Football cards worth money, basketball cards worth money and hockey cards worth money
- The middle three averaged - the figure to use
- $28.67
- All five averaged - what the outlier does to it
- $41.20
- Highest of the five
- $96
Every figure on this site comes out of the prices you type and the arithmetic printed beside them. There is no feed, no price of our own and no third-party data: this site holds no card prices at all, only the method for reading the completed sales you have already found. Each step is written out on the page so you can check it by hand.
Most cards are worth almost nothing, and the ones that are not are worth a great deal, which is why the question is so hard to answer by eye. What separates them is not the sport and rarely the player: it is how many of that exact card exist, what condition yours is in, and whether anyone is currently buying it. This page sets out what to look for before you spend an evening reading completed sales, and points at the calculator that turns those sales into a figure.
Open the Baseball Card Values and Card Value Checker Free to use. No account, no card, nothing to buy.
Start with how many were made
A card printed in the tens of millions is not scarce and no amount of nostalgia makes it so. Serial numbering on the card itself, a short-printed parallel, an on-card autograph or a genuine memorabilia patch are the things that make a modern card rare, and a print run stated on the back is the clearest signal you will get. If nothing on the card says it is limited, assume it is not.
Be honest about condition before you look up anything
Corners, edges, surface and centring decide most of the price on anything that is not vanishingly rare. Hold the card to a light and look at the corners against a white background. A card you would describe as near mint is usually excellent, and comparing your excellent card to near mint sales is the single commonest way people end up disappointed.
Check whether anyone is buying it at all
Value needs a buyer. If you cannot find five completed sales of the same card in the last few months, the honest reading is that the market for it is thin, and a thin market means the price a calculator gives you is not a price you can actually get. Absence of sales is an answer, and it is the answer for most of a collection.
Then do the arithmetic on the sales you did find
Take the five completed sales through the card value checker on this site. It drops the highest and the lowest, averages the middle three and prints the spread, so you can see both the figure and how much to trust it before you decide whether the card is worth listing, grading or keeping in the box.
Football cards worth money: the questions readers send about this one
Which football cards are worth money?
The ones that are scarce and in demand: low serial-numbered parallels, on-card autographs of players who went on to matter, and high-grade examples of genuinely old cards. A base card from a mass-produced set is worth what postage costs, however good the player was.
Are basketball cards worth more than football cards?
Nothing follows from the sport. Scarcity, condition and current demand decide the price, and each sport has both the cards that trade for thousands and the enormous printed runs that trade for cents. Compare a card to sales of that same card, never to sales from another sport.
What about hockey cards?
The same three questions apply, and the reading is the same. This site's market is the United States and its worked examples are in US dollars, so a reader outside it should type their own currency's prices and read the answer in that currency; the arithmetic does not change.
How do I tell a valuable card from a common one quickly?
Look for a serial number printed on the card, an autograph signed on the card rather than on a sticker, and a date before about 1980. None of the three guarantees value, but a card with none of them and no completed sales behind it is almost certainly common.