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An Ode to Tennis Cards
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An Ode to Tennis Cards
There are only two certainties in sports card collecting, as far as I'm aware: the first being that basketball cards are the only cards that consistently swing in the 100+% direction in a given month (meaning, that Michael Jordan base card that last month was $80 for a PSA 9 can become a $250 card for absolutely no reason) and tennis cards are the best investment in sports trading cards.
Tennis cards? Yeah, who are we kidding, you've heard me talk about tennis cards hundreds of times before. And the reason why is as simple as two driving factors.
First, tennis cards are a generally affordable product to open. Let's just look at the fact that someone like Alexandra Eala, the Filipino superstar, has her 2024 Topps Chrome base rookie auto sell for around $300-$350 raw.
On release day of that product, you could buy the hobby box which includes 3 autos and a number of numbered and parallel cards for under $200. Still to this day you can still find those hobby boxes for under $200.
And Eala was at the time of the release maybe not even the 20th most desirable auto in that box.
Consider this analogy; buying tennis products is basically like buying Bowman Draft which sell out near and above $1,000 for a hobby box. It's all speculation.
I know you're thinking: bro, no way you are comparing tennis to MLB. Of course not, tennis is actually more popular globally than MLB is. I wouldn't dare put tennis in such plebeian company.
I kid, of course. I love baseball. But, still, tennis cards are prospecting at a different scale than baseball. In that, tennis has highs that baseball doesn't. Take, for example, even some "great" prospects like Paul Skenes or exciting young talent like Jackson Chourio— their value peaks solely on speculation and often crumbles as performance settles in.
Whereas for tennis you can sit on rookies and prospects and their cards can fluctuate based on performance. Alex Eala, Iva Jovic, Mirra Andreeva, Jessica Pegula… all performance driven excitement at the professional level. Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Alex Michelsen are proving it on the men's side as well.
And, the second reason why tennis cards are an investment that actually sits on an equal playing field is because no one knows shit about identifying young tennis talent.
How're your Dylan Crews, your Jackson Holidays, your Anthony Volpes working out? How about Jasson Dominguez? "The Martian!" We all thought/were told that these guys were "can't miss" prospects so we chased them. Hard. And got burned. Even harder.
You could have had a numbered Alex Eala rookie auto for under $20 six months ago. Why? Because we didn't know anything about her. Iva Jovic? NetPro released a special set of her rookie cards – autos, patches, numbered cards – to little fanfare.
Even Carlos Alcaraz and his NetPro rookie set was palatable when released because… you know what I'm saying, right?
Tennis cards allow you to buy boxes, open packs and sit on the cards until maybe/potentially the performance meets the market. Baseball has you pay up for players who more likely than not won't pan out in the Majors.
There are very few PCA's in baseball. Beyond him, Shohei Ohtani and maybe Aaron Judge before he was injured, you rarely saw massive amounts of performance-based movement in the baseball market.
Quick: when was the last time you thought about buying a Yordan Alvarez rookie card? Triple Crown and MVP-potential Yordan Alvarez. You could get a numbered rookie patch auto of Alvarez for under 100. We don't care about performance in baseball, but we do in tennis.
Buy tennis cards in the offseason and list them in the summer – especially during the US Open.
Alright, sorry, time for silly stuff. Over 22k Jaxson Dart cards sold in the last 60 days. Meanwhile, according to ALT his market is down -8.52% over the last 30 days. Math!
We've seen the One Piece craze, the Disney craze, Marvel craze and recently the Bartman craze. So, what's next? Speculation around Harry Potter cards being the next to start to bubble is making its way around the Internet.
Aside from Steve Urkle and YO! MTV Raps cards, I'm sitting on a bunch of Beavis and Butt-Head cards that need some love on the market. Do something, fartknockers!!
Also, don't look now but Batman cards are up over 50% in the last 30 days (according to ALT)
Finally, I want to take a small victory lap and maybe hope for the best because I am seeing a TON of content out there about grading and how "effed up" it is – with SGC moving to higher rates and slower return times and PSA basically untouchable for most collectors. We love to see it!
I know I say this often but this is a reminder that we do this to ourselves. We let this happen, we pay the fees, we let PSA drag their feet, and we just continue to do the thing that pisses us off. Maybe it's time we just… stopped? What if we just decided that we deserve better? What if we decided that value lies in the card and not the label?
Just something to think about as PSA charges you 3x what you paid for the card itself to have it graded. You deserve better.
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