LeBron Market Update, BGS Grading Plays; Huge Sports Card Flipping Wins; Strategy For The National

The fun everybody, it's GaryVee and this is the sports card strategy show because you know this. There is no offseason. No offseason! When you get into this game, the reason why you pay someone like Paul Hicking, you get your sports card strategy together, is because when you're starting out, you need perspective. You need wisdom, you need insights. And so he's been around the track enough time for he can actually coach you up and guide you. Doesn't mean he's gonna take you to the promised land tomorrow. But you now have a coach by your side that can advise and connect, even create these pathways where you can get the education yourself. And that's a lot better than dugging it out on your own. What the kids bit about my rookie car now? 'Cause I'm the dish here to price ain't coming down. Welcome in everybody, I'm your host Paul Hicky. It's time to sit back, listen, learn and earn with me on the sports card strategy show. Welcome in, nooffseason.com family. We're so happy to have you with us to help you make money flipping sports cards using data-driven sports card investing. It's National Week and I will be at the National from Wednesday afternoon through Sunday in Chicago, Rosemont, Illinois to be exact and I'm excited about that. But that also means it's kind of football card selling season because today is Monday, July 27th. And from now, basically training camp starts and from now all the way through the end of August, it's that NFL hype rise to the season that we always talk about where if you've been buying football cards like we've been telling you to starting back in December, you know, maybe some deals in January, February, but definitely March, April, May, June. You're probably in pretty good shape in terms of cards that are likely up or likely to rise over the next month. If you've been using our guideline strategies, plays and tools at nooffseason.com. So we're going to talk about when to sell your football cards and a plan to either go to the national or not go to the national either way, a plan to determine how to utilize selling opportunities either at card shows or online to maximize your football card returns over the next month. We'll also talk about some events happening at the national, some eBay data and my strategy for going to the national. And it's again, it's not so much applicable only to people going to card shows, but it's also applicable to basically what to do with your sports cards in this selling season over the next month. So more BGS wins, not only from myself and lefty that I want to report, but also from our nooffseason.com members, some huge BGS wins. And my Fernando Mendoza BGS grades came back. So I'm going to talk through my selling strategy for the, for the F men, not the X men, but the F men card. Those of you who know know what I'm talking about, it's the NFL draft night tops now, the number on the card. It's actually letters is F men for F Mendoza. So that card BGS grades are back. Obviously PSA grades are not back yet, but we'll talk about my BGS selling strategy. And then of course the big news, the big news, we buried the lead, LeBron to the sixers. What does this mean for LeBron's card value? What plays remain for LeBron James? Is it a buying opportunity? Is it a selling opportunity? Is he a long term hold? Is he a short term flip? We'll get into that. And I'm going to use historical data to kind of paint the picture for what we might want to do with a new updated LeBron James strategy. Now that he signed a two year eight million dollar deal with the Philadelphia 76ers, one of the strongest starting lineups, if not the strongest starting lineup in the NBA on paper. But Joel and Bede can't ever fricking stay healthy. So we know that he's not going to play a full slate of NBA games. And LeBron is 41 years old. So how good is he really going to be? I think the best player on that team is Jalen Brown now. Not that I would do anything with Jalen Brown cards. I just think Jalen Brown is likely the best player on that team. And I think a lot of people will talk about what does this mean for VJ Ed Combs, Edg Combs value. What does this mean for Tyrese Max? He's value those kinds of things. So we'll get into a little bit of that later on in the show. But here's a critical question I have for all of you. All right. Are you sick and tired of getting slaughtered, ripping wax and buying into breaks? Do you want to actually profit flipping sports cards? Join no offseason.com now for less than a dollar a day. It's less than a dollar a day, people. And you make between 30% and 130% ROI consistently on flipping singles using our tools and advice. No offseason.com helps you make real profits flipping sports cards with insider data, proven strategies and exclusive access to undervalued cards. Before the rest of the market catches on join no offseason.com now before no more spots are available. We've got a member store that allows you to build up member points to join our discord, cohost an episode of this show with lefty and I. And get in a small group call with me. Get some personalized advice from me and a small group call. Of course, you get personalized advice on our weekly. Second podcast for premium members only called the premium pot. So again, join no offseason.com now also quick shout out to slab dynasty cards sports card strategy show is powered and sponsored by slab dynasty cards and next gen sports card platform built for collectors that includes a 2% marketplace fee and a choose your chase feature. Start your dynasty today using code no offseason for 20% off your slab dynasty purchase also. That 2% marketplace fee is a 0% marketplace fee for no offseason.com premium members. All right. More huge BGS win. So for those of you that don't know, we have re grade rankings at no offseason.com and their brand new. They're fed in through new data from hobby flipper and re grade rankings right here. So when you go to no offseason.com, the re grade crack and submit sports card rankings are boom right there. You got PSA 9 to BGS 9 5 potential wins and losses. You got BGS 9 5 to PSA 10 potential wins and losses and I will I will tell you that a play from these rankings over the last year has been Barry Sanders score 1989 PSA 9 cracking it out. Submit against a BGS in hopes of a BGS 9 5 big time profit on that with low downside check out the no offseason.com re grade rankings for all the details. But a lot of times people will say, well, what's your success rate on that not only are we tracking that at hobby flipper, but we're tracking that anecdotally through our premium members that grade with us. We have a grading service for premium members of no offseason.com. Well, we are two for two. That is batting 1000 on submitting the Barry Sanders score PSA 9 cracking it sending somebody get raw to BGS and getting a 9 5. That's huge profits for our premium members. And then we've talked about lefty and I have talked about the Kobe Bryant PSA 9 to BGS 9 5 play. That has been a huge win and that was something that I gave away on this show for free back in September of 2025. So for those of you who are annoyed with me for promoting no offseason.com and hobby flipper all the time. Too bad so sad because I've given away so many free tips on this show. And there's obviously much more at no offseason.com and hobby flipper. And that is how I make my living. So I do need you all to subscribe to those tools to support me so that we can we can keep this going. Right. But it's all part of the same family. It's all part of the same strategy. And so of course on this show I'll give away some free advice. But everything very, very, very valuable is behind the paid wall at no offseason.com and hobby flipper. Well, a case in point free advice. I just gave you some with the Barry Sanders play. But I've been talking about this Kobe Bryant PSA 9 to BGS 9 5 play since September I did the math. I started making the play based on the math after I announced it on the show. So I did not start the play before I before I mentioned it on the show. I gave you all the same opportunity that I had. And because there's 20 plus 1000 PSA 9. So this is something that we can all do. We talk about repeatable strategies on the sports card strategy show. We don't go off into like stupid stuff like, oh, this one of one or oh, this out of five or oh, this person pulled this sort of this. person, you know, this breaker did that screw all that. We are focused on repeatable plays. We want to look at things that anybody can access from anywhere in the world, regardless of their situation, make a play. So the Kobe Bryant PSA9 to VGS95 has been one of the biggest successes in the history of the sports card strategy show and of no offseason.com. Because several, several layers to this, all right. First of all, the PSA9 to VGS95 upside is big and it was big and it still is big back in September and it still is growing. The downside is low, meaning if you don't get the VGS95, you get the VGS9 instead, there was low downside. Well, if you would have made the play back in September or even as late as like December or January, not only is the downside low, but there's upside in the VGS9 from where you bought it at. So for people like Lefty and I and others who have been doing this play for several months now since I announced it, we are actually not only making money if we get a VGS95, but we're making money if we get a VGS9. That's how good of a play this has been. Now, the real reason why this has been a good play is because the success rate has been phenomenal. I personally, on my own cards, have a 50% success rate. Lefty on his cards has a better than a 50% success rate and premium members of nooffseason.com have a better than a 50% success rate. Meaning, more than half of the PSA 9s that we've cracked and submitted to BGS have gotten a BGS95. Not only that, but the value of the BGS9 have gone up. So even if you're getting BGS9s back, chances are you bought them for significantly less and then you submitted them to us or you're making this play on your own and you're still making money even if you're not getting BGS95s. Now, we recently in a recent grading submission, not only were we two for two on the Berry Sanders, but we were two for three on the Kobe Bryant and we were two for six, which is still really, really good on the Michael Jordan 1991 baseball upper deck SP one, which is a play that I've been making as well. So more huge BGS wins again, check out the regrade crack and submit sports card rankings at nooffseason.com. There are tons of data tools. eBay doesn't show you what cards to search for. Nooffseason.com not only gives you pricing data, but also shows you which cards to search for. Nooffseason.com is getting better. We've created a new data tool that premium members of nooffseason.com get for free. It's called Hobby Flipper. The purpose of Hobby Flipper is aligned with the purpose of nooffseason.com to help you find the right card for the right player at the right time and to help you make money flipping sports cards. As such, Hobby Flipper does not compete with market movers or card ladder in terms of the number of cards it tracks since around 5,000 cards at any given time are actually investible or cards that you can use for repeatable plays that I was talking about a minute ago. We focus on about 5,000 to 10,000 total cards, not the 7 or 8 million card ladder and market mover are tracking. We help you immediately see the plays to make in the plays to fade based on the data and math. We have raw to grade upside and downside on our card details pages, which is something market movers and card ladder don't have. We use our formula to make our rankings at nooffseason.com and we feed that data in through Hobby Flipper. Shout out to gemrate.com because we also are hitting the gemrate data to show you the gem rates for all the cards that are in Hobby Flipper and that helps you also make a determination on the card details pages at Hobby Flipper as to whether or not there is any upside to maybe raw to grade, maybe it's crack and submit, regrade upside and downside. Hobby Flipper also gives you the best time to auction off your cards. So we're tracking eBay data on the best time to auction off your cards. Top eBay sellers, which basically shows you rankings of sellers to buy the best cards from for the best prices. Better inventory and flip management, which I'm going to show you here in a second. We have flipper rankings. That is something that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Flipper ranking. So we've gamified the sports card flipping, which is something honestly, I'm surprised that somebody didn't snag this before I did because I've been, I'm almost five years of doing this podcast. Less than 45 days from now, we're going to have our five month anniversary of this show, the sports card strategy show. And when I launch this show, I launch know offseason.com in conjunction with the show. And the premise of this from the very, very beginning was how to make money flipping sports cards and not just for the money, but for the for the gamification of it for the pride for the bragging rights for the for the fantasy sports aspect of it, but in real dollars, like stocks, right? We all know that now, but five years ago, I came out with this, this concept of look, we need to compete against one another, right? We need to help each other out, but we need to compete against one another. So now we finally have the flipper rankings at hobby flipper. So what's really, really cool with the flipper rankings is you can see out of out of all the hobby flipper users, which include the know offseason.com premium members, who's made the most net profit, who's made the most profit margin. We can look at it all time. We can look at it in the last 30 days. We can look at it in the last 60 90 180. And let's just give a shout out to some of our premium members. These are know offseason.com premium members and hobby flipper premium members. Rose bros is number one in the last 30 days from a total net profit standpoint. Zach E. Brian Kite, Michael Stock Gavin Shen, lefty McKee's number six. So those are the top hobby flippers from a net profit standpoint in the last 30 days. Matt Winseller, Austin Fetterson, Sean Red Five cards, D. Fry 35. Top hobby flippers in the last year, Tim S, myself, Rose bros, John Kite, John Anthony, Zachi, SCI Brady, Matt Winseller, Sean Red Five cards, Evan Klein. Now if we go to profit margin, hollow forward, Sergeant Bucks, bunker, Jim McKeaton, Nick Eppler, AB sports cards, Austin Fetterson, Sean Phillips, recess, Lucky Monkey, Eric Minieri. So that's really cool. But also the top flips. I think the top flips super educational, right? I'm last week show we talked about, okay, which players are the top like are in the top 25 flips in the last 30 days most often, right? This gives you where like sports card investor does like their top five cards. All right, up, down, that kind of thing. We're taking a little bit of a different approach with that. Why not look at what are the top cards that are flipping the best? What are the top most, what are the best cards and the best players to make a profit on? That's what we're all about at the sports card strategy show in no offseason.com. The number one flip is still the boonix, John L.A. Don Russ downtown, which from Rose bros had to have been a raw to grade win in the last 30 days. But LeBron number two, that's a PSA 10 flip from Zach E. Shohei O'Connor is number three four five eight 12. So we've got five Shohei O'Connor cards in the top 25. We've got one two two LeBron. Wembee was the leader last week. One two three three Wembee. We got three Ken Griffey Jr. We've got a Shadour Sanders. We've got a Drake May. We've got Jacks and Darts silver prison Caleb Williams. Sean Red five cards made 233 dollars and 79 cents on a Caleb Williams, Penini instant NFL rated rookie retro PSA 10 flip. So my guess is that that was a raw to grade. But the flipper rankings are flipping cool. All right, the flipper rankings are flipping cool. Get in on the flipper rankings. Check out our top flips. You can either join no offseason.com and get free access to hobby flipper or you can join hobby flipper. So just for clarity, best new tool in the hobby, no offseason.com members get the following sports cards school premium pod episodes unlimited advice discord using member points, of course, creating services card analyzer and predictor tool. My athletes feature sports. card rankings, top eBay options and all hobby flipper benefits. And that's for less than a dollar a day, $299 a year or $299.99 a month. Hobby flipper members get hobby flipper for $999.99 a year or $999 a month. So two different options. No offseason.com gives you so much more. And hobby flipper is an amazing tool but doesn't replace no offseason.com in any way. All right. So we love data and eBay supplies us with data shout out to Joey shout out to Davina and her team. Davina. I'm going to see you at the national pumped about that. Looking forward to linking up with all of my peeps at eBay. So many good people that work at eBay shout out a Jamie Pericini who is on the sports card strategy show. Lat like about eight months ago. We'd love to have her back on. Sometimes she's been a loyal premium no offseason.com member like honestly since like 2022, which is like Jeannie thank you for that for real because I think our premium membership was probably not even close to anywhere as it is good as it is now. And you've stuck with us Mike net who's been on the show before. And then I'm going to meet some other great people from eBay in addition to the folks I've already mentioned but the Joey sends us data. And we've got some data from the world cup. We knew this would be cool. In June 2026 searches for several teams jerseys increased in eBay.com's collectibles category compared to the month prior May 2026. And the reason we bring this up and we're going to get to the card data here in a second. But the Jersey data I think is really cool also because it really shows the amount of eBay searches that happen during a selling marker and we talk about selling markers being a lot of different things. I think hype rise leading into a season. A hype rise say during a tournament when it's on TV in this case the world cup. But then there are selling markers that are like performance flakes and when performance flakes happen. They obviously send the prices much higher than during just hype rises. Right. When you can pair a hype rise with a performance bike with a raw to grade win or something like that. That's when you can really make the most money. But this data from eBay while it is Jersey data it indicates I still want to thank Joey for it because it still indicates the amount of interest that the world cup had and the amount of eBay search search increases that it did drive. And in last weeks episode go back and listen to last weeks episode lefty and I broke down kind of the card impact from the world cup. And where we felt like our advice really was spot on and maybe where it lacked a little bit. But anyway, June 2026 compared to May 2026 Colombia soccer Jersey was up more than 580% USA soccer Jersey was up more than 420% Ecuador Jersey up more than 370% England soccer Jersey up more than 360% Mexico Jersey up more than 340% France Jersey up more than 290% searches for players specific items in June as compared to May lamina mall Jersey up more than 290% Raul Jimenez more than 250% and that's just his name. So there could be there could be card results in that Christian Pulasik up more than 240% messy autograph card some card data there up more than 230% and Ronaldo sticker interesting one up more than 230% as we know stickers are a big part of soccer collectibles international football collectibles. So all right. If you need help selling your cards at the right time use hobby flipper and no off season.com sell alert feature for premium members only the sell alert feature at hobby flipper which no off season.com premium members get access to kind of looks like this when you you manage your portfolio and I'm going to I'm going to use my portfolio in a in a future segment coming up here. When you add a holding to your portfolio whether or not it's already in our database or not it starts to track its data if it's in our database then you already get the current market value which shows you the potential profit and ROI that you're at right now if that number is more than 20% ROI you get a sell alert feature and it's you get a sorry you get a sell alert email a sell alert email with the actual information of what your card just sold for and what whether or not we think it's a good time to sell that card so that's automated email from your portfolio the hobby flipper feature that really helps you track when is the best time to sell your cards and you get those email alerts. If the card is not in our database we start tracking the data for you for that card and the next time it sells you get this you get that data shown in your portfolio and then of course when it sells for over 20% of what you're into it for you get a sell alert email so it's a critical critical tool and then of course when you sell the card it becomes a flip and then that is how you're entered into the flipper rankings that I talked about earlier. All right so speaking of my portfolio I want to use my portfolio at hobby flipper to talk about my strategy for the national because I think it's important to talk about my plan for the national a lot of you are going to the national a lot of you aren't going to the national but either way you can use this strategy so should I sell my football cards yet or should I wait till the end of August my process is I'm going to look at my portfolio in hobby flipper because I have it all updated all right so before I leave for the national or before I list any of these cards on eBay I'm looking at my portfolio and what I can do is I can filter by categories football and you can see boom all the sudden you see a lot of green here because I've done a good job of purchasing football cards the right cards for the right players at the right time this offseason and you can see that I've got a lot of jade and daniel's I've got a lot of Caleb Williams just in Herbert Patrick Mahomes Joe burrow I've got some jalen hurts and so which cards should I even bring to the national well I'm going to look at only the cards that I'm up 20% or more on to bring so a good example is like this Patrick Mahomes Don Russ base PSA 9 the rated rookie PSA 9 I'm up 63.18% on that so my potential profit is if I were to sell it on eBay right now my potential profit is 147.51 that could be a good card to bring to the national now that was a SGC 85 that I cracked and it got a PSA 9 so that's part of the reason why I'm up so much but a good another good example is this joe burrow optic hollow PSA 10 2020 these were cards I just bought as PSA 10s well I'm up 31.17% on one of them and I'm up 19.23 on the other so I could probably bring these and net some profit in cash at the national as well now jaden daniel's prism silver PSA 10 that I bought as a PSA 10 I'm up 17.1% on that card and I bought two of them I'm up 5.16% on the other now because I'm only up that percentage amount I'm probably going to leave those cards at home just because now I might bring them with me because in the next week while I'm at the national these numbers could change and that's another good point I'm going to be monitoring my hobby flip report fully a while I'm at the national I'm going to be walking around the floor of the national with hobby flipper on my phone monitoring the prices because if one of them sells for a significant amount more then I'm and I'm likely to get a sell alert for that or maybe I get a sell alert for that while I'm at the show then all of a sudden that becomes a card that I can move for a cash profit at the show and for those of you not tracking I mean typically buyers are only paying 85% of comps at the show anyway so you need to be up at least 20 20% or more that that's why because you're there's not gonna be any profit if you're up 5% but you're selling for 85% of comps That's just obviously the math doesn't work out that way So I think for any of these cards that I'm that I'm close to 20% on I'll bring just in case something happens but any cards that I'm Any cards that I'm above 20% on I'm gonna bring like this Jalen hurts optic hollow 2020 PSA 10 I'm up 23.48% on that and I bought a second one and I'm up 17.31% on that I'll bring those You know because there could be some cash profit there hobby flipper like nothing else before in the past Is gonna help me really make the best decisions at a card show and Online on eBay so that's my process Look at my hobby flipper portfolio bring the cards them up 20% or more on Leave everything else at home Make decisions at the event while referencing my hobby flipper portfolio alright a couple other things that I'm gonna be checking out at the national You know, I've got a media pass. So I'm gonna be meeting up with a lot of I'm gonna cover the event and there's gonna be A week from today. There'll be a national recap episode for those of you not attending You're gonna get a nice flavor of what it's like to attend because I'm gonna do a nice recap episode Week from today. There's gonna be some interviews Some folks I'm gonna meet up with will do some interviews to give you some more great information We'll talk to people at eBay. We'll talk to people that some other up and coming Companies in the hobby that we think are interesting for you guys to check out And then of course, there'll be some wheeling and dealing that I'm gonna be doing and I'm gonna report back on That okay based on based on the strategy. I just outlined for you The eBay arena so last year we talked about eBay had a really cool scavenger hunt this year They have the eBay arena so the collecting experience Enthusias no interest comes to life at the national at the eBay arena where convention goers can explore Unmatched inventory and immersive experiences throughout the space Collectors can see upper deck auction one of a kind Michael Jordan collectibles on display Golden where you can check out high-value items 2018 Bowman chrome show hey otani red refractor auto bgs 9 5 2026 prism black lamina mall one of one Collectors can also take on the price guide challenge attendees are invited to the collectors lounge to test their knowledge Using eBay's price guide tool The collector card Cade experience Offers self-guided digital game featuring hobby themed trivia and challenges highest scores win big and then of course Trade nights so eBay has trade nights and I am gonna be at the trade nights That is probably where I will Look to make some deals on some of the cards that I mentioned Trade nights typically where you can you know not only make trades, but Cash deals and you can make bulk cash deals as the buyer or the seller Typically those are a little bit better than what you can get on the trade floor Although if you do your due diligence on the trade floor and you price things out Put things in bulk and you know Get get the right card for the right player at the right time under a comps and you can obviously use no offseason dot com and hobby flipper for that You can make good deals on the show floor, but the trade nights are cool eBay has trade nights with trading grounds and interactive Collector hub featuring large scale wall challenge and the signature be a breaker experience I'm gonna obviously fade the be a breaker experience Because if you if you know anything about me, you know that I hate breaking So I'm gonna fade the be a breaker But I'm looking forward to checking out everything else So let me take a quick break so I can tell you what no offseason dot com members are saying 1d shout out to 1d. What's up my man? He says amazing content at no offseason dot com and amazing new site hobby flipper Thank you my sons and I will be at the national and we will look for you on the floor If you have any hats to purchase I'd love to wear it on the floor and at the trade nights We're usually on location from 9 a.m to 10 p.m Unfortunately the hats that I have are one of ones I Don't sell merch, but I may I'll look and see if I have any any extra t-shirts for you and the boys all right Okay, let's talk about my Fernando Mendoza BGS grades so the F men cards I Thought about do I sell these now on eBay or do I take these to the national I got these okay These graded a very well and these grades make me feel really good about my PSA grades coming back for these cards and for the tie Simpson For those of you who are new to the sports card strategy show One play that we've made in the past we don't recommend making this play right now because of the PSA backlog and because the value submissions are paused so repeat repeat repeat Do not make these plays now, but We have made these plays in the past because we've had a situation where we've been able to submit Value submissions so less than $25 a card getting them back at a reasonable time those kinds of things These grade really well and then Being maybe not first to the market, but in the first wave to the market of the graded cards for some of the top top rookies So like Fernando Mendoza's NFL Draft Knight card the F men is what I'm talking about I got eight BGS 9.5 and two BGS pristine 10 gold labels I decided to list those on eBay in auctions because Over the than they're in 10 day auctions right now If I take them to the national there are no comps yet So my fear there is that I'm gonna get low bald Although shout out to cards HQ cards HQ buys these kind of cards and they actually pay pretty decently for them Even early on in the cards lifecycle So shout out to cards HQ for that and that that's not a paid plug That's like I've actually done business with cards HQ and they've done a really good job there Actually, I look forward to seeing my man Carter From cards HQ with the national Carter. What's up if you're listening? So and and up by the way, Texas Road Show Shop Cody and Chase I'm coming for you guys haven't seen you in a while So look forward to seeing you guys as well. Okay, but I think it's smarter to list these on eBay because you never know How pumped some people are gonna be to try to get the first Fernando Mendoza graded rookie cards especially in a bgs pristine 10 gold label which sells very very close to a psa 10 historically So I'm looking forward to seeing how these auctions do Um, is it a risk to auction them off on eBay sure, but I think it's a huge reward and I have my minimum bid pretty high So I don't think I can really lose here Um, remember that no offseason.com is the only place on the planet with sports card rankings Now updated every day because we're feeding in the data from hobby flipper sorted by the ROI percentage You're likely to make in the future and now showing the gem rate join no offseason.com now Before no more spots are available again shout out and thanks to Ryan at gemrate.com Stay alert and keep making plays use our new and improved card analyzer and predictor tool We've also launched consignment services if you're sick of dealing with the psa vault and connect and fanatics collect vault issues You can use us for that no offseason.com. We vault them for you. We can sign them for you. We grade them for you all that good stuff. All right Listen up. So Lebron signed a two year eight million dollar deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. We knew that Um coming into the show because that's been everywhere So not trying to break any news, but what we do here on the sports card strategy show is analysis Um So the analysis is like what what do we do with Uh Lebron now, right? Well, I'm in a position where I liquidated all of my Lebron cards Um In the during the playoffs like I made a ton of money on Lebron and in the playoffs and I mean you can see my public portfolio page Uh at hobby flipper.com My flips my Lebron flips malice tell you right now I can just go to my flips and search for Lebron and I'll tell you um I made 567 dollars on his Crone uh 2003 tops curl. I made four twelve on his Uh, that was a top-scrum bg s95. I made four twelve on his psa nine tops chrome made another two 90 and four 32 Each on two psa I made $27 on an SGC nine and on the white suit tops paper, $2,384. So made quite a bit in a short period of time on LeBron. Maybe would have made a little more. I mean, I think some of those cards might be selling for a little bit more now than what I sold them for back during the playoffs now with the news that, you know, him being in the news. Having signed with Philadelphia, but what do we do with LeBron? All right. I mean, first thing I think makes the most sense is to go over to our sports card rankings at no offseason.com and take a look at the rankings starting with the raw to grade rankings. And what I would do is the best thing about our rankings is you can just search for a player. It's going to immediately show you the top 100. You can just search for a player. And after I put LeBron's name in here, it's going to show me any LeBron James card from a raw to grade standpoint that I can make money on. Number one card is Fleer Ultra base 2003 super low, generate, but super low average raw price. So it's you can take many swings at that. The LeBron Bowman rookies and stars base. It would have been more expensive raw, but a much higher upside another cheaper option, bazooka base 2003. But the card with the best gem rate is the upper deck MVP base. It's got a 39, almost a 39% gem rate with an 88% ROI at PSA. So there's raw to grade LeBron options. There's plenty more you can look at it. No offseason.com. What I like for LeBron rookies, though, would be more of the regrade or the graded option. But from a regrade standpoint, again, if you're looking at our rankings, you're going to want to look at something with upside of close to $200, but with downside of like less than $200. So the card that sticks out to me is his prism silver from 2020 buying that in a PSA 9 is $241.50. It sells for $581 and a BGS 9.5. The downside is only $150. So you can make multiples of that play. Another one, there's a bet there's a much better one at no offseason.com that premium members only can go find. And if you're not a premium member, consider this your call to action to go become a premium member. And then on the graded side of things, you're going to go to our graded sports card rankings again. It's going to give you our top 100. But when you type LeBron James in there. It's going to give you. Here's the deal. Not many graded options reason being his cards are up by quite a bit right now. That's why I think the regrade is probably the best. There's only two cards that have any upside in the last 90 days if you were to buy them graded. Now that's not to say that is see that that kind of brings up the other thing that I wanted to talk about with LeBron, because when you look at things from a graded standpoint, you're relying on for some reason his his prices continuing to go up if you buy him graded. Whereas if you're making the regrader the raw to grade, you don't have to rely on his cards actually going up because what you're doing is you're trying to get the grade, you know, you're trying to win on the grade. So that's a good segue over to like what will happen with LeBron's market moving forward independently of like grading right the raw to grade wins and the re grades will always be there regardless of what happens with this market. Now as I mentioned earlier in the show Kobe that 1996 tops base the market for that card is continuously gone up since I spoke about it back in September not because I spoke about it but just since I spoke about it. So now we're in a situation where with with LeBron if you're buying already graded now you're you're taking the risk saying his market's going to continue to go up I'm not so sure it will. Looking at historical data is important and I think the best player to compare him to is Tom Brady because I think there's obvious reasons but I think from a hobby perspective you're looking at a player who has 20 plus years of cards. Who is is arguably the goat in their sport probably 90 90% or more of people would agree with that. You're looking at players who have played for multiple teams and then what I want to do is I want like now that LeBron is with the sixers it it's kind of like me like me comparing Brady go into the book and ears. And then coming back to the book and ears for another year when nobody thought he would so because remember he retired once and then he he announced his retirement and then 40 days later he came back to the book and ears and that's like when you have the goat of football doing that and then you have the goat of basketball with the bra on kind of doing like the decision part to. That took a little minute and then and then he announced it when nothing else was in the news cycle after the world cup to kind of be in the news cycle all by himself to go to Philly. It just reminds me of Brady doing a similar thing to come back to Tampa but what Brady has done that LeBron hasn't done yet is Brady has retired for good so the reason I'm where I'm going with all this is like LeBron will retire for good so the question is do we buy LeBron now. Or do we wait until he retires to buy back in because what we've seen obviously with Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant some of the others is we've seen their cards continuously go up after they've been retired for several years and in Kobe's case unfortunately passes away. But several years after he passed away like after the news of him having passed his cards are still gone up like his cards are going up in 2026 he passed away in 2020 so his passing doesn't have anything to do with his cards going up it's just his market so the call so bring it back to LeBron LeBron is going to be in a situation one day where after he retires something's going to happen with his pricing. But then in some things happening with his pricing right now by the way which is why I'm kind of I'm kind of. I'm not buying into LeBron right now in fact I would say if anything looking at the data in hobby flipper which I'm showing you on my screen right now there's a lot of reason to sell LeBron right now like I'm scrolling through a page on hobby flipper where you're seeing and like I'll just go to 100 I mean there are there are almost 100 LeBron cards that are up significantly over the last 14. Curdice of hobby flipper dot com so now. So I think it's a good time to sell LeBron or hold depending on the card you have but it really depends on the card you have and. Back to where I was going with all this let's use Brady as an example of what will likely happen to LeBron's market once LeBron. Retires so I'm just going to use one card as an example which is never like the best thing to do but just for the sake of discussion. And again like there's more. More behind the paid wall but for the sake of discussion on the sports card strategy show I think this makes sense. Brady's PSA 10 Bowman Chrome base 2000. Is. At an all time high it's previous all time high was in February of 2021 February of 2021 was the last boom. In the sports card market and then you can see right here there's a huge drop off in in the in the six months like the bubble burst in February 2021 in the sports card market and then. The market recorrected but it dropped quite a bit like Brady's PSA 10 sold for 29,657 dollars and 57 cents which was this previous all time high before the. Actually this past week let's verify this real quick i'm going to open up the ebit listing yeah so it sold. this past Friday, like Brady, like it's. been at an all time high, um, that it reached this last week. So point being though, it dropped significantly, uh, in the, in the, the next six months after the, the bubble burst in 2021. Now, I get that out of the way, though, because what's really, what's really important here, because we're not, we're not saying anything about a bubble bursting with LeBron, but we do know, we do know LeBron will retire at some point. Um, and if he doesn't, like, if he doesn't win a championship with Philly, it could get ugly, right? Like he could, he might not be that good in Philly. Like we don't know, um, or, or he might be a role player trying to win a championship, but to the masses who don't understand basketball, to the, to a lot of people in the hobby, it might just be, oh, well, LeBron's not that good anymore. He might only average 16 points of game is what I'm telling you. Like his stats might not be that great over the next two years. And then he might retire. And then in that case, I would, I would venture to guess his markets going to take a little bit of a dip. So the better time to buy into LeBron might be over the next couple of years, or it might be the 12 to 24 months after he retires, which again is going to be like three years from now. Well, I'm okay waiting three years to buy into LeBron because if his cards do what Brady's cards did, then that's going to be how we make money on LeBron. And that's where we wanted to get to. So Tom Brady's actual final retirement was on February 1st, 2023, stating that it was permanent after 23 seasons in the league. So where, where this Brady card was on February 21st, 2023, February 1st, is it actually did so before the retirement? It sold for $7,500 on January 3rd after he announced his retirement. It went up to 12,300. But then it went all the way down like this card was a $7,7,200 card. It got down to $6,100. It got down to $5,916.58. Now it's all the way back in the last week. This is my point. This is my point three years later. It sold for $33,000. Okay, so my point is, why would you buy into LeBron during the time, well, for sure, don't buy into LeBron right now. Okay, because he's in the news cycle. Now Brady kind of pooped the bed in his last season at Tampa. When he did that, his process started to come down. They went back up when he announced retirement. Then they went down for the next two years. Then they went back up. So that I believe is a model for what will happen with LeBron. That is a model for what will happen with LeBron. So I think a good LeBron strategy is going to be to wait and see what he does in Philly. If he starts to poop the bed and his cards come down significantly, some of his top cards, then it's a good buy-in strategy. If his price is maintained, regardless of how he performs, if his price is maintained, then I think the best move is to wait until your retirees start buying into him about six from about six months to 24 months after he's retired. That's when to buy in. Then there will be this LeBron goat real market situation where he will likely go up over time, like Jordan, like Brady, like Kobe. That is how I forecast the LeBron market using historical data. So I think it's patience. It's not trying to buy in to be like, oh, he's going to do this, that and the other in Philly. I think if you have a common LeBron card, even if it's a very high dollar card, if you are in the profit right now, significantly based on putting it into your hobby flip report portfolio, I would sell. Then I would buy back in because I do think there will be a dip, a couple of dips over the next few years. Then again, about six months to a year after he retires for good. That's when I think it's a great time to buy in and then just sort of ride it, ride it up like a mutual fund over time. All right, everybody. Just a quick shout out to people who join in the live chat, pick six cards, hit man. Thanks so much for being a part of the nooffseason.com fam. I want to see any of you who have been on the fence about joining nooffseason.com need to do it now. Thanks. Have a great day. Thanks so much for being here with us on the sports card strategy show. If you enjoyed the content on today's show, there's plenty more waiting for you at nooffseason.com. Just go to nooffseason.com right now. You get our formula based sports card rankings, sports card school, inventory tracker, the ability to grade with us and the premium podcast where we answer an unlimited amount of your questions. Check it out right now at nooffseason.com. For everyone at nooffseason.com, I'm Paul Hickey. Thanks again for being here with us on the sports card strategy show. We'll see you again soon. Have a great day.