Is My Trading Card Collection Worth Anything?

Finding your collection of old trading cards can spark a trip down memory lane. Perhaps you remember going to your local card shop to get a pack of cards, ripping them open, and then trading with your friends to complete your set.

Maybe you can remember the joy that you felt when you shuffled through the cards in your package and found your favorite athlete. While those memories are certainly great to reflect on, you may be wondering if your old collection is worth anything.

There are plenty of people on various social media channels who seem to be making significant money buying and selling cards. With that said, you may find yourself feeling frustrated when you look at recent sales of the cards in your collection.

Before you lose heart, or before you load up thousands of cards and search "trading card shops near me" to sell them, learn more about how you can decide if your trading cards are worth anything.

The History of Sports Cards

Before we delve into the value of your collection, let’s take a look back at how sports cards became such a vital part of American culture.

Before 1941, baseball was the most popular sport in the United States, so manufacturers focused heavily on baseball cards. Tobacco companies started including cards in cartons of cigarettes. The cards themselves weren’t considered collectible and were essentially used to advertise for the tobacco companies.

One of the most valuable sets of vintage trading cards is the T206 series, manufactured by the American Tobacco Company in 1909. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the number of manufactured cards increased.

Things changed drastically in the trading card industry in the 1950s. It was then that the Topps Gum Company, Leaf Candy Company, and Bowman Gum Company got into the sports card industry.

Now, nearly 75 years later, Topps, Bowman, and Leaf have become some of the most popular names in the world of sports trading cards, with Topps leading the charge.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, kids started collecting cards of their favorite athletes. You’ve probably heard stories of kids putting them in their bicycle stokes to create an entertaining noise while they rode.

The market took a dramatic shift between 1980 and 1996.

Unfortunately, this era is now widely known as the “Junk Wax Era.” The Baby Boomers who had spent years scraping up enough money to purchase cards in the 50s, 60s, and 70s suddenly had disposable income.

Some of the cards from their childhood became more valuable, both because of the iconic players on them and the power of nostalgia.

Seeing an opportunity to get into a market that was trending upward, companies like Fleer, Upper Deck, Donruss, and Score got into the market. While football and basketball cards had been around for the past several years, they became even more prevalent with this surge in companies entering the market.

Suddenly, nearly 10 card companies were pumping out inventory as fast as they could.

As is the case with any type of industry, the principle of supply and demand is everything in the world of trading cards.

While the value of old trading cards, those manufactured before 1980, continued to rise (and still does today), the companies that started overproducing cards to meet the increased demand drove the value of cards produced between 1980 and 1996 down.

Instead of there only being 500 cards of a certain player on the market, there were now 10,000 of the same cards floating around.

The “Modern Era” refers to cards produced between 1997 and 2012. In 1997, manufacturers realized that they needed to start adding special cards to their sets that would drive up the value.

This is when “inserts” became a thing. While base cards, those cards that just have a picture of the athlete and his or her name on the card, were everywhere, these special inserts often contained a patch from the player’s uniform, autographs, or special coloring. Fewer of these cards were manufactured, which created a sense of a card being special.

Now that we understand why the value of trading cards has fluctuated so wildly over the years, let’s take a better look at what your collection might be worth.

Is My Trading Card Collection Worth Anything?

Sports cards had another popularity boom during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When people were forced to spend more time at home and limit their contact with others, millions of people started cleaning out old bedrooms, basements, and attics, which led to a lot of people who were born between 1980 and 2000 getting their old collections back. Hours were spent going through old cards and reliving the joy of ripping open packages in search of certain names.

If you’re looking at your collection and asking, “Are my trading cards worth anything?”, there are several variables to consider, and two that stand out from the rest.

First, you’ll need to look at when the cards were made. By and large, the most valuable sports cards are those manufactured before 1980.

There are valuable cards that were manufactured after 1980 during the “Junk Wax” era, which we’ll look into in a moment, but the most valuable cards are older cards that were not mass-produced. Cards that were made in the early part of the 1900s are worth more than those that were manufactured in 2000.

The reason that the era between 1980 and 1996 is known as the Junk Wax Era is that so many of the cards were base cards, and they were mass-produced. Even players who never made a significant impact on their sport had thousands of cards bearing their names and images flooding the market during this era.

With this in mind, there were even more cards being made that featured players who wound up in their sport’s hall of fame. This means that many of the Michael Jordan cards that were manufactured at the peak of the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty aren’t worth anything, even though he’s arguably the greatest player ever.

Why? Because there could be 25,000 versions of that card floating around.

Obviously, the cards that were made in the early 1900s, like the American Tobacco Company cards, are incredibly valuable. The Honus Wagner card from the T206 set is consistently one of the highest-valued cards.

One sold for $6.6 million in 2021. A 1914 Babe Ruth rookie card manufactured by the Baltimore News sold for $7.2 million in 2023. Of course, Honus Wagner and Babe Ruth are two of the most legendary names in baseball, which makes their cards worth more.

The condition of the card also matters. Many experts in the industry debate about what matters more when it comes to age and condition, and there’s certainly something to be said for both sides of the argument. The aforementioned Wagner and Ruth cards that sold for millions of dollars weren’t graded very high, but their rarity increased their value.

There are plenty of companies out there that offer grading services for a fee. If you happen to stumble across a card that you think could be valuable, you can often increase its value by having it professionally graded.

Graders consider every element of the card when grading its condition. For instance, if the corners are worn down, the card will grade lower. If the coloring is faded or the sides of the card are damaged, the grade goes down. Higher-graded cards are worth more than ungraded or lowly-graded cards.

However, if the card is old enough, such as the examples that we’ve just discussed, low grades don’t always wipe out all of the value.

Additionally, the athlete pictured on the card impacts the value.

For instance, Michael Jordan rookie cards, specifically that come from the Fleer set, have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. MJ wasn’t the only rookie that season. Sam Perkins, the man who was selected right after Michael Jordan has rookie cards from the Fleer set, but you can get one of them for less than $10.

When determining the value of old trading cards, you must consider the age of the card, how many of the card are floating around the market, if the card was graded, if so, what grade it received, and who the card is of.

What About Modern Cards?

Maybe the discovery of your old collection has left you wanting to get back into the hobby. Perhaps you’ve been watching the countless videos available online of people buying cards from today and flipping them for major profits.

Is it possible for you, the collector who is starting to get back into the hobby, to get any valuable cards, or are cards from yesteryear your only option?

In the name of total transparency, the odds of you getting a card that’s worth a huge sum of money aren’t good, especially if you’re going to your local retail store and grabbing a pack or a box from their shelves.

This is because card manufacturers now send out different versions of their products, including some that they sell themselves. Hanger packs, the individual packs that you can find at your local store, and retail boxes, the boxes that contain anywhere from six to 12 packs usually don’t have much in them.

Yes, there’s always a chance of grabbing a rookie card that ends up being worth some money, but unless you get a parallel (a term we’ll define in more detail shortly), a base rookie card usually doesn’t fetch a huge return.

Hobby boxes are where you’re most likely to find cards that are worth some serious cash. However, these boxes usually only contain a few packs and can cost hundreds of dollars.

However, you’re more likely to find parallels and inserts of the biggest names in the sport today in those boxes.

For instance, a Patrick Mahomes Donruss base rookie card is worth around $250 if ungraded. That’s certainly not bad for a card that you can get in a pack, but the odds of landing that specific card aren’t that good.

However, a Panini Phoenix Patrick Mahomes rookie card, which is considered a parallel since the card has different coloring on it, is worth more than $800. However, you have virtually no chance of getting that in a retail pack.

You may have some valuable cards in your collection. However, it largely depends on the condition of the card and who is on them. Michael Jordan rookie cards will always have value.

The same can be said for players like Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady. The condition of your cards plays a huge role in their value, too.

Even if you can’t strike it rich with your old card collection, don’t be afraid to sit down and thumb through them and let yourself travel back to those trips to the local store to rip open a fresh pack of wax, even if it’s considered “junk” by today’s standards.