Super Bowl 56 is almost upon us and it seems obvious where #TheHobby is deeply invested in an outcome. It’s all about Joe Burrow. Sales on eBay of $500 cards and even $10,000 cards have been off the charts for Joe Burrow. The only problem here, or at least one of the potential problems, is that despite the Bengals taking more money bets the Rams are expected to win the big game. If that is the case, the lack of attention that was given to Matthew Stafford may be one of the greatest mistakes collectors have collectively made in a long time.

The hobby of sports collectibles is not always a great judge of outcomes. So, what if the hobby is completely overlooking Matthew Stafford here? Please take note that this is by no means a prediction of any sort! The lesson of ‘Any Given Sunday’ applies to any and every NFL game.

Regardless of which team wins and regardless of which quarterback performs better in the big game, there could be some serious assumptions that some of these countless card sales and bidding frenzies may have been too much.  Before getting into the cards, let’s look side by side at the 2021 NFL regular season statistics side by side. It is easy to say more stats should be considered, but these are the main stats we were focused on.

Now, what about the cards being sold on eBay in the last two weeks? We had to alter some of the criteria in higher-end and lower-end cards because 33-year-old Matthew Stafford’s career goes back to 2009 and his entire career was with the Detroit Lions prior to the top job for the Rams in 2021.  His win/loss ratio of 86-95 (and 1 tie) simply doesn’t highlight how good of a quarterback he can be based on lifetime stats. Being on the Detroit Lions just doesn’t get the same attention as being on other teams, at least not for the sports collectibles hobby. Despite having 2 partial seasons after his rookie year, Stafford has amassed 49,995 passing yards, 4,302 completions, a 63.0% completion rate, 323 TD’s, and 161 picks.

Collectors Dashboard went back to the same cut-off date for the start of January 29, 2022 to match the hype ahead of and then after the Championship game. Because Matthew Stafford has an exponential number of cards from 9 more than seasons than Joe Burrow, we had to screen out a lot more price levels. After all, how many people are clamoring to buy 7th and 8th season Detroit Lions QB cards?

Going back to the same period there were just 231 Matthew Stafford cards that sold for $500 or more, and many of those were in a Buy It Now (or Best Offer) format that was close enough that the prices could be significantly under that threshold. Joe Burrow’s figure figure back to the same start of January 29, 2022 was approximately 510 cards just one day ago.

In the $10,000 category of Joe Burrow cards back to the start of January 29, there were 42 eBay listings that hold sold as of one day ago. There were only 3 sales of that price for Matthew Stafford and those 3 may or may not be real. They were all Buy It Now and two of the sales shown were the exact same card (down to the serial number) from the exact same seller at the exact same price.

Many of Joe Burrow’s cards are currently ungraded, and many of Matthew Stafford’s cards would still be in the “maybe grade eventually” collector category. Here were the eBay screens using only PSA graded, SGC graded and Beckett graded examples with no price limits in the sold cards:

• PSA graded was 1,570 examples of Burrow versus 155 for Stafford
• BGS was approximately 170 graded examples of Burrow versus 129 for Stafford
• SGC was approximately 140 graded examples of Burrow versus 70 for Stafford

After looking at the raw number of sales of ungraded cards, the hobby should brace for an exponential graded population explosion in the coming months of both Joe Burrow and Matthew Stafford cards.

Going back to the start of 2022, here are some of the highlighted eBay cards that have sold. The descriptions have been left identical so that the sales can be more easily searched without listing links and item numbers, and any duplicate sales of the same seller and same exact card have not been counted even if they appear in the data above. These are those sales:

• 2009 Matthew Stafford Topps Chrome Black Refractor /25 Auto RC SGC 10 POP1 GOLD for $9,500.00 (Buy It Now format 1/26/22)
• 2009 Playoff National Treasures Rookie Matthew Stafford RC PSA 10 GEM MINT #/50 for $6,999.99 (or Best Offer 2/02/22)
• 2009 Playoff Contenders MATTHEW STAFFORD Rookie Ticket Auto PSA 10 Pop 72 for $4,499.00 (or Best Offer 2/4/22)
• MATTHEW STAFFORD 2009 PLAYOFFS CONTENDERS ROOKIE TICKET AUTO RC PSA 10 GEM for $4,350.00 after 29 bids (2/11/22)
• MATTHEW STAFFORD 2009 NATIONAL TREASURES ROOKIE PATCH AUTO #d 57/99 RPA PSA 9 RC for $4,161.45 after 58 bids (1/21/22)
• MATTHEW STAFFORD 2009 EXQUISITE ROOKIE PATCH AUTO #d 77/99 RPA SGC 9 AUTO 10 for $2,136.56 after 45 bids (1/21/22)
• 2009 Bowman Chrome Matthew Stafford Silver Refractor RC /99 PSA 10 MVP? SB? for $2,075.00 after 37 bids (1/26/22)
• MATHEW STAFFORD 2009 UD SP AUTHENTIC 4 COLOR PATCH /499 ROOKIE AUTO SGC 8.5/10 for $1,970.68 (or Best Offer 1/22/22)

Using eBay data in larger groups is sometimes difficult because the descriptions and titles sometimes include other players or bulk items. That can create some underlying numbers that are higher or lower than the true numbers, just like the multiple sales of the exact same card by the exact same seller on different days. That said, the efforts to produce these results were handled in the same manner and using the same rules of eliminating duplicate or other data in the smaller samples and larger groups.