Collecting Cards

When I was a kid and in my teens, I collected baseball and basketball cards. I had binders and boxes full of sports cards. I bought packs of cards and traded cards with friends. I also collected various collectibles – like Starting Lineup figures and Wheaties boxes with athletes images on the front of the box.

I recently brought my collection to my home from my childhood home so I could share with my kids. My son has been collecting sports cards with a focus on soccer cards. It was fun going through my card collection with him because he has seen highlights of many of the players and has seen some of them play or watched them on tv.

I started getting into buying collectible sports cards with my son. I don’t particularly have the patience to buy and open packs, although that is something he enjoys.

Like domain names, there is a lot of nuance in sports cards. When it comes to autographed cards, it seems that Leaf is the least valued of the major brands. It doesn’t seem like they have the licensing from leagues, so many cards don’t have team names or logos on them. Panini is popular with soccer, but they don’t seem to have MLB team licensing, so player cards will say “Boston” instead of Red Sox, and uniforms won’t have the logos.

Cards that are PSA rated tend to have more value, but there can be a pretty big gulf between PSA 10 and PSA 9. You can pay to have cards authenticated and graded, but it’s not cheap if the card is valuable. When buying cards for investment purposes, you have to think about all of these factors since an ungraded card may be priced significantly less than a PSA 10 card, but if you pay for grading and it comes in at a PSA 9, it could be worth less. The player could also suffer an injury or go through a big slump, and that could impact its value.

You can’t just start buying sports cards without a general understanding of the brands and the marketplace. I think the learning curve is similar to domain names.

Within the last couple of months, I have been mostly focusing on soccer and baseball cards. Some of the autographed cards I’ve bought are Bukayo Saka, Lamine Yamal, Robert Lewandowski, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Thomas Muller.

I am not really buying sports cards as investments. Yes, it would be nice if they become more valuable, but I am not spending this money with the idea that I will sell these cards. It’s been a fun way to connect with my son, and it’s neat to see a bit of a parallel with domain name investing from the aspect of someone who knows very little about the business of card collecting.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

6 COMMENTS

  1. I collected 90 percent of my sportscards before I was 13, bought with my lawn mowing and landscape hustle as a kid.

    About 40 percent are graded and authenticated.

    I have every HOF player in baseball, football and most in basketball. Also many boxing cards. No hockey or soccer yet.

    I sold a Willie Mays authenticated rookie card in a PSA 7 a few days after the Say Hey Kid’s death for quite a bit recently.

    These are liquid assets — if they’re graded and authenticated.

    Heritage will auction off many of my sports cards next year. My collection includes many Mickey Mantles, a few Babe Ruths, Lou Gehrig, many Ted Williams cards, along with Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain.

    I picked them up for about 5- 10 dollars per card as a kid. I’m one of the lucky ones whose mom did NOT throw out my cards while I was in college or living overseas …:)

    My sports card collection is way more valuable than my domain portfolio of 3500 domains.

    Graded and authenticated

  2. it was a 1951 Bowman Willie Mays RC #305
    Graded 7 NM (Near Mint)

    If it had a grade of 9 or 10, it would have fetched over 100 K USD

    I used the monies to buy one of my grail cards — a Josh Gibson card, who was the star of the “NEGRO LEAGUES” and considered by many the greatest power hitter all time — along with the Babe, Teddy Ball Game, Willie Say Hey, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds

    Low low population of Josh Gibson cards, and a real shame Josh Gibson never got a chance to play in the MLB due to racial bias, the barrier the great Jackie Robinson broke.

    Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Joe Dimaggio, Lou Gehrig, and Honus Wagner are some of my treasured cards.

    Unfortunately, I don’t own the Honus Wagner card that is worth over 10 million USD. I believe there are only 3 in circulation, with Wayne Gretsky and Warren Buffet owning 2 of them

    I bought most of my cards at the age of 13 from the owner of a pool hall near my junior high school…I understand he had many “girlfriends” and a wife and many kids to support at the time, so he was a “motivated seller”

    • Great story. I told my son about Josh Gibson. I agree that it’s a shame he never got the chance to play in the MLB. I am glad the league decided to add his stats to the record books.

  3. Yes, Elliot…. it’s such a shame Josh Gibson never got to play. Of course you can never verify what people claimed — but they say he launched some balls over 500 feet many times in Homestead, FL and in Venezuela

    at least other great black players like Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Larry Dolby and Monte Irvin got to play in the MLB and they did shine … Monte Irivin also was a military hero

    It’s fantastic you’re teaching your son about these often forgotten baseball greats

    BTW — Go Sox — what a scrappy team and stellar pitching and all world Devers and Duran having amazing years

    In Wild Card at the break and just 2 games behind the Yankees in losses

    I really like this team — they remind me a bit like the tenacious 2004 Red Sox team

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