With a total of 62 LeBron James rookie cards to choose from, there’s an abundance of valuable options. The majority incorporate a serial number or an auto of some kind.
The 10 Most Valuable Lebron James PSA Graded REFRACTOR Rookie Cards
Kicking off today’s list is this 2003 finest gold refractor card number 133 these finest gold refractors were serial numbered out of only 25 and this lebron rookie has a population of only two psa 10’s and seven psa. For twenty seven thousand nine hundred and eighty eight dollars. it’s worth noting that there was a more recent sell of this gold refractor in a becket 85 back in march of 2021 that sold for 295 thousand two hundred dollars even up next at number nine is this 2003 tops pristine gold refractor card number 103. this lebron rookie has a population of Only six in a psa 10 compared to 18 in our psa 9. the average sale price for this gold refractor is $16,083.33 while the highest recorded sale comes in at $40,000.
i’m gonna keep kendall’s looking i’m gonna segue us to a topic that actually is a play and not a conspiracy theory and that is something that kendall brought up on the last episode he mentioned that uh lebron james who deserves to be in this conversation with michael jordan um it’s a great time to buy lebron james
Cards and i totally do not disagree with kendall i in fact i agreed with him on the show but what i wanted to make sure that we did here was that we followed up and that we were very specific about this because my concern with lebron james and other athletes um who i’m sure you all in the audience have a ton of examples of is that just there’s a ridiculous amount of his cards we’ve had andy cason our football card
Strategy show host at no offseason dot com talk about the amount of joe burrow cards and he says there’s something like almost 5 000 of them and lebron might be close to that they’re gonna have to fact check me but but just looking at lebron james rookie cards he might be close to that so what i want to talk about here is i did a little bit of digging and i don’t know what his prices are gonna do i don’t think any of us really know what his
Prices are gonna do like they’ve gone down so is it a better time now to invest in lebron than it was 12 months ago yes probably 18 months ago definitely because that was february 2021 which is like the peak but what i want to make sure we don’t do is we don’t tell people to just go buy lebron because i’m not confident that we’re going to see an uptick in lebron prices any time soon meaning like anytime in the next
Two years now will there be an uptick in lebron prices should he make it to another nba finals will there be an uptick in lebron prices when he retires when he he will beat kareem abdul-jabbar as the all-time leader leading scorer in the nba so definitely there will be an uptick in his prices when that happens because that is a once in a lifetime thing that’s that’s not just like a regular accomplishment
That’s like a big effing deal so there’s definitely markers we’ve talked about brawny on the show him playing with his son all that stuff yes yes yes there are tons of markers for lebron but if you’re kind of like me and you don’t necessarily want to hold for like years on a card um here’s a couple plays for you that i found and you can love me or hate me in the comments but i think grading specific lebron cards make a lot of
Sense i this is not something that we talk about very often anymore in the hobby because of psa being shut down for a year and all that stuff but i think now that psa is back open at the economy service level what you can do i think is you can buy lebron rookie cards two or three specifically that i’ve seen one is the 2003 fleer base and if you just kind of look at the raw prices the raw price
Of this card is about at what a uh psa seven is uh and the 2003 tops chrome is about the same thing now one’s a little bit riskier than the other because you can buy the the flir base for about 400 the tops chrome is going to run you raw more like uh over a thousand dollars um but when you if you were to get a psa eight
Or even seven of that you’re kind of breaking even if you end up pulling a nine or a ten you’re doubling or even 7xing your profit margin on those cards and then if you look at the 2003 top’s base where he’s holding up his jersey the top’s chrome i think is the one where he’s in the jump shot and the and the jersey is is the top’s base uh i believe paper but that’s raw around 300 right now in psa 9 it’s double that in psa 8
It’s more than that in psa 7 it’s about the same as that in psa 6 it’s not even that much less than that and in psa 10 uh or bgs nine five you’re looking at um you’re looking at uh a big profit margin now the crossover grading you if you if you’re not with me on the raw play the crossover grading from sgc or bgs over to psa you still get a pretty solid profit margin if you were to buy like an sgc
885 sgc 9 and if you were to get a higher grade than that over at psa or if you were to buy a bgs95 and it crosses over even worst case scenario to like a psa 9 or psa 8 you’re not out that much money and it’s worth the risk to try to get a 10. so i just think do some research around grading those uh specifically those three lebron cards can you find them raw in decent
Enough condition to where you’re confident to get at least a seven from psa or if you’re not that risky and you can’t see the card raw do you want to cross it over i think it’s a play right now i think that might be a better lebron play for people who are like me and may want to move out of it before the next two years rather than
People maybe more like you or you you kendall or you audience fill in the blank here who may be okay holding for five to ten years on a lebron card yeah i think i brought up lebron specifically for the long term play like i think what i’m trying to do is like when i look to my right here i’ve got all of my you know cards like i’ve got them all shelved and boxes over here and i’m thinking okay my strategy is to
Turn these cards into cards that i send to evolve yep and the cards that i send to a vault go and play towards my net worth yep you know and so like my my so for instance i if you did if you did listen to the uh the soccer episode that we put out that is airing today as you know like whenever this episode’s out when whatever it airs
Uh that me and trey talked about so trey’s strategy is he is selling investable cards to build into his pc so he can show off cool soccer cards in his office that he wants to look at all the time that is not my strategy i do not care what these things look like i want them to build my net worth and so like not that i think that trey’s dumb like that’s not what i’m saying i’m just saying like that’s not my strategy
And so like all these cards over here like generally i don’t have one card that you could not offer me a price on and so like like for instance that mic trout i bought a couple of uh like a month or so ago it’s at psa right now that’s gonna vault that’s gonna for me that’s one of the first ones i’m just gonna i’m gonna set it and forget it type thing um that’s why i was thinking lebron because
Any time i could like shave a little bit off of my entry into that i mean i was just looking at pop reports for these 2003 chrome in 2003 basically the one where he’s holding the jersey there’s 12 000 graded psa cards of the one where he’s holding the jersey and there’s 7 664 graded of the chrome version that’s a lot that’s a lot of pop report yes i mean there’s 2184 psa 10 of the chromes now like when you’re thinking about all
The investors out there that’s not very many and i would imagine that out of those 2184 psa 10s i would imagine there’s three or four whales in there that hold most of those yep so the rarity aspect is probably okay but what if one of those whales decides to sell everything you know like
That’s where i think this investment like in this investment um section like when we’re talking about non non-uh non-traditional investments something that the sports card world can grow in is actually like i don’t know how you would do this but unique holders would be a really big thing to know um you know how many people own what and if you can track that at
All yeah you know so it’s like that’ll be really hard who owns what percentage of the market share of a particular of a particular car i think that’s a good i think that’s a good point because i do think that plays into sort of risk management of it like if one person or one company decides to to liquidate their their lebrons or their tigers or their steph curry’s or whatever it could it definitely would affect the
Market we’ve seen the opposite of that we’ve seen the market be affected by apparently like one company or one person from time to time buying buying all of all of a card and then uh and then listing listing that and and and so you know i think but i think that lebron’s pop count is definitely something to look at i like that you did that i like that you brought that up i also like that you said the demand is probably for someone like lebron always
Gonna outweigh the pop count so you probably shouldn’t take you probably shouldn’t compare it to some other players but uh make sure you’re buying the right lebron card if you’re i’m with you though kendall like i my strategy is the same as your strategy you articulated it well that’s what i’m trying to do also so um to me it feels riskier to spend seven thousand dollars on a psa 10
Tops chrome 2003 than to spend a thousand dollars on a raw and then spend sixty dollars getting it graded and if it comes back a seven or a six i’m probably still okay on my one thousand dollars for for the now and it might even be great for the later i mean who knows but if that nine if that gets a nine or a ten i immediately double or immediately seven x on an investment that we were a
Minute ago talking about taking years to materialize um that’s that’s where uh i’m just less patient i’m just less patient and uh i know people will be like well guarantee the 10 by the 10 it’s gonna appreciate sure i agree with that strategy too i just wanted to bring bring something else to the table for those of you that might not wanna that might be okay spending a thousand dollars or a thousand and sixty dollars to get a
Graded lebron card but not okay necessarily with spending two thousand or or more on it so um so yeah i think it’s a it’s a strong like long-term play but not a great short-term play yeah if you buy if you buy a lebron psa nine because your budget’s two grand on the on the tops chrome or the tops paper i might be getting
That right no i think i’m getting it right i think it is the tops chrome but anyway if you buy if your budget’s 2500 and you spend 2 500 on a psa 9 i mean that thing might not go over that could be 1900 a year from now like it’s just it’s got to be so and for reference just because this is a card we’ve talked about previously in like a uh in terms of pop reports that 2008 kobe that we talked about where 2008 kobe is
He’s being guarded by lebron in the tops chrome the sideways card uh the horizontal card that one the pop count and all total graded from psa is 1300. so the tops chrome of lebron is seven times more out like more out there that that’s not english did not come out correctly there but basically like the card is seven times overgraded than it is this tops card obviously it’s just a regular 2008
Kobe lebron like it would have been nothing unless but it is something because it’s both of them guarding each other and you know yeah and i think that’s what i mean also when i say like be careful buying lebron rookies sort of blindly because there are just so many of them like i mean and i’m not even talking about the pop count i’m talking about just like i don’t know how many different lebron rookie cards were produced but i
Mentioned andy’s data from the football card strategy show with joe burrow and it would not shock me if it’s something like three to five thousand different lebron i mean upper deck for crying out loud had like 250 different or something ridiculous correct me in the comments because i know i’m wrong but anyway um yeah just a couple quick more basketball notes real quick like
Just to hammer our points home and also make another point that i wanted to make real quick which is you don’t always get the value of the card that other people got so as we talk about moving out of jimmy butler moving out of grant williams as we talk about like even moving out of a guy like steph curry which called me crazy but i just moved out of a steph curry card because it was a 2009 panini psa 9 of him in a golden
State warriors uniform i didn’t project that as a long-term investment i projected it as a flip this year and uh value-wise i was right but when i actually executed the sale um for whatever reason my my ebay auction did not materialize the way that i had hoped it would and so i was i ended up being underwater on a steph curry rookie which kind of sucks but i do think that um
It all kind of goes to i probably bought it at the wrong time um i bought it in february and i probably should have bought it in december or i probably should have bought it i probably should have waited until the season was over and then the off season kind of kind of dies down because while i thought i bought it while he was injured so i thought it was it was going to materialize and i could sell during the
Conference finals for a profit um and in theory i would have had my ebay auction just done better had more bids but um what other things can you do that are in your control sometimes ebay auctions aren’t really in your control what can you do that’s in your control i think you can buy at better times and so even though he was injured other people probably had the same idea i had it probably wasn’t the best time
To buy and so uh looking at looking at times like august september even december to buy cards like this is what i probably should have done um and i would and so lastly i would say i have question marks next to guys like do you still buy jason tatum or tyler hero right now i would say no i would say avoid the temptation to buy anyone playing right now in the nba
Playoffs nba conference finals nba finals because i mean even beyond that i wouldn’t even be buying nba cards right now yeah no i mean shay’s card shay jealous alexander his cards are up 30 almost yeah and the the thunder i mean that’s i mean that’s probably because some of the hype around thunder being able to get the number two overall pick which i think which came out last week that they
Think chet holmgren is going to fall to number two first off skinniest lineup i’ve ever seen in my life if he goes there pokashevsky and chet holmgren then you got baisley who’s long who’s long you got shea who’s a pretty tall point guard and giddy don’t forget oh yeah and then get there you can’t unorthodox giddy out there too
Thunder are gonna be the strangest looking team you’ve ever seen kitty’s hair probably weighs more than his body does i would think so yeah well chet holmgren’s jersey probably weighs more than him so i think you’re right i think there’s there’s like this um hype around the entire league right now not only because the playoffs are still happening but also because of the draft then we’ve got the summer league and
There’s almost no off season for basketball similar to there is for football but there are better buying pockets that i mentioned and also like if you just if you go to ebay and just search first of all go to nba go to google and google 2021 nba draft results and then copy and paste any of those guys into google along with the terms contenders rookie auto contenders
Rookie ticket auto and they’re just too expensive right now like all of them there’s one guy that i mentioned on the basketball card strategy show and i’m going to mention a couple more guys on an upcoming episode of the basketball card strategy show but cameron thomas is probably the only guy that i feel is underpriced maybe in the entire nba right now so i agree with what you’re saying um
Right now kendall so um all right cool well let’s move on and i did look it up um there’s 62 different rookie cards not counting parallels special edition cards or other inserts all right nice lebron thanks for that data did you find the data you were looking for related to the earlier topic or was that butler michael jordan jimmy butler michael jordan uh there is as far as i can tell there is no dual auto
No dual auto probably not dual auto though because jordan’s upper deck specific but maybe i’m thinking maybe there’s like a dual maybe there’s just a card that they’re both on that was plays like a bulls legend card i don’t know you don’t have to look it up but like a bull like something like your like your kobe kobe lebron example where there’s a card with both of them on it for some reason