100 box. The odds are generally stacked heavily against you here though. I think that buying and busting hobby and retail boxes are a great way to have fun with baseball cards. It’s just that it’s a poor way to invest in baseball cards.

Paying Too Much For Rookies

Do not buy rookie cards at a price well above the players performance record. What I mean by this is don’t spend $75 on a rookie card of a player who hasn’t even put a cleat on a big league diamond yet. Again, this is a general rule. You will find the occasional Albert Pujols Bowman Chrome autograph, as an example, bought for tens of dollars, subsequently increase to thousands of dollars. However, you will generally lose more than you can make back with this type of strategy. With this method, you are purely speculating. You can compare this strategy to investing in the internet stocks of 2000.

Overpaying For Non-Graded Cards

When you purchase a non-graded card, be careful about how much you spend on that card, based on a scan.  A scan of a card, especially considering the quality of the scan, will only tell you a certain amount about the quality of that card.  Without the card having a grade given to it by a professional grading authority (such as PSA or BGS), it’s tough to determine what condition the card is in, and therefore what another card buyer might be willing to pay for that card. 

If you can find a seller with 100% feedback and a superb reputation, you can generally reach out to that seller by e-mail or phone, and inquire as to the quality of the card.  You should expect an accurate answer regarding the seller’s estimation of the condition of the card.  If it is a newer card and was put right in a sleeve and toploader from a pack, you’ll generally hear a seller say the card is in near mint to mint condition. 

When buying previously graded cards, you eliminate this speculation almost altogether.

Questionable Graded Cards

As mentioned above, buying graded cards largely eliminates speculation about the quality of the card you are getting.  If you buy a PSA 10 graded card, you know that it is in mint condition, because it has been reviewed and graded by PSA, an industry leader. 

However, you cannot just purchase ANY graded card and assume that it is in the condition the grading company says its in, or assume that someone else will buy this card from you.  Only the industry leading graders are trusted by baseball card collecting hobby enthusiasts. 

The generally accepted leaders of baseball card grading are the following companies.

Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA)

Beckett Grading Service (BGS)

Sportscard Guaranty (SGC)

Global Authentication (GAI)

There are many other grading services out there, but in order to ensure you are purchasing a quality graded card, which will have resale value, purchasing from an industry leader is a wise move.  

(Beckett also supports grading at a local level, under the acronym BCCG. This is not the same as BGS grading.)

I hope this post was beneficial for you. Remember to be wise in your baseball card investments, and try to avoid some of the more common pitfalls outlined here.