Best Tools For Valuing Your Baseball Cards
Best Tools For Valuing Your Baseball Cards
Take a deep dive into eBay and Card Ladder as the two leading tools for card valuation.
TL;DR:
🏆 #1 Card Valuation Tool: Card Ladder
Accurate card valuation is crucial for collectors and investors. Although eBay offers accurate valuations, it lacks the features to make it a comprehensive card portfolio and valuation platform. Card Ladder is a superior alternative, providing valuations from 34 sources, comparison tools, portfolio tracking, and the ability to bulk upload your card collection. Card Ladder has significant opportunities for improvement, especially for ungraded cards, but it's the clear market leader in card valuation tools.
The Perfect Card Valuation Tool
The resurgence of the card market legitimized cards as an alternative investment vehicle. However, valuing cards has remained a headache. As a collector, I’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to value thousands of cards. In that time, I’ve recognized what my ideal valuation tool would include (in no particular order):
Extensive database: The tool should have a vast database covering a wide range of baseball cards, including vintage and modern sets, players, and variations.
Real-time price tracking: The platform should offer real-time price tracking and historical price data from multiple sources, such as auctions, online marketplaces, and card dealers.
Grading integration: The tool should integrate with major grading services like PSA, BGS, and SGC, allowing users to input the graded condition of their cards and receive accurate valuation information based on the card's condition.
Bulk upload and raw card valuation: The ideal tool should include a bulk upload feature allowing users to input a list of raw cards we own through a spreadsheet or CSV file. Once uploaded, the platform should automatically value the cards based on aggregated sales data from various platforms like eBay, auction houses, and online marketplaces.
Customizable inventory management: The platform should enable users to create and manage baseball card inventories, including categorizing cards by player, team, set, year, or other custom categories. Users should be able to track our collection’s acquisition cost, current market value, and price trends.
Analytics and reporting: The tool should provide detailed analytics and reporting features that allow users to track the performance of our collection over time, compare our cards' value against market indices, and identify trends or opportunities in the market.
Alerts and notifications: The platform should offer customizable notifications for significant price changes/predetermined price changes, new card releases, or other relevant market events, ensuring that users stay informed and can act on opportunities quickly.
Mobile compatibility: A mobile app or mobile-optimized website would allow users to access our collection and market data on the go, making it more convenient to manage and track our investments.
After using numerous card valuation tools, I’ve found that two platforms are superior to the rest – Card Ladder and eBay. Neither are perfect, but considering the existing options, they lead the pack. Here are the other platforms I’ve researched:
Beckett Collect, a platform Beckett intends to release that looks a lot like Card Ladder
eBay
eBay is far and away the most popular website for buying and selling cards. As a result, you can find sales history and prices for almost any card. Since eBay is so popular, the sales data provide extremely accurate valuations. eBay has been actively promoting its price trend valuation tool, however, at this point, the feature is somewhat lacking in depth.
I’ll use the example of the 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout #US175:
Step 1: Type in the name of the card and hit “Search”
Step 2: Click on the “Track the value of your trading cards” banner, right below the search bar
Step 3: Once you click on trends, you’ll see eBay’s value and price trends
Unfortunately, this is where the good times end. We see a very accurate card value but no other tools. For example, it’s shocking to me that we can’t save the search into a list to track sales and automatically update values.
eBay has the data and resources to make an incredibly useful valuation tool but, so far, has failed to utilize its vast resources to create a great, comprehensive card valuation tool.
Card Ladder
Card Ladder has emerged as one of the most valuable tools for card collectors (and was purchased by PSAs parent company, Collector’s, in 2021). It isn’t perfect, but the more I use it, the more I appreciate what they’ve accomplished and continue to strive for. Card Ladder pulls sales data from 34 sources (eBay, auction houses, etc.), making it more accurate than eBay. Note that Card Ladder’s aggregated data below shows a value of $1,625 for #US175 compared to $1,466.22 on eBay.
Card Ladder has too many features to cover in this post, but I’ll highlight a top few that I find most valuable.
Compare Card Values
If you’re deciding where to send a card for grading (or crossover which I think is mostly a waste of money), this tool is incredibly beneficial. You can compare cards in a variety of ways. For example:
Compare the value between two players’ cards
Compare the difference in value between two cards of the same player
Compare the values of the same card with different grades by the same or different grading company
Collection
Card Ladder allows you to upload a spreadsheet of your cards. The website claims after you upload, it will “quickly get all these cards into your collection with estimated values.” The feature works well with graded cards but fails to value most ungraded cards. It's certainly nice to have your entire collection listed on the website, and while you are able to search for your ungraded cards’ values, the platform often fails to locate the cards.
You can find Card Ladder’s upload template here.
Portfolio
The Portfolio feature provides insight into the total value of your card portfolio – updating you daily on aggregate value, daily value change, and more. It’s basically a stock portfolio interface for your cards.
Indexes
In Indexes, you can track the performance of different players, sports and games. For example, I can track baseball cards’ performance over a specified period of time and compare it to the performance of Pokémon cards.
Bonus: Buying Cards on Card Ladder
While eBay is the largest online card marketplace, Card Ladder’s platform aggregates cards for sale from multiple websites, including eBay and Goldin Auctions. Therefore, you can find the platform your desired card is on sale for at the lowest price.
The index also allows you to track the performance of specific players, providing more data insights than I can discuss without your eyes glazing over.
Raw Cards
Unfortunately, Card Ladder is not great with raw card valuations. While it does contain some raw card sales history, eBay is clearly the superior tool for finding raw card sales.
Final Grades: eBay vs. Card Ladder
Here are my final grades with respect to the ideal valuation tool I described at the beginning of this article:
Cost Comparison:
eBay: Free to value cards (but 12.5% Fee on Sales)
Card Ladder: 7 day free trial, $15 per month
If you’ve found a valuation tool you think is best, please reach out to thestealinghome@gmail.com and we’ll queue up a review.