The NBA playoffs of 2021 has seen a first as LeBron James and the team he plays for did not progress to the second round in the playoffs. The Los Angeles Lakers barely made the playoffs as is, and the Phoenix Suns were in firm control of the game from start to finish on June 3, 2021. LeBron’s rookie card sale prices may continue to pay a price.

LeBron James had been considered “guaranteed money” in the past for sports collectors and for sports collectible investors up until earlier in 2021. The question that will reign high and loud ahead over the summer of 2021 is what all this means for LeBron’s value ahead. This is also after prices have been in a serious correction from the peak seen earlier in 2021.

Collectors Dashboard has some price and volume data that may raise some eyebrows for those who were hoping LeBron would continue his legacy of victories and championships. That said, there was an outlier sale that went off that is not reflected in the timeline set out in the chart below.

LeBron set a mega-record in sports collectibles earlier in 2021. In April of 2021 a 2003-04 Upper Deck “Exquisite Collection” #78 LeBron James signed rookie Patch Parallel Card graded BGS GEM MINT 9.0 sold for a whopping $5.2 million. This was a tie at that time for the most expensive sports card ever sold.

Record-setting cards are one thing, but the base rookie cards are where the bulk of the action takes place for collectors and investors who do not have limitless funds. The 2003 Topps LeBron James #221 is one of the most recognizable rookies of the modern basketball era. This base rookie card shows a teenage LeBron wearing a white suit and holding his Cleveland Cavaliers jersey as the Draft Pick #1 for the series. The base card has a massive number of graded cards already in the population reports:

• PSA counted 10,166 total grades of this variation of the LeBron rookie (as of June 3, 2021) before getting into qualifiers. Of the PSA grades, there were the following: 2,470 examples at PSA 8; another 4,281 examples at PSA 9; and another 1,935 examples at PSA 10.
• SGC’s grading system shows a population report of 587 cards graded. Of those, 1 is listed as 10 PRI. These are the following counts per high grade thereafter: (47) at SGC 10; (26) at SGC 9.5; (221) at SGC 9; and (113) at SGC 8.5.

One serious wild card that may impact values ahead is that there is likely going to be a flood of additional LeBron base rookie cards that will be added to the population reports ahead. There may already be hundreds (or thousands) of these cards that are currently held up in the grading queue as grading companies try to get their systems back into normal operations in 2021. There may also be hundreds or thousands of more examples of LeBron’s base rookie that collectors and investors have been sitting on as ungraded until the grading SNAFU of 2020 to 2021 is worked out.

Collectors Dashboard has started collecting data on many cards to create indexes for select cards and groups of cards that are influencing the hobby and and investment space in collectibles. Normally we would not focus solely on the PSA 10 Gem Mint grades, but in this case the population is so large and the trading activity is so active that we wanted to see the data on the PSA 10.

This base rookie in PSA 10 was routinely selling for close to $5,000 at the end of 2020 and in January of 2021 and the price surged to well above $10,000 in February 2021. There were even two outlier auction prices at $14,400 and $16,200 but the price went to sub-$7,000 at the end of March. And while the price even dipped under $5,000 in May, there was an eBay auction (probstein123) that managed to fetch $9,100 on the evening of June 4. Without knowing the details of that auction, and knowing that all PSA 10 examples are not always the exact same look, here were other sales up for grabs on June 4, 2021:

• PWCC Vault had five (5) PSA 10 examples for sale between $5,050 and $7,000;
• Alt had one (1) for sale at $7,750 with an “or Best Offer” qualifier;
• and eBay listings for “Buy It Now” had multiple cards from various sellers from $5,250 to $6,250.

It has been undeniable that investors have been active in collectibles. Every major auction house and eBay have all started to refer to collectibles as assets and as an alternative asset class. There are many examples you can see in the graph where some prices have been recorded handily above or below the norm — but what has been undeniable is that after a surge in January and February (2021) prices have come down massively for the LeBron James base rookie card.

One article which may be sounding board for just how difficult the predicament is for both LeBron James and for the Lakers was seen in The Big Lead titled “It’s Time to Blow Up the Los Angeles Lakers and Rebuild.” The article is critical of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, noting that each player may fetch first-round draft picks in a trade (James has two years and $85 million remaining and Davis has $150+ million remaining).

Collectors Dashboard has been tracking the most expensive sports cards ever sold, but the real driving force and interest for those without unlimited funds is going to be in the most popular cards of each era. This grading population should speak for itself in the case of the 2003 Topps LeBron James base rookie.

While this is far from what the end products will look like, here is a graph of just the PSA 10 sales that have been seen from July 1, 2020 through May 31, 2021.