Should I Convert My Basketball Cards to Original Comic Art? 0

[Mickey7]

The card market for almost ALL sports stars has simply exploded. Jordan being the biggest explosion.  Walter Payton, Elway, Trout  etc.  I'm a long time Elway fan.  I could buy PSA 9 rookie cards of his for under $200 all day long a year ago.  Recent sales are around $1,200+.  Thousands of examples like this.  Unopened card boxes have taken off as well.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Mickey7
Correction

[Bronty]

15 hours ago, cstojano said:

Don't those jersey cards destroy the notion that made for collecting gimmicks are for suckers. 

Well, the overriding rule I suppose is the people with the money get to decide what its spent on.

And you've got a multi billionaire buying this kinda stuff so... shrug.

[jick]

I thought I read what I needed to in my last comment, but a lot more new insights here. And yes, my passion is really comic art.

Maybe I should sell my Jordan auto cards so I can finally buy that ArtGerm piece I've always dreamed of... ok, so I'm kidding here haha....

[exitmusicblue]

On 2/14/2021 at 7:17 AM, jick said:

I thought I read what I needed to in my last comment, but a lot more new insights here. And yes, my passion is really comic art.

Maybe I should sell my Jordan auto cards so I can finally buy that ArtGerm piece I've always dreamed of... ok, so I'm kidding here haha....

As the owner of a Kevin Durant rookie superfractor 1/1, as well as the owner of an Artgerm Vampi... I admittedly look at the Vampi more often, but KD has my heart.

Edited February 16, 2021 by exitmusicblue

[campued1010]

Anybody here a good card grader?? I have a Jordan Rookie 86 Fleer. Sides and corners are super sharp, it's off centre so want to get an opinion. Please pm me if you can lend a hand 

[Bronty]

21 hours ago, campued1010 said:

Anybody here a good card grader?? I have a Jordan Rookie 86 Fleer. Sides and corners are super sharp, it's off centre so want to get an opinion. Please pm me if you can lend a hand 

I don't collect cards, but it sounds like a 8 to me

[delekkerste]

I know some guys here are into Greg Simkins' (a.k.a. "Craola") artwork.  His first card for Topps' Project 70 art/baseball card project is available for the next two days only:

Craola Roger Clemens baseball card

Edited March 5, 2021 by delekkerste

[John E.]

I was at Target today and I saw something I’d never seen before. An employee stood in the middle of the main aisle with a shopping cart full of boxes of basketball cards and a long line of (mostly) men in their 20s-40s waiting for them. Each was allowed to take one box. They grabbed one and went back in line. The cart was depleted and they waited for another cart to show up. Target is the new Con I guess. 

[comicwiz]

Over 10 years ago, I landed into some full wax boxes of Topps Star Wars. I had 3 of the 5 sets under my belt, but ever since then, the two boxes I was missing have always seemed very difficult to find. I'm now realizing the first series 1 box that seem to be coming out in droves was something people were holding on to rather than selling because they saw that series greatly underappreciated, and the current uptick in the first 10 cards of that set would seem to indicate this. So I went through and found all my first series extras that I acquired from a collection which allowed me to put together a full set of O-Pee-Chee series 1-3, with loads of extras. I sold four cards, all ungraded, for a good chunk of money - surprising to me because even as recent as a few months ago, the entire first series set of 66 cards was selling in the 50-80 range, and here I sold singles for multiples of the entire set. A few days ago, someone put up a series 3 (which I needed) missing about 13 packs for a full count, and when I was paying for the box, I found out he had a series 1. Now if people don't know, a series 1 recently sold for $36K. He had the box with 7 packs and I managed to buy that box and the series 1 for less than what I got from those four single cards. At this rate, it took ten years to get these two series boxes at a price that was reasonable, to spend another 5-10 years buying sealed packs at a comfortable pace to complete them is fine by me, and funding the purchase from singles that were sitting in a box, pretty much collecting dust relieves any trepidation of buying into a volatile market.

This type of lateral move is something I'm comfortable doing. I'm not sure I would hang on to the cards if I were in your position, but I guess it would be important to know which cards, grades, and such to know what feels right. I think spotscards involve a certain risk not found in non-sports trading cards, where players who may be regarded with massive potential go bust due to injury, early retirement, unethical stuff their caught doing, etc. Anyone who collected in the 90's and bought into Eric Lindros being the next hockey phenom will attest that sometimes things just don't work out the way scouts may have wanted or predicted the way they would. The Jordan's, Gretzky's and Kobe's of sportscards will remain blue chip, if you've got those, I'd hang on to them, I think the Zions and Crosby's and even McDavids are in an era where there's still tonnes of unopened wax boxes people are sitting on, and the moment 9's and 10's start climbing to stupid money, the pop's on those will explode. 2/3rds of the submission of Marvel Trading card pops are 10's (2000+ 10's out of 3000+ cards submitted). People may look to the way pops on comics seem to remain stable even after thousands have been graded in a certain grade tier, but c'mon, we are talking about fresh pack, almost dead centered, cards coming out of hundreds of thousands of unopened boxes, the result is inevitable. This is something that just isn't as readily possible in comparison to a wax box from the 70's or even up to the point in the 80's when Topps started realizing pack-searching and sequencing was causing tampering issues with their brand's legacy and began introducing counter-measures to offset some of the barrel scraping that had been happening to clean out boxes of rookies and hof's without people noticing or realizing it.

These are aspects that simply are non-existent in only example markets like original art. And even though I dislike the practice, not even when artists sell blueline/reproduced commissions to more than one person of the same or near similar inked image of work rendered for a previous commission does that sort activity depress values like populations exploding from everyone getting a 10 like some participation trophy.

Edited March 6, 2021 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

On 2/16/2021 at 6:15 PM, campued1010 said:

Anybody here a good card grader?? I have a Jordan Rookie 86 Fleer. Sides and corners are super sharp, it's off centre so want to get an opinion. Please pm me if you can lend a hand 

Off-centering is akin to the green label in comics. I have an error card which is insanely rare, but the OC notation on the PSA slab will surely act as a detriment to being able to get error money, despite having a lot going for it as and an only known example, it's a Luke Skywalker "rookie" and is from the O-Pee-Chee set, which is usually the gold standard, and worth multiples of what a Topps would get. When I was appraising a Gretzky RC a few years ago, a PSA 9 was going for somewhere around $23-$25K, an off-center (OC) PSA 9 was somewhere in the range of $4-$6K, and those were lingering BIN's with no takers. I imagine with the current market, those may have experienced an uptick of maybe being worth double what they were worth then, but PWCC has a nicely centered PSA 9 at near half a million.

Edited March 6, 2021 by comicwiz