Why YOU Should Be Buying Soccer Cards NOW! A Step by Step Guide

So the story of essentially July and August has been basketball cards, but it's also been soccer cards. Yes soccer cards. That sport that none of us really knows about as Americans. At least most of us, and I'm one of those people that is included in that group. Baseball and Basketball cards have definitely taken the cake for the last few years, there's no doubt about it. Those have been the most popular sports, but soccer is creeping up and today we're going to talk about how to invest in soccer cards and why you should be investing in soccer cards, and I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process on how to do that.

So let's start off by saying that I am no soccer expert. I know probably as much as the average American does about soccer. I know who Messi is and who Cristiano Ronaldo is. I don't know Neymar, I've just started to learn who Mbappe is. So I know who some of the main guys are. I know many of the U.S.A guys from the past and Landon Donovan and those kinds of guys. So my knowledge is limited, but I'm going to share with you what I've experienced in the last couple months in investing in soccer sports cards.

So first off let's start by saying why you should invest in soccer cards. Well soccer is the most popular sport in the entire world. We all know that they have the most amount of fans. It's the most popular sport in most countries, obviously not in America. It's got some of the biggest stars in the entire world.  Let's take for example Cristiano Ronaldo. If we're using just Instagram followers for example, 236 million followers, let's compare that to LeBron James who we all considered to be a very big star, 70 million. So he's got over three times as many Instagram followers than LeBron James does. So that's saying something, and also soccer has arguably the biggest sporting event of all time, the World Cup. We all know it's held every four years so can you imagine what soccer cards are going to be able to do now that they're gaining some popularity? When the next World Cup rolls around it's gonna be huge. So we're just kind of beginning our prep now for the 2022 World Cup. If you haven't seen yet, prices have just been going through the roof on soccer cards.

Let's take Mbappe for example. He's the French star from the 2018 World Cup. His 2018 Prizm card graded as a PSA 10 over the last 90 days has gone from $700 which most of us would consider a very expensive card to $2,450. Think about that. That's over three and a half times it's gone up in value and probably more expensive by the time that you see this video. So just incredible explosion. Where else are we gonna see returns like that? Essentially soccer has been really flying under the radar so people were probably picking up these cards for $300 about six to nine months ago and look at that, now they can sell a PSA 10 graded one for $2,500. Absolutely crazy!

So number two that we're going to talk about here is how do you pick the best players? That's probably one of the most important things when collecting cards. You don't want to get the guy who never plays right? So you want to get the superstars. The ones that people are most looking after. If you don't know much about soccer this can be the toughest part, so let's just assume you're like me. You don't know much about soccer. How do you find out who the place best players are? How do you find them? Well obviously a quick google search will work, “who are the top players in soccer in 2020” that's a great way to start, but really since we're doing cards let's go over to eBay and let's check to see which cards have been selling the most. Which players have been selling the most? That would be a great way to start off to know which players are the hottest. YouTube videos are great go on too. Soccer YouTube videos. See which ones are the most popular. You can know those are going to probably be the most popular players but I think most people are probably familiar with the main soccer guys like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, those type of players. Yes those are the ones that we want to be collecting of course, but there are a ton of other soccer players out there who we just don't know about yet because we haven't followed the sport all that much. So that's why these tools are going to be really great to use. Definitely eBay to make sure that you are not missing out on those players and also marketmovers.com too. That software program I keep telling you guys about. If you head on over to their website you can actually type in soccer and you can see, based off grades, which ones are the most popular, which ones are going up in value, that's going to be a great tool for you.

Number three here is how do we pick out the best cards? Well soccer is just like the other sports, mainly basketball, but Prizm is the most popular, I guess you can say, brand. Panini Prizm is the most popular soccer brand. The 2014 cards are very popular because that was the first year of soccer Prizm. 2015 Panini Select is another popular one. That's the first year of Select. So if you get the theme here, first years of cards are very important. 2018 Prizm is another good one. Again those are following the World Cup years. So anything Prizm or Select. Another one, Topps Chrome is a good brand but you always want to be trying to collect World Cup years, so 2014, 2018, and then eventually 2022 is what I would suggest doing. You can get variation cards off of those Prizms too. So they have silver Prizms, they have red white and blue ones, and other variations of it. The Topps Chrome, the Prizm, and then the Panini Select as well those would be the top three that I would stick with.

Number four is where do you buy your cards? Obvious answer is eBay. That's a great option. Also COMC, so comc.com, that's checkoutmycards.com. Great place to buy cards from other sellers. You can make offers on stuff and they have some really great scans on everything and really easy to use interface. So if you're not familiar with them that's a great place to go. Facebook soccer groups are going to be another one. You'll meet up with a bunch of different collectors and other people that are selling cards and that's going to be a great way to get cards as well on the cheap because you're not paying fees on these other platforms. So now that you've found out what players to get, what type of cards to get, and you find out where to buy them at, what do you do when you get these cards?

Well there's a couple different options. You've got the first option. You can just keep them raw and ungraded and sell them as raw and ungraded. It's no problem to do that. What I would suggest doing is once you buy these cards raw and ungraded is send them off to PSA and get them graded, that's going to increase the value of the cards the most it's going to increase your profits, and even if you're not planning on selling them go ahead and send them off, get them graded so that way you've got it in your arsenal in case you need to sell at some point down the road. You're ready to go. You don't have to wait for that long turnaround time at PSA which can be really long. I would use PSA over Beckett just because PSA 10s for example tend to hold their value and sell for a lot more than say for example a BGS 9.5 which is the most likely grade that you're probably going to get from Beckett. Then to sell them, eBay is always a great option. Facebook groups as well. COMC, you can also send your cards there, the only downfall as you have to send them all the way out there and then they sell them for you so you don't really have any control of that, but you don't have to do any shipping and all that kind of stuff so that's super nice. Another great option is myslabs.com. They just recently started here in 2020 and they have, I think, 1% selling fees. So very cool, very cheap, I've had a little bit of success on there so that would be something to check out.

So this is just a kind of general overview here on soccer cards. Hopefully this helps you kind of navigate that world. I know it can be rather confusing with all these players you don't know, again just take your time. If you don't understand something or understand the players or understand who the card is don't buy until you do. Never buy something that you don't understand. So take your time, understand who these players are, and the type of cards that you want to collect. Yes you may miss out on some because you're not rushing but in the end you may not make as many mistakes so that'll save you money in the long run.