The Los Angeles Lakers are having a mixed season with just 18 wins and 19 losses. They are ranked ranked 7th in the Western Conference and LeBron is in his nineteenth NBA season. The dilemma about the modern sports card market continues to rage on as many card prices are down handily from their peak prices in early 2021. As 2022 gets rolling, it’s time to start counting populations of some of great base cards in the hobby and evaluating what prices have been doing — and maybe where they may go in 2022.

It’s time to look at some basic economic issues around supply and demand here. The base rookie for LeBron James is the 2003 Topps (#211) and Collectors Dashboard is taking a price and data dive look into what has been happening. We also cannot forget that LeBron had multiple sightings in the Top 2021 Sales Prices of All Sports Cards.

It has been well known that basketball cards made up a very large amount of the backlogs at the grading companies, and LeBron’s base rookie population exploded in 2021. With demand not rising, the old balance between an increasing supply in a pressured modern card price environment, simple economics would imply lower prices.

Collectors Dashboard evaluates high-end collectibles as an alternative asset class. This means that even high-priced sports cards may be competing for the same capital that would have ended up in stocks, bonds, land, crypto, and so on. This base rookie in a PSA 10 was commanding in excess of $10,000 less than a year ago — it was closer to $3,000 heading into the end of 2021.

The 2003 Topps LeBron James #221 base rookie PSA population report was at 11,828 base grades on 12/31/21. That is versus 11,282 on 9/11/21 and versus 10,166 on or around 6/3/21. These are just the base grades, not counting autographs and not counting half-grades and qualifiers. Still, that is a 16.3% gain in the base grades of the PSA population alone in less than 6 months for a card that is now 18 years old. The “zone” part of his grades are all at the highest grades as of 12/31/21:

• PSA 8 (2,979)
• PSA 8.5 (164)
• PSA 9 (4,984)
• PSA 10 (2,051)

SGC’s population has also risen handily to 912 graded cards in total as of 12/31/21. SGC’s grading system showed that its population report of 735 total graded examples as of 9/11/21 was up 25.2% from the 587 total cards graded as of 6/3/21.

What about the phantom population of ungraded cards and cards that are in line waiting to be graded? Back in June we noted that there could still be thousands of more examples of LeBron’s base rookie that remain ungraded. Many collectors and sports card investors have lightened up on their flood of grading submissions. It’s not just the time to get the cards back either — it is the high costs of getting full grades. Many dealers and collectors have also complained that higher and perfect grades are also harder to come by now. There are also newer entrants into card grading services which have also been grading more cards in 2021.

Will LeBron’s base rookie card prices do better in 2022? That remains to be seen and it is still rather early in the season. If stocks and bonds cannot be given price guarantees then you know sports collectibles cannot have any price guarantees. Anyone who purchased this card in the last year has found out the hard way that card prices can plummet.

LeBron’s base 2003 Topps rookie in PSA 10 was routinely selling for close to $5,000 at the end of 2020. From January of 2021 the price surged to well above $10,000 into 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 (2021). LeBron’s base rookie in a PSA 10 went under $5,000 in May, but there was an eBay auction (probstein123) that managed to fetch $9,100 on the evening of June 4. Here were other sales up for grabs we tracked back on 6/4/21:

• 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.

Things did not improve for LeBron’s base rookie card as the 2021-22 NBA season has gone on. Collector’s Dashboard stopped tracking pre-Christmas sales of these PSA 10 examples to avoid any holiday and year-end aberrations. The range of sales we have tracked may overlook some sources and will absolutely ignore in-person or offline transactions that take place via private orders, local card shops, Twitter, card conventions and so on. Here was the range of PSA 10 sales we tracked below:

• 12/1/21 – 12/20/21 was 12/6/2021 at $3,399.00 HIGH and 12/13/2021 at $2,600.00 LOW.
• 11/1/21 – 11/30/21 was 11/15/2021 at $4,001.00 HIGH and 11/20/2021 at $3,600.00 LOW.
• 10/1/21 – 10/31/21 was 10/13/2021 at $4,299.99 HIGH and 10/24/2021 at $3,740.00 LOW.

Again, these may not capture some sales but the pricing trend for LeBron’s 2003 Topps base rookie has yet find a floor that showed an immediate bounce of consistently higher prices. That of course does not mean that prices will only keep falling because that depends on many outside factors.

What if LeBron and the Lakers start blowing out their opponents? On New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, LeBron James scored 43 points against the Trail Blazers in the Lakers’ 33-point victory. It was his first 40-point game of the 2021-22 season. LeBron is also averaging 35 points and 10 rebounds per game in his last 7 appearances, not bad for a NBA player that just turned 37 years old. And while Anthony Davis is out, LeBron has been averaging 36 points per game and more than 10 rebounds per game.

Again, there are no assurances that prices will rise in sports collectibles. Those who bought the base LeBron James rookie have witnessed firsthand that those prices can drift much lower. This sets the stage for many Top Items Coming Up for Auction in 2022.