Every sport has its G.O.A.T. player, and Michael Jordan held that status for about 30 years before the current generation of basketball players have become so much more prominent in the news. Michael Jordan’s rookie card variations have always been in high demand and its prices proved it. What was seen in prices from before the pandemic back in 2019 through the peak of the pandemic in early 2021 was nothing short of a mania while other sports cards and collectibles were soaring.

The saying “Nothing Lasts Forever!” is perhaps an understatement for what happened to the card prices of Michael Jordan rookie cards after prices reached their zenith in early 2021. If these were tallied using stock market investment terms, the market would have said Jordan rookie card prices were worse than a correction — they crashed!

So, what about the prized 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card?

With basketball nearing an end in 2021, and with many sports card prices having crashed from their highs, it’s time to start looking at whether or not the prices have corrected enough that they are a bargain or whether the market is going to keep correcting.

Collectors Dashboard evaluates collectibles as an alternative asset class, effectively evaluating high-end sports cards and all high-end collectibles no different than if they were stocks, bonds or real estate. And in the case of Michael Jordan rookie cards, a PSA 8, 9 or 10 commanded such high prices over the last year that the could cost more than many cars and homes. This was a period where collectors with passion to own a MJ-rookie were competing directly against investors who simply wanted to make quick money by selling quickly for a profit.

There are never guaranteed profits in stocks, bonds or real estate. Collectibles also come with no guaranteed profits, a lesson that was learned the hard way by countless sports card buyers in 2021. The 1986 Fleer card of Michael Jordan is the defacto rookie card despite some earlier issues. The red border is easily chipped, and this makes the cards much harder to keep in a way that the cards will grade in a pristine and Gem-Mint PSA 10. in fact, many cards straight from the pack would not have come out as a PSA 10. Many of the cards also have centering issues.

For the sake of simple evaluation and appraisal, Collectors Dashboard is valuating the auction universe that has been seen from 2020 into 2021 to see if this market has bottomed out or whether it still has room to correct from the zenith.

First and foremost, the “Jordan Rookie” has a massive population that is rapidly approaching 22,000 total graded cards in all grades combined from the PSA population report alone. While a PSA 10 wills till command a sale price in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are “only” 318 examples at that grade and the prices are too high for most collectors and collectibles investors to buy. The graded examples by other whole-point and non-qualified grades are as follows:

• PSA 7 has 3,634 graded examples
• PSA 8 has 7,996 graded examples
• PSA 9 has 2,788 graded examples

With nearly 8,000 Jordan rookie examples graded at PSA 8, that is the grade we will focus on for a so-called market because there are multiple auctions and sales at this grade that now occur each and every week. In an effort to try to smooth out the highest and lowest sales of the PSA 8 examples on any given day, it is important to take the average of a day’s sales rather than trying to cheery pick individual sales that were higher or lower than normal and trying to figure out if odd bids or subjective card grading had a role.

For instance, the July 1, 2021 at the PSA 8 grades had already been tallied with a range of $7,200 to $8,000 per PSA 8 example from PWCC Auctions and Probstein123 on eBay for a daily count of $7,600 for this purpose. That is also despite card sales of $8,610 and $9,840 from Goldin Auctions on June 29.

The peak of the Michael Jordan Fleer rookies was in February 2021 when prices went above $20,000 — to levels above $28,000 in “Auction” formats and at least two PWCC Vault auctions seeing prices above the $30,000 level. Those prices have routinely dropped to under $10,000 at the current level and the Jordan rookies have a range of about $7,200 to $8,000 in most PSA 8 sales.

This would give an entire market capitalization for the PSA 8 universe without qualifiers of $63.97 million at $8,000 per card and $59.97 million at $7,500 per card.

The zenith for PSA 9 graded examples was briefly above $80,000 in February and a range of $22,000 to $23,000 for most sales within the last 10 days. The zenith for Gem-Mint PSA 10 graded examples briefly went above $600,000 and then above $700,000 at the absolute zenith for one auction, and a range of $180,100 to $295,200 has been seen in the last 30-day period.

Going much further back in time on the PSA 8 grades, the price had routinely stayed under $2,000 through early 2019 until rising to a range that was generally $4,000 to $7,000 in 2020 before blasting into the stratosphere at the end of 2020 and into the February 2021 highs above $20,000 and ultimately (and briefly) above the $30,000 level.

The PSA price charts for the PSA 8 level were still weak as of July 1, 2021 but were stabilizing compared to what had been seen after the February 2021 zenith into late May when the prices started reaching under $9,000 per card. The PSA 9 examples have seen some prices under $20,000 but after a fair look at those cards the 9 grades appeared to not be as strong as the 9 grades selling closer to $23,000 in late June 2021.

Calling out any bottom in traditional asset classes is hard enough, and calling an absolute bottom in sports card and collectibles prices may be a futile effort. Collectors Dashboard does not issue any line-in-the-sand price calls as if card prices followed the same Wall Street analyst price targets on stocks. That said, the rate of decline has been slowing and some of the prices seem to have stabilized at some slightly lower levels in June. There are still many cards for sale in the Buy It Now category where sellers are hoping for a significantly higher price. We can also not forget about the backlog at the main card grading services keeping an unknown number of cards that are in line to be graded but which are not currently counted in any population reports.

The unrealistic above-market prices being sought by the Buy It Now sellers may also suggest that the sports card market capitulation has not been universal from those who were buying cards before, during and right after the February 2021 price zenith. Perhaps the direction in prices ahead will start to depend upon the supply of cards that sellers will be willing to part with.

As we have warned, there is no reason to ever just bank on the last sale price before your purchase and how the card market has crashed before.