Investing in Hockey Cards

I see this question asked a lot, and sometimes you see a newspaper article about a big sale of a rare card, or of someone who just stumbled on an ultra rare card in a flee market.

First of all, if you have money to invest, there are several options you would want to consider first,  over putting it in to hockey cards. The stock market or real estate being the two obvious examples.

It's important to realise that hockey cards are more like gambling than it is investing. Few people make actual money from hockey cards.

That being said, there are things to consider if you want to give it a try

Short term flip, or long term value building
First, decide on your strategy. Will you try to make profits by only holding on to cards for a short time, flipping them as soon as possible, or do you want to hold on to cards for a long time, hoping that they gain value.

Short term flip
A short term flip strategy focuses on exploiting the FOMO (fear of missing out) that a new product release generates. A lot of people start agressively collecting the cards they want, as soon as a product releases. This means that in the initial stages of a release, before enough boxes have been opened, market demand far outweigh market supply. And accordingly, prices are at their absolute highest on release day. As more and more cards hit the market, and more and more collectors have bought the cards they want, prices drop and stabilizes somewhere between 3-18 months after a release. 

In a short term flip strategy you should pre-order boxes of a popular product, rip them open as fast as you possibly can on release day, and put whatever the most sought after cards of that release on e-bay as soon as possible. If you hit something spectacular and can get it shipped to PSA, graded to a 10, and shipped back to you within a few days, you might get one of the first PSA 10 sales on e-bay. 

Long term value building
If you opt for a strategy of long term value building, you should avoid buying boxes entirely. You should also avoid the temptation of buying new rookies. Most new rookies will see their values reduced to almost zero in a few years. In order to hold and increase long-term value the player has to be a generational talent, and he has to succeed in his career. This limits your choice of players to McDavid, Crosby, Gretzky and a few others.

You not only need to pick the right player, but you also need to pick the cards of that player that are sought after. This means cards like their exclusives Young Guns card /100, their The Cup RPA card /249 or /99, their Future Watch Auto /999, their first Seismic Gold /50 (not any Seismic Gold, the one from the first season OPC Platinum has a Seismic Gold card of that player). 

You will want buy an as high grade card as you can afford, as these have the highest value. Which means a PSA 10 preferably. A Crosby PSA 10 (regular) Young Guns in February 2024 will cost you roughly $2,700.

Buying boxes vs buying singles
In general, buying boxes and hoping to pull a monster will cost you more money than buying the singles you want. Box prices are going up (and going up alot), while values on the secondary market are down considerably compared to peak-covid. However, if you opt for the short-term flipping strategy, in order to exploit the FOMO you need to gamble on buying boxes.

Graded cards vs raw
Cards graded 10 by the globally most respected companies are likely to hold the highest values. In addition, they will give you the benefit of knowing that the card is authentic. Would you gamble $10,000+ on that the raw card you are looking at isn't a fake? 

It's worth remembering that, for cards that are produced in huge quantities, the amount of PSA 10s available on the market will grow over time. And the bigger the population of PSA 10s, the greater the market availability and the lower the value of each individual card. As an example, at the end of February, 2024, there are 4,925 Kirill Kaprizov Young Guns graded PSA 10. Where as his Future Watch Auto only has a print run of /999 and can't have a pop count bigger than that (current pop count is 60 for PSA 10).

Unpredicatble market
It's worth pointing out that long term market values are impossible to predict. The market is unpredictable and volatile. Very few players' cards actually hold long term value, and the value can be affected by a bad performance-streak, an injury or the player being involved in a scandal. There are indications that prices on the secondary market are up by a lot  since before Covid. There are also indications the prices has dropped by 50+ % since peak-Covid. With the current Bedard-hype, it's hard to predict if there will be enough money left for any other players' cards than his.