The numbers don’t lie.
Luka Doncic is trending toward one of the best careers in NBA history.
Granted, the third-year Dallas Mavericks star needs to keep producing at his current level for several more seasons before he can cement his place alongside the game’s all-time greats.
However, it’s not a stretch to say he could eventually be considered one of the game’s all-time greatest players.
Bill Silheet and others who make their living selling sports trading cards sure hope so.
“Luka Doncic is going to pay for my house,” said Silheet, co-owner of the Tarrant County-based Superior Sports Investments.
The price on cards from Doncic’s rookie year from the 2018-19 season have skyrocketed.
If the card is a different color than the base card, is part of a limited run, or is autographed, the value can climb even higher.
Add more dollar signs if the card is graded by Beckett or PSA grading services.
Anyone who has enough of those, as Silheet does, is sitting on a gold mine.
Doncic has been an integral part of the unprecedented surge in the hobby over the past year. It’s a rise that started with the death of Kobe Bryant last January and was also buoyed by last spring’s airing of “The Last Dance” documentary on Michael Jordan’s run with the Chicago Bulls.
“It was a perfect storm of Kobe Bryant passing away, the pandemic hitting, and then no one knew what would happen when ‘The Last Dance’ premiered,” said Eric Norton, who runs the online Becket Marketplace in Dallas.
Zion Williamson and Ja Morant’s rookie cards in 2019-20 sets also helped fuel the U.S. market, as new money came into the hobby in the form of prospectors who turned their COVID-19 stimulus checks into a new investment opportunity.
Doncic’s popularity, though, stretches worldwide, and the native Slovenian’s card became a commodity in Australia and China as soon as he entered the NBA.
“Specifically with Luka, so much of his popularity, dating from him being an international star before he was really known here in America, you’ll see guys in all markets … they’re crazy about Luka,” Norton said. “We in the states are playing catch-up a little bit.”
So, just how much has someone spent on a Doncic rookie card? The three highest sales on eBay were for $237,000 nearly a year ago, $299,999 in November and $750,000 last month. A seller confirmed that he sold another for $200,000 after accepting an offer from a buyer.
There are rumors of Doncic rookies going for upward of $1 million in private sales.
And in recent days, the highest price being sought on eBay for a Doncic rookie card was $172,100.
“If you get something rare, you can put your own price on it and see what happens,” Norton said.
Silheet went for quantity over quality. Sure, he has some Doncic rookies that were short prints, colored parallels, various prizm designs and autographs, but he and his business partner, his brother Sam, decided during in a pricing swoon in Doncic’s second season to stock pile more reasonably valued cards.
In some instances, they purchased cards in lots of 10 for $25 that are now selling for $100 each. It made more business sense than spending the same amount for only a few premium cards.
“It was a temporary drop, and instead of getting out of the Luka game, we went all-in,” Silheet said. “When it comes to getting the most value out of your money, we like to go for the lower-end stuff because it goes up at a better percentage and we’re taking less risk.”
Add them up, and Silheet estimates that he has 4,000 Doncic rookies, 500 of which have been graded. Most of those were rated as 9 or 10 on a scale from 1 to 10. Beckett will slab cards with a 9.5 grade.
That’s where the value starts to kick in.
An ungraded Doncic base Panini Prizm rookie card has been selling on eBay for as much as $650 since the NBA season started.
However, that card with a BGS 9.5 grade has sold for as much as $1,500. A PSA 10 has sold for nearly $2,500.
“We ran out of money buying Luka Prizms at $35-$40 apiece,” Silheet said. “We kept buying and buying and buying, and he had a couple good games, a couple triple-doubles, and we were priced out of Luka, because we had so many, at the $150-$200 price point on his cards.”
And they are continuing to go up in price.
And Beckett? The grading service is swamped to the point where normal turnaround times have been delayed as much as six months.
“It is nuts,” Norton said.
Doncic has a great deal to do with it.
An all-star on the floor, who can also help pay off someone’s mortgage? What more could you ask?
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