November 2020 Soccer Card Market Recap
A largely incomplete state of the market for November 2020
It’s been a bit of a crazy year for the hobby. One thing that I’ve wanted to do, but haven’t really found the time to write (until now) is a bit of a summary of how certain card prices are trending.
I did this on the pod last month, but it was a bit of a mess over audio (what idiot thought explaining graphs on a podcast would be enjoyable? 🤦)
So, I thought I’d look at a few key cards around the hobby and see how they’re going on SellThePeak.com, which looks at sales data.
The cards I’ve chosen are:
Messi 2014 WC Prizm
Ronaldo 2018 WC Prizm
Mbappe 2018 WC Prizm
2016 Christian Pulisic Donruss
2019 Mason Greenwood Rookie Ticket
2019 Ansu Fati La Liga Megacracks
The reason I’ve chosen these cards are:
They give a decent look at the scope of modern cards, including the WC Prizms for established legends, WC Prizms for players at their first World Cup, a top USA prospect, a top European prospect, and a top UK prospect
Sell The Peak is great, and the information on it is useful… but there isn’t a whole lot of soccer cards on the site - and no vintage at all. This really limits the data on hand - hence the ‘largely incomplete’ in the sub-heading
There’s more data for base cards, and ungraded cards
Basically, it’s doing the best with what data we have. Meanwhile, if anyone knows a tool like this especially for soccer, I’m all ears!
I will not give straight advice on what to buy or not buy. I try to avoid that at all costs with all of my content, I just aim to give you more information to make decisions.
Also, this is a new concept for an article, so let me know if you find it useful.
Lionel Messi 2014 Prizm
As you can see, the 2014 World Cup set had a huge peak earlier this year, with an ungraded base Messi fetching over $400!
Now, when you consider that this isn’t a special World Cup for Messi or anything like that, it was pretty obvious at the time that those prices wouldn’t stick around forever.
And like the rest of the set, this card has been declining in price over the last few months at a steady rate.
However, the fall has seemed to flatten throughout October.
It’s going to be interesting to see if the price continues to fall, or if this is the new bottom.
You can search the card on eBay here.
Ronaldo 2018 World Cup Prizm
Similar to the Messi 2014 WC, the 2018 World Cup Prizm set has been falling over the last few months for established legends of the game.
Ronaldo’s base prices have been trending down the past few months, and this one was no different. While the 2014 set seems to have stabilized a little last month, the 2018 set is still trending down.
The WC bubble has well and truly burst for players where the competition isn’t a significant one (it was Messi and Ronaldo’s 4th World Cup in 2018), and it’ll be interesting to see how prices go over the next few months.
You can find the card on eBay.
2018 Mbappe World Cup Prizm 2018
Mbappe was the best “prospect” in the 2018 World Cup. I use that term loosely, because he was already an established star by that stage.
However, it was his first World Cup, and he won the tournament too. So, you could say it was a big month for the gun striker.
Price-wise, even Mbappe’s card prices dipped over the last few months - lining up with the other Prizm cards we’ve looked at.
And that makes sense, those prices were getting pretty out of hand. It was not sustainable.
But the drop here is nowhere near the level of the Messi 14 and Ronaldo 18. Instead, it’s more like a correction. If you remove that outlier at around the $900 mark, it’s been a slow fall. Throughout October, the prices stabalized and have actually started to sneak up again, which is exciting. It’s going to be interesting to see if this continues.
Perhaps there was a slight overcorrection with the price dip, and it’s leveling off.
You can find this card on eBay.
2019 Mason Greenwood Rookie Ticket
There was a hell of a lot of hype around Mason Greenwood toward the end of last season. Prices shot up as a result, and they’ve tailed off in the time since.
This is also performance based though I’d say.
Greenwood was scoring at stupid levels last season, and was overperforming his xG by a huge amount. So, he was either going to revert back to the mean, or he’s good enough to break every statistical model the game has.
He’s also in and out of a Manchester United team that’s been a little underwhelming this season, so there’s that too.
Greenwood was hot at the right time though, so his poor form has coincided with card prices dropping all-around.
2016 Pulisic Donruss
Pulisic’s Donruss Debuts’ prices have been a bit all over the shop according to this data. Some of those low points are potential errors though, so I wouldn’t look too much into that - that or someone got a good deal!
The last month though, Pulisic’s Donruss has slightly trended down, and is comfortably under the $200 mark, where it was fetching $300-ish in September.
Throughout October, Pulisic was actually playing too - and playing well. However, he’s out injured again, so it’ll be worth keeping an eye on his prices.
You can find the card on eBay.
2019 Ansu Fati La Liga Megacracks
This graph shows that even in a market that is cooling off/falling/balancing/crashing and burning (depending on your level of optimism), top performing young players will still do well price-wise.
Ansu Fati’s Megacracks rookie went up over $100 in under a month, which is pretty cool.
I’m writing this article only hours after Fati went down in Barca’s league match, and it looks like he might have eight or so weeks out. That’s going to have an impact on prices, but I’d like to see how much of an impact. In more established sport card markets like NBA and NFL, it seems to have a decent impact.
I’ve seen people estimate 20% drop off in prices, but I honestly don’t know how heavy it’ll impact prices. Maybe it’ll just limit the amount of people looking to sell.
You can see this card on eBay.
Vintage Sales
While there’s a little doom and gloom in the graphs we’ve looked at (or opportunity, depending on how you look at it), vintage had a great month.
The big news was a Pele 1958 Alifabolaget PSA9 sold for $288,000 at Goldin Auctions, which even made ESPN and other sport news outlets.
But there were another two Pele cards with incredibly low pop counts that went on sale in that same auction and all sold for pretty impressive prices!
So there is still money in vintage, no matter what happens to most other prices. But hey, it shouldn’t surprise many that a vintage Pele is a safer bet than a Mason Greenwood rookie. That’s why it’s $300k and not $300.
Next Steps
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Let me know what you think of these types of articles. Like I said, it’s something new and I’d love your input on if it’s worth doing every month or two.