September 2022: Sports Card Opportunity Report

Welcome to September! It sure seems like the Sports Card Market is as strong and stable as ever, with singles and wax being super liquid all across football, F1, basketball, baseball, soccer and even hockey. While the NFL hype season is in full swing, and soccer is ramping up with the kickoff of the Champions League and World Cup anticipation, we’re advising to liquidate football and look to invest more in basketball, baseball and hockey plays. Our premium subscriber community continues to grow, and we’re extremely invested in continuing to improve our product for you - our members. Some feedback we received this past month includes: Cut down on ads. Well, we’re pumped to announce that we’ve implemented an ad-free experience for members. You deserve it, so we made it happen. Improved “Buy, Sell, Hold” organization. In the Spring, we implemented drastically improved player profiles across the board, with a new “Buy, Sell or Hold” designation to each player that we update daily. This ensures that whenever you check the site, we are giving you our recommendation as to how to time the market with regards to the opportunity to hopefully maximize profits for each player. You all asked if we could improve the organization of this. We have several options, but since this changes so frequently, we think the best way forward is to feature our top Buys, Sells and Holds here in this monthly article moving forward. Tracking Our Picks. As you know, “The Play” section of every player profile features our recommendation regarding what to do with each player’s cards at the moment. Feedback from you all indicated that we should track our predictions. We love this. So starting in this monthly installment of the Sports Card Opportunity Report, and moving forward, we are also implementing a “We Were Right About. We Were Wrong About.” section. More Soccer. Many of you have requested more soccer content. We are releasing Episode 6 of the Soccer Card Strategy Show, and have added several Soccer Card Player Profiles to our rankings, and will continue to do our best to be a leader in Sports Card Soccer Content. Happy 1 year anniversary to the Sports Card Strategy Show. And finally, one more shout out to the Sports Card Strategy Show and our audience! We just celebrated our 1-year anniversary of the show, and plan to keep it going for many years to come. Thanks again to all of you who listen or watch, and please remember to leave us a review on Apple. One More Important Note. Card Data. We have made a strategic decision to change the way we display card sales data on the site. What we were doing - grabbing all recent sales of three different levels of cards: low, medium and high. What we are doing now - focusing only on the most investable and liquid cards that other sports card data tools primarily ignore. We have begun creating data feeds from 130point.com showing tables and charts of the most recent sales data. We keep these updated weekly for each player and it helps us determine our recommendations in “The Play” section. Why - As much as we respect data tools like Market Movers, Card Ladder and others, we really aren’t trying to be them. They consistently miss sales of key investable rookie cards, like Contenders Rookie Ticket Autos, Prizm Autos, NT RPAs, Origins RPAs, Bowman Chrome 1st Autos and more - including Goodwin Champions Autos, UD SP Authentic Autos, etc. We are focused on cards like this for each player. We believe this will continue to differentiate us from other subscription tools on the market and keep us the most valuable for our subscribers. That said, below is the September Premium Member-Only Sports Card Opportunity Report. Cuyler Smith Cards. In a Special Edition of the Sports Card Strategy Show, we dug into top cards for cinematic/fictional athletes. In doing our research, we found that one card brand in particular was consistently selling on the secondary market (eBay) more than anything else. Cuyler Smith Cards - https://www.cuylersmith.com/store/trading-card-aps Cuyler Smith is a super talented illustrator, who obviously has a keen sense of pop culture and relevance. He has used his talents to specifically create sports cards of fictional characters that are athletes in some regard. This includes everything from Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen, He Got Game) and Neon Boudeaux (Shaquille O’Neal, Blue Chips) to Pam Beesly (Scranton Volleyball, The Office) and Roy Kent (AFC Richmond, Ted Lasso) cards. The question is, do they sell? Well, many of his drops sell out quickly on his website at $20/each, but some of the top sales on eBay include: Lucas Sinclair (Stranger Things) Basketball Card ($34.99) Roy Kent (Ted Lasso) AFC Richmond Coach Card ($100) Willie Mays Hayes (Major League) Card ($325) Dottie Hinson (A League of Their Own) Card ($425) Here are current listings you may want to check out. Why are they investable? First of all, they’re extremely aesthetically pleasing. Secondly, they’re culturally relevant. Lastly and most importantly, they’re rare. Not only is there nothing else like them, but they are each individually signed by the artist and hand serial numbered on the back (usually to no more than 250). So there’s built-in scarcity. These make perfect investment plays because there will always be a collector who is interested, and we can potentially predict market spikes with the releases of new seasons of popular shows, movie remakes or reboots, etc. The lowest hanging fruit could be investing in a Ted Lasso character card now, before any announcement about when Season 3 will air. Tracking Our Picks. We Were Right About: Oscar Piastri - We’ve been high on Piastri since February 2022, and began buying his cards shortly after the release of his first autos in the 2021 Topps Chrome F1 set. We ranked him in our top 25 overall sports card rankings and have had him in our top 30 the whole way. His prices were super high following the release, then dipped due to the fact that he was no longer racing in F2 and was instead serving as a back-up driver for Alpine in F1. But in August, the hype cycle picked back up again around Piastri surrounding the controversy of his eventual appointment to his first F1 seat - ultimately, with McLaren. Now that he’s with McLaren, teaming up with Lando Norris in 2023 as the youngest, most exciting and possibly most talented team in F1, there is a really solid runway to sell his cards leading up to his F1 debut. Darius Garland - Our love for Garland, like Piastri, has been off-the-charts. He has been as high as #8 overall in our rankings and we’ve touted him as a buy over and over again. We’re entering a situation where his card value is going to steadily rise. Not only are the Cavs now primed to compete in the East for years to come with their young core of Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, but Garland is primed to be a perennial All-Star at the forefront of future success. At first, I saw Garland as a challenge because of his lack of Panini Rookie Autos (he only has Upper Deck Autos), but now, I realize that the scarcity of his truly investable rookie cards makes him THAT much more valuable. Coco Gauff - We added Gauff to our Top 50 several months ago, noting that she is primed to win a future Grand Slam event. The 18 year old is ranked #1 in doubles and #11 in singles in the world, and just lost in the quarterfinals of the US Open after a very solid run. She has a great future ahead and her card prices will continue to rise. Lamar Jackson - We’ve been on Lamar since December 2021 as a phenomenal buy low candidate. Now, he’s once again an MVP candidate heading into the 2022 season and his card prices have risen since we touted him a buy. Not only that, but they’re still a fraction of what they were at their peak. Pedri - We love our Spanish soccer studs, and Pedri and Gavi are at the top of our list. We’ve been on Pedri for the last year, and moved him up our rankings as more and more investable rookie cards and rookie autos were released. Now, he’s one of the hottest young names in soccer, and all of his cards are super liquid. We Were Wrong About Ansu Fati - Speaking of Spanish soccer studs that we have loved for more than a year, we were wrong about this one. He’s still young, and there’s time for us to be right, but his value has dipped since his injury issues. He’s back healthy and scoring goals, but as a reserve behind the rot hot Robert Lewandowski. Collin Morikawa - We saw the young American as a threat to win some majors this past PGA season, but he fell way short. His cards have since dipped since we touted him as a buy. Best Buys - Check out the profiles of the athletes below that we see as our best buys in September Vinicius Jr. LeBron James Julio Rodriguez Ronald Acuña Wander Franco Vladimir Guerrero Sell Now - And these athletes are some that we see as being at their current peak of value - or simply have an opportunity to crystallize profits then buy back in a few months during an anticipated dip Serena Williams Trey Lance Mac Jones Erling Haaland Hold - Darius Garland Elly De La Cruz Max Muncy Carlos Alcaraz What’s Coming Next? We’re currently working on some of the following content that will be released later this month! College QB Breakdown Hockey Prospect Breakdown Fictional Athlete Sports Card Profiles

September 2022: Sports Card Opportunity Report

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