7 Big Sports Card Market Stats to Know & Appreciate

Ryan Barone (@ballcardgenius, Card Expert) is a lifelong member of the hobby. He has been quoted in PSA Magazine, and his content has regularly been mentioned in “Quick Rips” (the Topps RIPPED Newsletter) and across other hobby publications. hello@ballcardgenius.com; Last Time Ago LLC dba Ballcard Genius.

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I saw a tweet today that reminded me that we that this hobby and business is just getting started. The content of the tweet isn’t entirely all that important, but the idea behind it is.

To summarize, it was a mention that Fanatics live has introduced “The Ten” which is a list of ten undiscovered sports cards that have yet to be pulled from packs. With this absence, Fanatics is offering $10K in Fanatics Live credit to whoever pulls one of the ten on Fanatics Live (and that person gets to keep the card).

That is awesome, right! But what really strikes me with every bounty, contest, and cardboard surprise that comes about every couple of weeks is that there is so much that can be done to get new people into sports cards. And I love that Fanatics is pushing those buttons.

All of that then got me thinking about the state of the hobby; the trends and stats. So, enjoy what I’ve uncovered:

First, we all know that the Pandemic provided an incredible boost to the hobby…but did you ever have any idea on what that growth looked like?

1. “Trading cards on eBay grew 1.5 times in 2020, with over 4 million more cards sold than in 2019! Soccer (1,500% increase) and basketball (370%) saw the most significant growth out of all sports cards.” Source: MarketDecipher.com

4 MILLION is a ton of cardboard, but what is the actual value of the sports card market now and moving forward?

2. “The latest research study on the global Sports Trading Card market finds that the global Sports Trading Card market reached a value of USD 635.26 million in 2022. It’s expected that the market will achieve USD 767.86 million by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 3.21% during the forecast period.” Barchart.com

In terms of the details and methodologies used to come up with a value of over $635 million, the actual report must be purchased and reviewed. But either way, no matter how that number was arrived at, we can all agree the market is massive, and probably still growing.

One big piece of business is grading—here is a tweet talking about how many Michael Jordan rookie cards were graded at a certain point in 2023 (early December, so almost the full year):

3. “So far in 2023, we have authenticated/graded 1,604 1986 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan rookie cards. On top of that, we failed 447 additional copies as fake/counterfeit. So, YTD, 2,051 copies of MJ’s rookie card came in and 21% were fake.” Source: Nat Turner on Twitter

And here is another reporting the total number of sport (and non sport cards) were graded in 2023 (and how that compares to 2022).

4. “Roughly 9 million sports cards (-6% YoY) and 8 million TCG (+ non sport) cards (+71% YoY) were graded.” Source: Gem Rate on Twitter

There are a number of reasons to grade a card, and the cost to grade will vary from company to company and throughout the year. So, is the number of sports cards graded even a good metric to look at? What I’m really interested to see is how developments in grading (hopefully more transparency aided by AI) will impact that number.

Switching gears, how about number of cards sold. While I can’t find an updated number from 2023 yet, check this out:

5. 36 cards sold for more than $1 million in 2022. Source: Beckett.com

Let that sink in. Not to mention that the top 10 cards on that list all sold for at least $2 million, and the #1 card, 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle SGC 9.5 sold for $12,600,000.

Ok, so there is high end and there is low end. There are the big online auction and consignment sites, and there are a ton of new and growing platforms for cards of all values.

6. 95,692 cards sold on DollarBoxCards.com in 2023. DollarBoxCards.com

Without comparison or context, that number might not mean a lot (and it’s a lot less cards that were sold on eBay) but the point is, have you ever heard of Dollar Box Cards? I have, and I’m a fan, but I’m also someone who researches the space for hours each day. The average collector probably hasn’t, and so it’s amazing to think a new site can generate that many sales.

Speaking of eBay…

7. “There were an average of 90 cards sold per minute on eBay over the last year…There are an average of 119 trading cards listed per minute on eBay.” eBay Product News

Now, these stats were from 2021, sho who knows how they have changed (for better or worse) since then, but wow.

Anyway, there is no telling what the future holds. But between new technologies, companies, and collaborations; influencers, celebrity/athlete collectors, bounties, and more, the hobby won’t be short on excitement.

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