United States – The Gold Rush for Sports Cards

Behind the window of an unpretentious store in Greenwich Village, New York, a dozen men take turns unlocking their black briefcases: inside, collectible sports cards, a passion as much as a market, doped by the pandemic. The excitement was special that day, as a San Francisco-based investment fund announced that a card featuring Golden State Warriors star basketball player Stephen Curry had hit the insane $ 5. $ 9 million (approximately 5.4 million Swiss francs).

Michael Campobasso, a 38-year-old jeweler, is counting on this record to boost the value of another Curry card in his possession, dating from the 2009-2010 season, when the three-time NBA champion was still a “rookie” or a player. beginner. “I could sell it for $ 80,000,” he hopes, as he paid 25,000 for it. The market for collectible sports cards has already been on the rise in recent years, but lockdowns have energized collectors and attracted new ones, while some investors helped push prices up.

“It had a massive impact,” says Jacob Salter, 25 and product manager at Bleecker Trading, the company that hosts the party in Greenwich Village. “People were at home, they were bored, locked in their homes. They found their childhood memories and started buying sports cards, ”he explains. In the United States, baseball has long dominated the sector, but the success, in April 2020 and in the midst of a pandemic, of the Netflix series “The Last Dance”, on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, put basketball in the spotlight. center of the game.

In February 2021, a card autographed by the Bulls legend sold for $ 1.44 million at auction. In April, it was a card from LeBron James when he was a “rookie” that went to $ 5.2 million. During this New York evening, the cards in the room reached a total value of $ 20 million, according to Jacob Salter. The precious objects are presented in protective plastic cases, which collectors display on small displays in cases fitted with locks with secret codes.

The authenticity of the cards is certified by classification societies, which rate them from 1 to 10, according to criteria such as rarity or state of conservation. For Vahe Hekimian, what started out as a hobby has become his main source of income. “It’s a passion. I love that. But I also do it to earn money, ”he told AFP, explaining that the performance of athletes has an impact on the value of the cards.

Recently, he paid $ 50,000, partly in cash, for a card for rising Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic, who will play in the Tokyo Olympics with Slovenia. The most important transaction of the evening, a transaction involving several cards, exceeds $ 90,000. A 44-year-old collector, who calls himself Cage Lawyer and claims to have a $ 500,000 Michael Jordan card, believes the cards are a wise form of investment.

“People see them as an alternative asset class, something akin to art and cryptocurrency. They are looking for a place to put their money to protect themselves from inflation, ”he says. A boon for a growing number of investment firms. Alt, a fund specializing in non-traditional assets, which shelled out $ 5.9 million for Stephen Curry’s autographed card, estimates the market is currently worth more than $ 15 billion.

Another company, Collectable, specializes in fractional ownership of collectible cards or sporting items, a booming form of investment that allows one to acquire a piece of ownership of an item and see its value rise. or go down like a stock market share. For its part, PWCC, a platform that organizes auctions of collectible cards and manages a secure vault to store them, hopes to achieve $ 500 million in sales this year, three times more than in 2020. “We are convinced that our sector will continue to grow ”, assures its director of business development, Jesse Craig.