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Last Updated On: September 13th, 2023
One of the most exciting aspects of collecting or investing in sports cards is the ability to track the value of your collectibles over time. The old school way to determine the price of a card and whether it was going up or down in value was by purchasing a price guide, which was usually issued on a monthly basis in a magazine-style format. The #1 name in sports card price guides back then was Beckett.
The good news is that Beckett is now an online price guide, although it’s a paid subscription service. In this post we’ll show you several ways to appraise the value of a sports card similar to using a free sports card price guide.
Table of Contents
Free Tools to Value Cards
eBay Completed (Sold) Listings
The eBay completed listing trick is more well known now than it was over a decade ago, but many newer collectors still have no idea of its availability and how easy it is to use.
Let’s say you want to perform a search on eBay for “2000 SP Authentic Tom Brady RC PSA 9” or similar, the default search will display results for active listings (auction and/or buy it now format).
This search yielded us one active buy it now listing for a price of $10,900 or Best Offer. If you’re using the eBay mobile app on iPhone for example, just tap “Filter” in the top right –> and scroll down to Completed Listings and Sold Listings to enable both like below, and then tap “Show Results” to rerun the search again.
Let’s sort the search by most recently ended results to see the most up-to-date pricing for this card. Just tap “Sort“, then select “End Date: Recent First“.
Now you can browse all the listings that matched your search to determine how much the Tom Brady sold for, if it’s the same PSA 9 grade, the overall picture quality for that particular listing, and even whether the seller had solid feedback — all reasons for why a card can sell below or above average market value.
Notice the most recent sale for this card is listed at the top, having sold for $6,632.99 on March 27th, 2020. There was also a buy it now “Best offer accepted” (2nd result shown), and also a sale for $5,651.22 on January 26th, 2020. This tells us the card appears to have appreciated in value by almost $1,000 in just two months!
One thing to keep in mind about Sold listings is that the buy it now format (not auction) does not display the actual selling price of the card if a “Best offer” is accepted. As you can see the from the 2nd result above, the buy it now price for the Tom Brady was listed at $10,000 and the card appears in the Sold listings with the price struck-through as “$10,000 Best offer accepted”. This is not the exact price that was paid by the buyer. You can ignore these in the listings for valuing a card as it’s not a reliable source of information (more on this in the next section).
One other thing to keep in mind is that eBay’s completed listings only display the last 90 days of activity. So while they’re a good source for appraising recent market trends & prices, they’re not going to give you all the information you need to understand the trajectory — up or down — of a particular card over long periods of time. That’s where 130point.com comes into play.
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130point.com
The site 130point.com is another popular tool for appraising sports cards. There are two main benefits of using 130point:
- Their free online search tool displays eBay auction listings that completed even beyond 90 days
- The price accepted for best offers is actually shown, which is a limitation when viewed directly within eBay completed listings as mentioned previously.
To try it out, go to 130point’s sales search, enter the terms of your search. e.g. 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan #57 PSA 9, and hit Submit. The search results below show us the Jordan Fleer RC in PSA 9 is roughly selling for $16,500 in September, 2023.
PSA APR Pricing History
Earlier in this post we mentioned how eBay only shows the last 90 days of history. Using the PSA Price Guide, we can look at a much longer history of sports cards sales to compare with current prices, and view how a card is trending.
While the PSA price guide only stores information on PSA graded collectibles, it’s still a great resource to compare between cards graded by other companies such as BGS or SGC. Sometimes I’ll use it if I’m buying raw, ungraded cards to determine the potential of the card grading as a PSA 9 or PSA 10 and what it could be worth (e.g. if you’re buying an ungraded card for $50, but as a PSA 9 it’s worth $450, you have considerable upside in perhaps having it graded).
Let’s walk through a full example of how to do this. In our post about the Micheal Jordan Sticker from 1986 Fleer, we talked a lot about the PSA 9 grade and its potential. Here we’ll look at the PSA pricing for the the PSA 10 graded version.
First, start by going to the PSA Price Guide and scroll down to select Basketball. Here you get a first glimpse at all the types of sports, memorabilia, gaming cards (e.g. Pokemon), and non-sports cards PSA is happy to authenticate and grade.
Now we’re going to filter/search for 1986 Fleer. Simply start typing in the filter box “1986 fl…” and the screen will auto-filter the results. Once you see 1986 Fleer Stickers, click the link.
Next, we’re going to click APR to see recent prices sold at auctions. Ignore the “Prices $” link to the left of APR, as that’s more of an average price and seems to lag the true market value right now.
Filter for “Jordan” by typing in the filter box as shown, and click the “Michael Jordan” link once you see it. We know this card is #8 in the Fleer Sticker set, but just in case you’re using this for different cards in the future, be sure you’re picking the correct card by looking at the number as well.
Finally, we’re going to filter for only the PSA 10 grade by selecting it right above the results.
As you can see in the boxed results, the most recent auction results are at the top, and you can already see all the way back to August 2019. As you scroll down, you’ll see years and years worth of data! You can even see the auction house (eBay in many cases), the seller, whether it was an auction or buy it now listing type, and even the specific certification # of the graded card that sold.
PSA also charts the results if you click the blue bar at the bottom of the webpage Show Price Chart. Note: the blue bar will not show unless you filter by a specific number grade (e.g. 10) as we did in the prior step.
Notice how the chart goes all the way back to 2005, where the PSA 10 Jordan Sticker RC traded under $5,000, and is now just a touch away from $35,000!
Summary
That’s a wrap! With eBay completed listings and 130point, you’ll be able to view recent prices of cards, and also view the trajectory of prices using PSA’s APR guide given their elaborate history and charts.
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