Why the Last Comp Isn’t the Whole Story + Hidden Fees & Taxes + What Is Your Card Worth?

What is a sports card actually worth?

Jeremy Lee, David Chase, Chris HOJ and the very wordy Josh Adams finish the night by digging deeper into one of the hobby's most deceptively complicated questions: how do we determine value when buying and selling cards?

The conversation begins with more insight into Card Ladder and the effort to maintain the integrity of sales data. Chris explains why the goal isn't simply to fix individual questionable sales, but to identify the underlying systems that allowed a problem to occur and improve those systems for the future.

From there, the discussion turns to something every collector encounters: the difference between a reported comp and the actual economics of a transaction.

A marketplace may report the final price paid for a card, but that number doesn't necessarily reflect what the seller received after commissions and fees. It also doesn't capture everything the buyer may have spent on sales tax, shipping, financing or other transaction costs. Jeremy shares how financing part of a major card purchase pushed his actual cost basis well beyond the publicly reported sale price.

So which number represents the card's true value?

Jeremy revisits a question he and Chris discussed years ago: why should the buyer have all the power in determining value? For highly liquid cards, recent comps may provide an obvious answer. But with truly scarce cards, shouldn't the owner's willingness to part with the card matter just as much as what a buyer is willing to pay? And as David points out, value can also depend on how long a seller is willing to wait for the right buyer to arrive.

The panel also returns to vintage non-sports and the possibility that rising prices could eventually send a large supply of previously raw cards into PSA. How dramatically could populations change once cheaper grading tiers become available, and how long will collectors have to wait before the true supply becomes visible?

Then, as tends to happen four hours into Sports Cards Live, things get a little less serious.

Is chess a sport? What about poker, darts, billiards, professional wrestling, auto racing and competitive eating? Does something have to involve physical exertion to qualify as a sport, and is being an athlete necessarily the same thing as participating in a sport?

Plus, Josh Adams names the 1990s card he'd most like to see consigned to 90s Auctions, and the panel puts the finishing touches on a four-hour-and-15-minute edition of Sports Cards Live.

Subscribe to Sports Cards Live on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Discover cards across multiple auction platforms with AuctionWire at auctionwire.ai and use promo code SCL for 60 days free.

Check out Card Ladder for sports card sales history, market data and research.

And pick up Jeremy Lee's book, Pops and Comps: Truths, Insights, and Psychology Behind the Numbers That Drive the Sports Card Market, available on Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices