Sports Card Prices are Falling: Is It the End?

In the last 12 months, the sports card index values from all four major sports have fallen according to pricing data taken from CardLadder.com.  What does this data say about the overall health of the hobby?

The Card Ladder indexes track the aggregate daily value movements of cards across various categories.  In the last year, the value of the basketball index has fallen 2%.  The football index has fallen 6%.  Baseball has fallen 8.35% and the value of the hockey index has fallen the most, with a drop of over 11%.

The declines are seen across all subcategories as well.  From high end to low end, vintage to modern, high population to even the most rare and scarce, the aggregate value of sports cards has fallen.

So is that it?  Is that all she wrote for the years long hobby boom we’ve seen?

I don’t think so.

Here are a few reasons why.

1. Prices are normalizing

Over the last few years, we saw trading card values climb at a rate which was unsustainable.  There was a period of time where it literally didn’t matter what the card was.  In the coming weeks and months, the value was going to be higher.  Price escalation month after month was not going to last forever, and a portion of what we are seeing today is a return to a more “normal” market.

2. New records are still being broken

Not all cards are going down.  In fact, you can look back at several headlines here at si.com/collectibles and see multiple new record highs being set throughout the year. There are some collectors with deep pockets who continue to be excited about owning cards.

3. Overall sales volume and transactions are up

This is one the the most telling pieces of data in my opinion.

There was over $231 million in card sales on the five largest online platforms in October of 2024.  This is up from about $190 million in December of 2023.  The number of individual transactions is up as well.  So while the overall values of individual cards are coming down, the number of transactions and the total value of those sales continues to go up.  Collectors are not abandoning the hobby.

4. In person activity remains strong

In addition the the online activity I’ve outlined above, we continue to see growth at the card show and local shop levels.  The number of new local and regional shows continues to rise, and the National Sports Collectors Convention set new attendance records in 2023 and 2024.  

So while some collectors have seen the values of their cards come down a bit, the underlying data seems to provide a reason to be optimistic about the future of the hobby.