How To Create Accurate Sports Card Sales Comps

So you want to sell your sports cards? Or at least understand what they're worth?

The best way to sell a sports card is to first create an accurate sales comp, then of course make your listing look good. In this post, we'll be primarily focused on the former.

Although technically I've been collecting Sports Cards since I was 8 years old, I really only collected heavily from 1989-1994, then paused big time until early 2021.

After getting back into what many call "The Hobby," I realized that "The Hobby" is actually dead, and what we're living in now is a world of Competitive Sports Card Collecting, which, quite frankly suits the forty year old version of me better than trying to put together sets like the 8 year old version of me did more than 30 years go.

Why? Because collecting competitively combines predictions related to player success, grading company values, market demand vs. supply along with vintage vs. current, set type and more.

All of the variables are super fun, which leads me to the topic of how to establish sales comps for each of the sports cards you're looking to buy, hold or sell.

Establishing sales comps are important for two main reasons:

1. If you want to sell your cards, offering them for fair market value is essential

2. It's important to know what your cards are actually worth

Collectors and investors know what cards are going for and follow popular cards closely, so it's nearly impossible to move frequently sold cards for much more than their recent sales comps on eBay, which we'll get to in a second.

But the harder part is establishing a sales comp for a less frequently sold card. While it's fun to think you can just make up your own prices for those (which technically you can), there is math to figuring out what the sales comp would project to be, and it's pretty firm. If you want to sell cards that don't have sales comps, this article will help walk you through that math.

But first, let's cover the basic way to find sales comps on eBay.