Collecting sports cards is a hobby for many people.
Many of us just love having some of our favorite sports cards in our collection and keep them tidy so one day, we’ll be able to recollect the memories of our favorite sportsmen.
Others are in the business to make a profit. With a bit of wheeling-and-dealing, it’s possible to make a handsome amount of money – if you know when and what to buy.
Sports cards are bigger than ever today. Many people see it as an investment opportunity.
And it’s a bit like buying stocks – sometimes, the prices will go up, other times, they’ll go down. It can be quite unpredictable.
If you’re wondering how to make money from sports cards, we’ll show some great methods that you could use to make some money while collecting your favorite cards along the way.
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Method 1: Buying and Selling Cards
The most obvious way of how to make money from sports cards is to buy cards cheaply and sell them at higher prices.
This method requires you to have some knowledge about the cards but also the players that are involved in the cards. Often, you’ll see that cards of young players that have great potential for the future will get a lot of attention since their values might increase over time.
But as with almost any type of investment, you simply can’t be sure that you’re always going to make a profit.
Players will have their streaks of form; sometimes, they’ll play well, other times, they might get injured, which can cause prices to crash.
You’ll have to be strategic about it, and more importantly, you’ll have to know the market.
Knowing when prices for a particular card are low is crucial for deciding to buy a card. The key with this method is to buy cards at lower prices than usual and then sell them for a profit once the prices increase again.
This requires patience, and it’s a long-term game, as well.
You can test the waters with some smaller purchases at first to see how it goes. If you keep making profits on most of your purchases, then it’s time to move up a bit and buy more valuable cards until eventually, you’re making tidy profits with almost every purchase.
Alternatively, you could also buy boxes with cards and sell cards inside individually. These boxes can be quite expensive, but you’ll have a good chance of pulling that one gem inside that will repay for the box and leave with a bit of cash left.
There’s a bit of gamble to this method, though, as you never know for certain what you’re gonna get inside the box.
How to Get Started
It is not particularly hard to get started with buying and selling sports cards for a profit.
If you have little to no experience with buying and selling cards, then I’d suggest that you start small.
Start with research. Decide which player you’d like to invest in first. Then, it’s time to take a look at the listings.
See which cards are worth buying of this particular player. You’ll also want to consider the potential of this player – the younger the player, the more potential the card has to sell well in the future.
There are a few things that you need to keep in mind. Some of the most important factors when deciding which card to buy include:
- Card brand – some brands are more popular than others, and will thus command higher values. For example for basketball cards, National Treasures cards will almost always be more expensive and valuable than Panini Prizm base cards, for example.
- Type of card – there are several types of cards you can buy. In essence, we have base cards and parallels. Also, rookie cards tend to be the most valuable card of a player. A rookie card is a card that comes from a player’s rookie year so that one is almost always going to be more expensive.
- Grade – the higher the grade, the more valuable the card is. The grade simply tells us how well the card is preserved, and if there are any errors with the card. Cards are