This post will update the values of some of our favorite Ohtani cards to grade, while adding a new one to the mix (that we are buying tons of). You can also find the link to our last Shohei Ohtani Market Update here.

Looking at CardLadder’s Shohei Ohtani Index, we can see that Ohtani’s market is up a whopping 22.04% over the last month.

We generally focus on the rookie cards, but we’re now specifically targeting his 2023 All Aces card as well. This one stands out for having abnormally large Expected Profitability right now, while admittedly being one of the stranger cards on the market right now for a variety of reasons.

We’ll discuss this, as well as some of our other favorites to grade right now, including Bowman Chrome and Topps Chrome rookie cards. Let’s get into it.

*We may receive compensation for any purchases completed from links in this post. Thanks for supporting BCG Cards.

Top Shohei Ohtani Cards To Grade Now

Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

The Rise Of All Aces

1. 2023 Shohei Ohtani Topps All Aces #AA11

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $315
PSA 10 Value | $1,275
PSA 9 Value | $450
Gem Rate | 63.6%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $797.66
Expected Profit | $482.66
Expected ROI | 153.2%

Available For Purchase (eBay)

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

Notes: This card has seen a meteoric rise over the last few months, leading to Expected Profitability that is far higher than any other card currently on the market (that I know of).

Something has to give, as this isn’t a sustainable spot to be. Eventually, card graders will bid the raw value of this card higher until Expected Profit falls, or PSA 10 values will fall, or some combination of the two will happen. My best bet is we’re going to see raw prices rise to catch up sooner rather than later, but we’ll see graded prices fall over the next few months (unless Ohtani starts the season hot, in which case we might just keep going up).

The market dynamics are also interesting. This card was mass produced in 2023, and there is a lot on the market right now. There are 5-10 PSA 10 copies and about 30 raw copies selling every day. That’s a ton of supply for a non-rookie card to be demanding prices like this. For more on this specifically, I recommend giving this article by Slabsquatch Analytics a quick read.

That said, with Expected Profitability at well over 100%, I’m willing to take a risk and buy as many of these as I can find in gradable condition. Even if the market falls by 50%, these will ultimately still be profitable if you can achieve 60% gem rates on your submissions.

And for some final thoughts, quality control on these doesn’t seem to be great in spite of the high average Gem Rate. Be especially careful of jagged back edges and corner chipping.

Bowman Chrome Is Still King

2. 2018 Shohei Ohtani Bowman Chrome #1

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $1,950
PSA 10 Value | $4,700
PSA 9 Value | $1,950
Gem Rate | 56.0%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Express
Expected Value | $2,877.00
Expected Profit | $927.00
Expected ROI | 47.5%

Available For Purchase (eBay)

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

Notes: This is not as high margin as the All Aces card, but is still a good target and a good way to invest a large amount of money in a single card. Investing in expensive cards is great for reselling, as it helps you to scale as long as you can still make your target ROI.

We’ve talked about this card extensively in the past, but these grade well as long as you submit well centered copies.

Topps Chrome Keeps Rising

Notes: I’ll touch on all the Topps Chrome cards here instead of leaving individual notes for each.

Each of these grade well and aren’t prone to flaws despite being almost a decade old. They all have been consistently rising for what feels like 2 years now, and currently have Expected ROI in the 50-70% range. As a reminder, we generally target a minimum of 25%.

Going a little deeper on Gem Rates… while 2 of these have Gem Rates above 80%, we rarely project for cards we are purchasing to have greater than a 70% chance of grading as a PSA 10. There’s just too many unknowns from buying a card online.

3. 2018 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome #150

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $435
PSA 10 Value | $900
PSA 9 Value | $420
Gem Rate | 87.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $662.50
Expected Profit | $227.50
Expected ROI | 52.3%

Available For Purchase (eBay)

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

4. 2018 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome #HMT32

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $365
PSA 10 Value | $860
PSA 9 Value | $365
Gem Rate | 85.0%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $615.53
Expected Profit | $250.53
Expected ROI | 68.6%

Available For Purchase (eBay)

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

5. 2018 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome #HMT1

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $225
PSA 10 Value | $640
PSA 9 Value | $240
Gem Rate | 62.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $361.25
Expected Profit | $136.25
Expected ROI | 60.6%

Available For Purchase (eBay)

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

BCG Auction Tracker Updates

Our eBay auction tracking tool is meant to help you find the top raw cards to buy and grade for profit.

This week, we’ve updated our auction tracking tool to include the previously mentioned Shohei Ohtani All Aces card, as well as Kevin McGonigle, Jesus Made, and Leo De Vries. All 3 are surging as the baseball season gets underway, with McGonigle leading the way after a fast start to the season.

You can try the tool, which shows the eBay auctions ending soonest for all the players we’re targeting, at the link below.

BCG Auction Tracker

We generally look to buy cards with positive price momentum, because PSA 10 prices usually rise before raw prices catch up (read more about this approach here and here). You can see this phenomenon very clearly with the Victor Wembanyama Prizm Silver market.

Wemby’s PSA 10 Prizm Silver Rookie Card is up over 60% in the last 30 days:

While the raw market is trailing with just 23.8% gains over the same time:

This post is going to break down some of the top Wemby cards you can grade, with a few additional thoughts at the very end. With that said, Victor Wembanyama is not the only player that’s hot. The card market is in a great place for graders, with Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and others also surging.

If you want to find profitable cards to grade, you can try our BCG Auctions Tracker, which tracks the eBay auctions ending soonest for all the players we’re targeting. Link is below.

BCG Auction Tracker

*Affiliate Disclosure: As an eBay affiliate, we may receive commission from links in this post. Thanks for supporting BCG Cards.

Victor Wembanyama Cards To Grade Now

Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

1. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Silver #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $700
PSA 10 Value | $2,540
PSA 9 Value | $725
Gem Rate | 62.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Max
Expected Value | $1,522.83
Expected Profit | $822.83
Expected ROI | 117.5%

Available For Purchase

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

Notes: If there’s one card on this list to focus on, it’s this one. This is both the most abundant of the listed cards, and one of the most profitable. Buying just a few of these can genuinely move the needle for a grading business.

2. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Hyper #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $350
PSA 10 Value | $1,500
PSA 9 Value | $375
Gem Rate | 48.4%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $748.71
Expected Profit | $398.71
Expected ROI | 113.9%

Available For Purchase

All Listings

Notes: This one is more rare than the others on this list, but worth having on your radar. While you’re not going to see a lot of them, Expected Profitability is very high, so just one purchase will be impactful.

3. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Ice #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $240
PSA 10 Value | $850
PSA 9 Value | $270
Gem Rate | 58.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $466.44
Expected Profit | $226.44
Expected ROI | 94.3%

Available For Purchase

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

Notes: Pretty much all the Ice variants are profitable as you’ll see in the remainder of this list, although this one has the highest Expected ROI. If you see any of these on the market, including variants that aren’t shown in this post, they are worth looking into.

4. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Pink Ice #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $225
PSA 10 Value | $615
PSA 9 Value | $225
Gem Rate | 68.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $361.93
Expected Profit | $136.93
Expected ROI | 60.9%

Available For Purchase

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

5. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Red Ice #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $300
PSA 10 Value | $775
PSA 9 Value | $240
Gem Rate | 59.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $422.98
Expected Profit | $122.98
Expected ROI | 41.0%

Available For Purchase

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

6. Victor Wembanyama Prizm Orange Ice #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $250
PSA 10 Value | $725
PSA 9 Value | $275
Gem Rate | 55.1%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $391.56
Expected Profit | $141.56
Expected ROI | 56.6%

Available For Purchase

All Listings

7. Victor Wembanyama Optic Holo #225

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $175
PSA 10 Value | $585
PSA 9 Value | $160
Gem Rate | 47.4%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $251.79
Expected Profit | $76.79
Expected ROI | 43.9%

Available For Purchase

PSA 10s For Sale | PSA 9s For Sale | Raw Cards For Sale

Notes: This card doesn’t quite have supply like some of the other Prizm cards, but there are still quite a few on the market. Many Wembanyama cards are like this — highly profitable but with only 10 to 20 PSA 10 sales per month as compared to the more liquid/abundant cards above. These cards are also worth having on your radar, but didn’t make the cut for this article.

Final Thoughts

Grading Notes: In general, all of these cards grade well. The corners are sturdy, and on the Prizms in particular, the borders are large which means that many of these are centered within PSA’s 55/45 guidelines. Just be aware that the front surfaces on these cards can scratch easily.

Market Outlook: I expect we’ll see these raw cards rise in value quickly as they catch up to the grading math (although it’s possible that graded cards fall instead). This happens when people like us enter the market and start buying them at profitable prices. That doesn’t fundamentally change the strategy to target these cards now, but you should be aware that these markets are moving quickly right now. We’ll be buying these cards aggressively for the foreseeable future.

We’ll break this into two parts. The first will be how to screen for cards that have a high chance at being profitable. The second is a quick rundown of how we use Expected Value in this specific place.

Subscribe now

*This post contains affiliate links. Thanks for supporting BCG Cards.

How to Screen Effectively

The goal of the screen is to filter out any cards that are either unlikely to be profitable, or not abundant enough to be worth researching.

Recently we’ve been using Market Movers for this. If you haven’t used it before, it’s a tool that tracks recent sales for raw and PSA graded cards. The key piece that has been helpful for us is that beyond just showing pricing for individual cards, it also shows the volume of sales in a given time period and the market trend.

Once this is setup, we usually go through the three major sports and Pokémon with a set of screens to identify potentially profitable cards. These are the 3 screens that we apply:

1. Minimum PSA 10 Value

This isn’t a hard rule because I know some graders that do well on lower value cards. But for us, we find that cards worth $300 or more as PSA 10s have a higher chance of being profitable than cards under $300 (you can read more about this here). Regardless of what price you choose, having some sort of price threshold will help you eliminate a large majority of the cards you aren’t actually interested in.

2. Minimum Sales Volume

We set this differently for Pokémon and sports, but the general idea is that we want to look only for cards that are abundant. There’s no reason to spend time researching a card that you’ll never actually see on the market. For sports, we usually look for cards with at least 5-10 sales in the last 60 days, while you need to set the threshold at 20 or higher for Pokémon since the popular Pokémon cards typically have much larger print runs than sports cards.

3. Price Momentum

Again, this is not a hard rule, but more of something that points us in the right direction during our market research. We’ll usually look for cards that have increased in value over the last 60 days. Why? Because PSA 10 values tend to lead while raw values tend to lag. If the PSA 10 has increased in price but the raw value has yet to catch up, this creates a strong window for profitable grading.

This has led us to target Konnor Griffin, Shohei Ohtani, Victor Wembanyama, and Drake Maye (pre-Super Bowl) recently. Not because we were predicting these markets would rise, but because the Expected Values of grading these cards were significantly higher than raw prices.

The obvious risk with momentum buying is purchasing cards at the peak of their market value. But buying at highly profitable prices is your cushion against that. If you’re buying for significantly below Expected Value, you have margin to still make solid profits even if markets decline. And players who are already hot often continue rising longer than you might expect, as has been the case with Shohei Ohtani over the last couple of years. The point isn’t to predict markets, it’s to buy at prices where the math is so good that you will come out ahead on average regardless of where prices go.

From here, every card that makes it through the prescreen gets run through our EV model. This is where we decide whether a card is actually worth buying, and at what price.

After The Prescreen: Building Your Targets

Once a card passes the prescreen, we evaluate its Expected Value relative to its raw price. We have a spreadsheet built out with conditional functions that allows us to do this very quickly.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, I’ve added the formula for calculating Expected Value below, but you can read the full guide to EV here.

EV = PSA 10 Value x (Gem Rate) + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

By inputting the PSA 10 value, PSA 9 value, Gem Rate, and raw price, the spreadsheet gives us the Max Bid, Expected Profit, and Expected ROI of the card. The Max Bid is the EV divided by 1.25 (i.e. the max price we can pay to generate a 25% ROI), Expected Profit tells us the average profitability from buying the card raw and grading it, and the Expected ROI is just the Expected Profit divided by the raw price.

We also include the card name and the date of recording the data. We then use this spreadsheet as a reference when looking for cards to buy. Having this data gives us two main advantages: speed and clarity.

Speed means that when one of the cards we’ve researched hits the market, we know exactly what we are willing to pay for it. This means that we can get great deals on newly listed items because we can recognize underpriced cards faster than other buyers.

Clarity means that we know what we’re interested in, and we don’t need to waste time on cards that we’re not interested in. We build search filters specifically to target the athletes and Pokémon that are profitable. You can read more about building search filters here.

Takeaway

Both the screen and the EV model are prep work. None of this is designed to lead to purchases right away, but if done right it should make your entire process much more efficient. I know that it has for us.

For each card, we’ll show pictures of the card, closeups of the defects we’ve identified, our pregrade notes, and a short breakdown of what we can learn.

And before we get started, here are some helpful resources for anyone who’s new here:

• Everything You Need To Know About Grading For Profit

• The Complete Guide To Expected Value

• The Complete Guide To PSA Grading

• How To Find PSA 10 Candidates on eBay

Want to grade cards more profitably? The BCG Auction Tracker shows eBay auctions ending soon for every player and Pokémon card we're actively targeting.

BCG Auction Tracker

*We may earn a commission for completed purchases. Thanks for supporting BCG cards!

1. 2022 Topps Chrome Cal Raleigh Auto PSA 10

Defects:

Pregrade:

• Notes: Bunch of tiny marks on the front. They look like lint, but they’re not. Clean otherwise.

• Expected Gem Probability: 40%

Thoughts:

I’m actually surprised at how clearly these marks showed up in the PSA scans. The light hit the card just right to show the defects, but outside of the case, they’re not as easy to see.

I think this is a great example of surface marks that do not kill a card’s chances at grading as a 10. This is something you get a feel for as you grade a lot of cards, but the key thing to note here is that these marks were not very deep and were not easy to see without perfect lighting.

2. 2021 Gengar Fusion Strike #271 PSA 10

Defects:

Pregrade:

• Notes: Front left/right centering is borderline. Measured at about 55/45. Other than that, back borders have a couple white dots and minor print issues.

• Expected Gem Probability: 40%

Thoughts:

I didn’t show all the marks on the back that are referenced in the pregrade, but the others are all super minor. Honestly, this is not a surprising 10 but I still think it’s worth showing. The front centering was fringe but technically still within PSA guidelines, and as we’ve noted in past posts, it’s very common for Pokémon cards with minor back surface issues to 10 (see Behind the Slab #1).

That said, this one is a big win for us since this is a high value PSA 10.

3. 1998 Roy Halladay Bowman Auto #54 PSA 9

Defects:

Pregrade:

• Notes: Very clean card except for cluster of white dots on the back surface.

• Expected Gem Probability: 10%

Thoughts:

We generally find that PSA is tough on older cards so we didn’t really expect a PSA 10 on this one. Really, I wouldn’t have been surprised with anything from a PSA 6 to PSA 8. I’m pretty happy with a 9, even though I feel as though an Ultra Modern card with similar flaws easily could gem. Note that we bought this card at a price where a PSA 9 would make us profit, so this is a win.

4. 2016 Rayquaza JPN XY Promo #232 PSA 6

Defects:

Pregrade:

• Notes: Back top edge has a bit of white.

• Expected Gem Probability: 40%

Thoughts:

This grade feels harsh, although I will say that we know PSA is very picky about these edge issues at times. It’s also possible that we missed a defect on the surface of the card that caused this. In general though, I do think just based on the edge this is something that we shouldn’t have submitted.

I’ll also note that while we don’t often get grades below PSA 9 and the occasional PSA 8, it does happen. The rest of the cards make sufficient profitability to cover the occasional bad grade.

You’ll also notice that every one of the cards presented below are from our Market Update posts. We eat our own cooking.

You can find the exact cards discussed in this post by using the BCG Cards Auction Tracker. This post contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

eBay Search Filter

Reviewing Our Recent Purchases

Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

1. 2017 Bowman Chrome Aaron Judge #56

Notes: As you can see these pictures leave a lot to be desired. There are a few reasons we were willing to buy this card regardless.

1. The seller’s profile checked out. He didn’t have any graded cards on his profile, and he said that he pulled this card himself and put it directly in this case. We prefer buying from small sellers who don’t grade cards themselves.

2. The Expected Value math on this card is really good. As you can see in our most recent Market Update this is one of the most profitable cards on the market right now. Based on current market values and average gem rates, we calculated the Expected Value of this card to be $351.60. We bought the card for $135. The upside here is well worth the risk.

2. Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex #231

Notes: This one is a bit different than the Judge above because in this case, we bought a card with noticeable issues. The left/right centering is visibly off on the front and the card has a bend (although this usually has limited effect on grading from our experience). There are two important points here.

1. We bought this for $435, which is below market value for a NM+ raw card. This means our downside is low if we decide to sell it without grading.

2. The EV math on this card is very strong.

I’m going to show the EV calculation below but note that for this card, we will use a Gem Rate of 35% instead of the average Gem Rate of 56%. We are assuming this card has a lower probability of grading a PSA 10 as compared to the average copy submitted to PSA.

Values & Gem Rate

Purchase Price | $434.78
PSA 10 Value | $1,225
PSA 9 Value | $490
Gem Rate | 35.0%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $604.67
Expected Profit | $169.89
Expected ROI | 39.1%

In short, the upside is high and the downside is low. This is the kind of purchase that makes me lose a bit of sleep, but we stuck to our process on this one.

3. 2023 Victor Wembanyama Obsidian Black Color Blast #3

Notes: At $2,600, this is actually the most expensive raw card we’ve bought so far. And as you can see, the pictures leave a lot to be desired. But like the Judge from above, we bought this for two reasons.

1. We messaged the seller and he confirmed it was pack fresh and clean.

2. We got a great deal.

I’ll walk you through the math on this one. This card has very little sales volume so I tried to make conservative estimates for market values.

Values & Gem Rate

Purchase Price | $2,600.29
PSA 10 Value | $7,000
PSA 9 Value | $3,000
Gem Rate | 58.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Super Express
Expected Value | $4,264.00
Expected Profit | $1,663.71
Expected ROI | 64.0%

When even conservative estimates suggest a card is a screaming buy, you have to pull the trigger.

Takeaways

Buying cards to grade always implies some level of risk, you never know exactly what you’re going to get but there are lots of things you can do to maximize your results. Following the Expected Value math, checking your sellers carefully (and asking questions when you need to), and buying with significant margins are all key. If you follow these steps, you can make profit even when pictures and information are limited.

Interesting Auctions Ending In Next 24 Hours:

Here are some auctions ending today of cards/players we have been targeting (including cards not discussed in this post). You can find our recent Market Updates here.

1. 2025 Abdul Carter Downtown

2. 2024 Drake Maye Resurgence Auto Refractor

3. 2025 Bowman Chrome Konnor Griffin Auto

4. 2023 Pokémon 151 Snorlax 051 Pokémon Center

5. 2018 Bowman Chrome Shohei Ohtani

6. 2024 Bowman Chrome Konnor Griffin Auto

7. 2025 Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon ex 161/131

8. 2023 Pokémon 151 Charizard ex 199/165

9. 2023 Pokémon 151 Charizard ex 199/165 (2)

And here is the filter we used to find these listings:

eBay Search Filter

This post is all about the cards that we are sending to PSA that are not perfect. These all have defects that we’ve identified and will affect grading, but we still feel like they have a chance at grading as PSA 10s.

Before we start, I recommend you read our Complete Guide to PSA Grading: How to Get More PSA 10s.

Try our auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Auction Search Filter

1. 2025 Donruss Downtown Tyler Shough

Defects:

Notes: Overall, this is a pretty solid card but it looks like there’s two manufacturer surface flaws. One is a light scratch on the side that can only be seen in certain lighting. The other is a dimple. We see stuff like this gem pretty often, and 2025 Donruss Downtown cards have been grading well. I feel good about this submission.

2. 2024 TC Bo Nix Auto Aqua Sonar /199

Defects:

Notes: The only flaw on this card is an ink stain on the front surface, which came from the original signature. In the past we’ve had good luck on auto cards with ink stains, but they have always been smaller and on the back of the card. I will say, this one benefits from being hard to see since it blends into the aqua sonar design of the card.

Basically the main test here is whether or not ink stains on the front of auto cards impact grading differently than ink stains on the back. Overall I feel like this one has a solid shot.

3. 2024 Prizm Drake Maye Silver #329

Defects:

Notes: Really the main defect on this card is the front top/bottom centering. We measured the centering at about 42/58 (well outside of PSA guidelines), with the bottom border being quite a bit larger than the top.

Considering the usual quality control issues on these 2024 Prizm cards, this card is in good condition besides the centering. Generally we don’t worry much about manufacturer dimples like the ones shown here: PSA is lenient on these.

With all that said, the main test here is how far we can push it on off-centered cards. I think this one has a chance.

Takeaways:

To leave you with some quick thoughts on what we have here:

• PSA is lenient on light scratches and manufacturer dimples.

• We’ve had good luck on ink stains on auto cards in the past, but we’re still actively testing this area.

• PSA recently updated their guidance on centering to suggest that cards slightly outside of 55/45 can gem. We’ve had some luck with cards as off center as 57/43. We’re testing going a bit further.

Interesting Auctions Ending In Next 24 Hours:

Here are some auctions ending today of cards/players we have been targeting (including cards not discussed in this post). You can find our recent Market Updates here.

1. 2025 Tyler Shough Downtown #19

2. 2018 Shohei Ohtani TC #HMT32

3. 2024 Downtown Caleb Williams #21

4. 2021 Dragonite V #192

5. 2023 BC Junior Caminero Auto

6. 2018 TC Shohei Ohtani 1983 #83T-6

7. 2024 TC Update Yoshinobu Yamamoto Green Auto

8. 2023 Prizm Silver Victor Wembanyama #136

These are affiliate links and we may receive compensation for completed purchases.

Previous posts have covered Shohei Ohtani and Konnor Griffin as key targets for us. Both remain targets and we’ll actually look at a couple more Ohtani cards below.

The remainder of the post will focus on other superstars like Aaron Judge and Mike Trout, as well as rising talent like Jac Caglianone and Junior Caminero.

Try our eBay auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Business of Card Grading Auction Search Filter

Profitable Cards To Grade Now

Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

1. Shohei Ohtani

We’ve bought a ton of Topps, Topps Chrome, and Bowman Chrome Ohtani rookies lately, but less of the other variations. With that said, profitability is strong on the 3 cards below, and we’ll be targeting all three going forward.

2018 Topps Finest #100

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $160
PSA 10 Value | $450
PSA 9 Value | $220
Gem Rate | 63.7%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $263.86
Expected Profit | $103.86
Expected ROI | 64.9%

Note: Technically, this also could be submitted in the Value service level (which would increase margins), but generally raw cards worth around $150 or more we bump up to the Value Plus tier for faster turnaround times. This is just a matter of preference.

2018 Topps Finest Refractor #100

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $1,250
PSA 10 Value | $3,200
PSA 9 Value | $1,350
Gem Rate | 60.9%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Regular
Expected Value | $1,991.96
Expected Profit | $741.96
Expected ROI | 59.4%

2018 Bowman Sterling Continuity #BS-SO

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $515
PSA 10 Value | $1,200
PSA 9 Value | $550
Gem Rate | 77.6%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $858.89
Expected Profit | $343.89
Expected ROI | 66.8%

2. Aaron Judge

We bought a lot of Aaron Judge cards in 2025, but less so far in 2026. With his market on the rise, this is a key target for us now. There’s also a lot of these on the market, so if you want to increase your grading profits this is a great place to focus.

Note that most of these grade really well, but the 2013 Bowman Chrome card is tough because most of them are off center. Pay extra attention to top/bottom centering on these.

2013 Bowman Chrome #BDPP19

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $290
PSA 10 Value | $1,000
PSA 9 Value | $335
Gem Rate | 39.4%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $459.50
Expected Profit | $169.50
Expected ROI | 58.4%

Note: Make sure you don’t accidentally buy the mini version of this card. It looks the same, it’s worth a lot less. It’s also worth noting, it has a different card number, so it’s easy to spot.

2017 Bowman Chrome Batting #56

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $160
PSA 10 Value | $575
PSA 9 Value | $180
Gem Rate | 76.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $351.60
Expected Profit | $191.60
Expected ROI | 119.8%

Note: This is a wake up call to me more than anything. This just went from a card I haven’t been targeting to one of my top targets. These Market Updates help me as much as they help you.

2017 Topps Chrome #169

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $155
PSA 10 Value | $400
PSA 9 Value | $200
Gem Rate | 78.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $256.11
Expected Profit | $101.11
Expected ROI | 65.2%

2017 Topps Chrome Refractor #169

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $490
PSA 10 Value | $1,150
PSA 9 Value | $490
Gem Rate | 79.7%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $823.90
Expected Profit | $333.90
Expected ROI | 68.1%

3. Mike Trout

Notes: This was one of our most bought cards in 2025. Despite the sub-50% gem rate and the age of the card, we grade very well on these (9 PSA 10s out of 14 submissions).

2011 Topps Update #US175

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $275
PSA 10 Value | $940
PSA 9 Value | $340
Gem Rate | 42.5%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $457.13
Expected Profit | $182.13
Expected ROI | 66.2%

4. Rising Talent: Bowman Chrome Autos

Notes: This section is for the young talent that hasn’t quite ascended to superstar status. Jac Caglianone and Jacob Wilson were big targets of ours last year, and we graded well on these. As their markets rise, they are emerging as targets again as the season approaches.

Kevin McGonigle is one of the top prospects in baseball and is a solid target right now based on Expected Profitability. We’ll see if he can crack the Tigers opening day lineup.

Junior Caminero rounds out this list as he’s the most proven player on this list coming off a 40 home run season in Tampa Bay.

In general, Bowman Chrome products tend to be well produced and one of our favorite products to grade. There’s lots of different refractors of these cards, which can be good targets as well (although we mostly buy the base cards).

2024 Bowman Chrome Jac Caglianone Auto #CPAJC

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $300
PSA 10 Value | $675
PSA 9 Value | $325
Gem Rate | 57.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $394.83
Expected Profit | $94.83
Expected ROI | 31.6%

2023 Bowman Chrome Jacob Wilson Auto #CDAJWI

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $125
PSA 10 Value | $380
PSA 9 Value | $135
Gem Rate | 50.1%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value
Expected Value | $186.24
Expected Profit | $61.24
Expected ROI | 49.0%

2025 Bowman Chrome Kevin McGonigle Auto

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $340
PSA 10 Value | $785
PSA 9 Value | $410
Gem Rate | 48.8%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Max
Expected Value | $459.12
Expected Profit | $119.12
Expected ROI | 35.0%

2023 Bowman Chrome Junior Caminero Auto #CPAJCR

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $290
PSA 10 Value | $700
PSA 9 Value | $290
Gem Rate | 59.6%

Profitability

PSA Submission Tier | Value Plus
Expected Value | $400.65
Expected Profit | $110.65
Expected ROI | 38.2%

More Market Updates

• Market Update #1: Blastoise Is On Fire??

• Konnor Griffin Emergency Market Update

• The Most Profitable Ohtani Cards To Grade

Now, I understand a lot of my audience is primarily interested in sports cards, so this post will aim to give sports card graders basic tools to successfully start grading Pokémon. We actually started buying and grading Pokémon just last year, and we’ve had very strong results doing it.

In total, our gem rate has been exactly 72.5% on over 250 cards, and we’ve generated over a 55% ROI. All that is to say: if you have the skillset to grade sports cards well, the transition is not as hard as you might think.

Subscribe to get our most profitable Pokémon card picks, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe now

The Fundamentals Are The Same

Our sports card grading business is built on Expected Value. I’ve included the EV formula below, but anyone unfamiliar can read the full guide here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

The good news is that the math doesn’t change for Pokémon. A sports card with $400 / $150 / 55% (PSA 10 Value / PSA 9 Value / Gem Rate) will have the exact same Expected Value as a Pokémon card worth $400 / $150 / 55%.

This means that fundamentally, nothing changes. If you submit good condition cards with positive Expected Profit, there’s no reason that Pokémon cards can’t be just as profitable as sports cards (if not more).

“Star Power” Is Still King

Our approach to sports cards is always to buy the most popular players in the league, as this is what usually leads to strong Expected Profit. For instance, our most bought players in each sport this year are Shohei Ohtani, Drake Maye, and Victor Wembanyama.

Pokémon is more or less the same. We target the most popular Pokémon, probably some of the same Pokémon you have heard of even if you’ve never collected the cards.

What this means is you don’t have to learn the entire market overnight. If you start with Pikachu, Charizard, Gengar, Umbreon, and Mewtwo, you will have more than enough targets to generate solid grading profits. You’ll also find more targets gradually through your own market research and by reading this newsletter.

Pay Attention to New Releases

Just like with sports cards, new releases tend to be profitable because a new release leads to hundreds of thousands of ungraded, pack fresh cards hitting the market. So it’s helpful to be aware of what cards are new on the market.

To do this, you don’t even need to follow a release calendar: just by actively buying in the market you will see listings for cards from the current year (i.e., seeing 2026 cards on the market today). This is your signal to investigate further.

But remember, buying new releases can be risky without a plan. We use a Market Adjustment framework, meaning that we assume anything that we buy will decrease in value while it’s being graded. You can read more about this approach here.

Set Knowledge Is Optional

You don’t need to know about specific sets or card variants to grade profitably. As long as you can find individual cards that are profitable, you can do just fine buying those.

At the same time, knowing different sets well can be helpful. In general, having more knowledge of each product will help you to make fewer mistakes, identify trends in price movements that lead you to profitable cards, or to understand common grading defects across different products.

While you don’t absolutely need this yet, I highly recommend the Sleeve No Card Behind YouTube channel (to which I have no affiliation) to get you started. It explains many of the fundamentals in a beginner friendly way. You can find this linked here.

Pokémon Cards Are Printed In Many Languages

Pokémon cards are printed in many languages, including English, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, German, Indonesian, and more.

We’ll keep it simple for this section. English cards are the most relevant for profitable grading, Japanese cards are on the rise (and a real target of ours), and Simplified Chinese cards are worth buying as well. We don’t buy any other languages at the moment, but that could always change as markets evolve.

More Supply = More Opportunity

Pokémon is great for reselling because a popular card may have tens or hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation. What this means is that researching one card can lead to 5 or 10 profitable purchases of that card. In other words, when it comes to Pokémon, a little bit of market research can go a long way in terms of increasing profit.

Volatility

We see bigger price swings on Pokémon cards than sports cards. But having some of your inventory in Pokémon can provide diversity (and huge profits at times). I’ve said this before, but we are fine with risk. In my view, it’s how you balance risk that’s important. You can read our guide on how and why to diversify your card inventory here.

Grading Pokémon Cards

This section will build on our Complete Guide to PSA grading. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here.

With that said, there are a few things that are useful to know specifically when grading Pokémon cards. At the end of the day, Pokémon cards are still evaluated based on centering, corners, surface, and edges, but there are a few nuances that are different from sports cards.

Centering:

• Pokémon cards have small borders: This makes it really hard to see if a card is centered just by the eye test. As a beginner, I recommend always measuring the borders to make sure they’re within 55/45 (or at least close).

• Pokémon cards are often printed on a slant: This means that centering may be better on some parts of the card than others. I recommend picking the worst point and measuring from there. I have an example attached below. Note how the left border is larger towards the bottom of the card than the top.

Back Whitening:

Whitening on the back of Pokémon cards is extremely common due to the dark color of the surface. I’ll attach an example below.

Here are some simple rules to follow:

• Surface dots: Cards with small white dots on the back surface can still grade as 10s. We submit these regularly.

• Back corners: We only submit cards with back corner whitening if it is extremely minor. In most cases, it’s best to just avoid these.

• Whitening on edges: Don’t submit if you see whitening on edges. This can easily bring a card to an 8 or lower.

Takeaways

The opportunity in Pokémon is real. We’re finding more Pokémon cards that are highly profitable right now based on Expected Value than any other category, and all the fundamentals behind grading sports cards profitably apply to Pokémon cards.

If you already understand EV and know how to grade cards well, you have everything you need. The easiest way to start is to pick 3 Pokémon, make a search filter for them, get familiar with just these markets, and make your first purchase. The rest comes with reps.

We’re going to look at one of these middle cases in this post.

Hey everyone. I’m working on building a Facebook page with more card grading content! I’d really appreciate if you dropped a follow. You can find it here.

Evaluating the Card

We bought this Shohei Ohtani card back in December for a really solid price, but it came in with some flaws that we didn’t notice in the original listing. I’ve attached pictures below of the card, the defects on the card, and our pregrade notes from when we initially evaluated this.

Card Front & Back:

Defects:

Pregrade Notes:

• Top/bottom centering about 53/47.

• Back edges slightly rough. Don’t think it’s a big deal.

• Back has two small nail-size scratches/shallow indents. Great card otherwise.

• Estimated Gem Probability: 20%

I want to point out a few things about the pregrade before we go into the decision making process. In general, the line between a deep scratch and a shallow indent is extremely thin, and indents are one of the more reliable ways to drop from a PSA 10 to a PSA 8. That meant there was a wide range of possible outcomes here. You can read more about this in our Complete Guide to PSA Grading.

I’ll also note that getting the lighting right is extremely important to any good pregrade. The marks were completely invisible without a light shining directly on them.

And lastly, this card benefits from the fact that the defect is on the back instead of the front. We’ve learned that condition on the front is more important than the back for PSA grading.

To Submit or Not To Submit

The decision of whether or not to submit this card might seem like a debate about the condition of the card. And to some extent it is. We first identified that the card had a 20% chance as grading as a PSA 10, but what to do with that information is the important part. Ultimately, we used Expected Value to make our decision.

I’m going to walk you through the math of this decision below, but for a more detailed explanation read our Complete Guide to Expected Value.

Alternatively, we could have sold the card raw on eBay. The market price was about $1,050 and the fees on eBay are 13.25%, meaning that the sale would have netted $910.88 after fees.

In this case, we estimated that the value of submitting the card to PSA was about $265 higher than selling it raw. When we broke this down mathematically, this went from a challenging decision to an easy one.

Sometimes It Works Out

There’s a reason we submit risky cards. Sometimes they grade as PSA 10s, and when they do, the payoff is generally very large. In this case, we assumed that this would get a PSA 10 just one time out of five. And that’s fine, because that one PSA 10 more than makes up for the other four.

For this Ohtani card, our risk was rewarded with a strong profit margin. It doesn’t always work out this way, but this is the process we try to follow regardless of the results. Good profits come from maintaining a good process over time.

Sports Card Targets

Right now, the three main guys we’re targeting in sports are:

• Shohei Ohtani (read more here)

• Konnor Griffin (read more here)

• Victor Wembanyama

While Ohtani and Wemby have been top targets for months now (we’ve bought 9 Ohtani cards just this week), Konnor Griffin is the new addition to this list.

After his recent 2 homerun Spring Training game, Griffin’s market has exploded, leading to significant Expected Profitability on his cards. I admit this is a bit of a risky play, as Griffin’s market could rise or fall quite quickly, but the profitability is too strong to ignore.

Pokémon Card Targets

Pokémon is also emerging as a huge area of focus for us. The entire market seems to be trending up, and basically all of the big names are becoming profitable to buy right now. This includes Pikachu, Charizard, Gengar, Umbreon, etc.

Per CardLadder, Pokémon cards are up 15.30% over the last 30 days, which more or less matches what we’re seeing in the market.

The biggest takeaway you should have from this post is that if you’re grading for profit, you need to start paying attention to Pokémon now.

Cards On Our Radar

• 2025 Topps Basketball Product: This is on my radar, especially Cooper Flagg cards which at some point we will buy tons of. But for now, I’m still waiting for the market to stabilize.

• 2026 Pokémon Ascended Heroes (English): We’re already targeting some of the Japanese Ascended Heroes cards which released in 2025. We’ll target the English release sometime in the next 2 months.

• 2023 Pokémon 151: This post will look at the Pokémon 151 Blastoise card that’s skyrocketing right now, but this whole set is surging right now, especially the other Generation 1 Pokémon. I will cover this in detail in a future post, after prices settle.

Other Notes

• PSA turnaround times have sped up: Our most recent Value Plus submission popped in just 5 weeks, which is a huge change from just a few months ago.

• PSA offers have been very aggressive: After seemingly months of ignoring PSA’s Partner Offers, we’ve accepted more than 20 offers this week.

• 2025 Downtown Football: After writing this set as a main target of ours, we’ve seen very high pricing on raw cards lately. We didn’t buy any of these this week, but we still have lots of stock being graded with PSA.

Now let’s take a look at some specific cards.

Try our eBay auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Business of Card Grading Auction Search Filter

Profitable Cards To Grade Now

Analysis based on Expected Value (EV). Read the full EV tutorial here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

2024 Bowman Chrome Konnor Griffin Refractor #BDC22

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $120
PSA 10 Value | $450
PSA 9 Value | $145
Gem Rate | 55.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $222.09
Expected Profit | $102.09
Expected ROI | 85.1%

Notes: I highlighted this card during last week’s Konnor Griffin post, but it’s increased in value since then so we’re coming back to it here. I’m seeing a ton of these on the market right now and Expected Profitability is very strong, so this has become a top target of ours. We’ve paid as high as $138 for this card.

2023 Prizm Silver Victor Wembanyama #136

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $500
PSA 10 Value | $1475
PSA 9 Value | $515
Gem Rate | 63.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $927.37
Expected Profit | $427.37
Expected ROI | 85.5%

Notes: Star power goes a long way with sports cards, and Victor Wembanyama certainly has that. Any time we find a well-centered copy of this card with sharp corners for under $600, it’s an automatic buy. Many of the other Wemby Prizm Parallel cards are also profitable for around market price, so keep an eye on those too.

2025 Mega Gengar ex Mega Dream JP #240

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $310
PSA 10 Value | $690
PSA 9 Value | $340
Gem Rate | 87.2%

Profitability

Expected Value | $440.66*
Expected Profit | $130.66
Expected ROI | 42.1%

Notes: This is from the 2025 Pokémon Ascended Heroes Japan release and has emerged as one of our top targets. Japanese quality control is generally great, and we’re seeing that as most of these are well-centered and sharp leading to very high gem rates.

We’re also seeing plenty of supply of this on the market, which is great for volume buying. We’re looking for these at around $300 and have bought 4 so far.

*Due to the recent release, we applied a 10% Market Adjustment to this card. You can read about this here.

2025 Pikachu ex Mega Dream JP #234

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $180
PSA 10 Value | $485
PSA 9 Value | $215
Gem Rate | 83.2%

Profitability

Expected Value | $294.24*
Expected Profit | $114.24
Expected ROI | 63.5%

Notes: Like the Gengar, this is also from the 2025 Ascended Heroes Japanese set, so the notes from above apply here. We’ll target these for as high as $210 to $220.

*Also applied a 10% Market Adjustment to this card. You can read about this here.

2023 Blastoise ex Pokémon 151 #200

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $235
PSA 10 Value | $900
PSA 9 Value | $270
Gem Rate | 31.2%

Profitability

Expected Value | $345.00*
Expected Profit | $110.00
Expected ROI | 46.8%

Notes: By the time you read this, this card will probably be worth even more. The price increase on this card has been relentless (as I update this article before publishing I am revising market values up again), which has made it tough to actually buy. Market Movers can’t even keep up…

Right now I’d be buying clean copies for as much as $270 (we just got one for $246), but who knows what tomorrow will look like.

*Included 10% PSA 8 probability in EV calculation as this card is more prone to low grades than the others.

2025 Mega Charizard X ex Phantasmal Flames #125

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $775
PSA 10 Value | $1750
PSA 9 Value | $725
Gem Rate | 64.3%

Profitability

Expected Value | $1,097.06
Expected Profit | $322.06
Expected ROI | 41.6%

Notes: Back in January, I wrote about this as one of the most profitable cards you could buy. While the Expected Profitability has come down a bit, this card is still very profitable.

One of the biggest challenges with this card is that it’s often printed on a slant, which makes evaluating the centering tricky. With that said, all three of these that we’ve submitted that have finished grading have graded as PSA 10s, so this hasn’t been a big issue in practice.

We generally evaluate the slant by picking the spot on the card where centering is worst, and measure from there. If it’s close to 55/45, we’re willing to buy. I’ll make a full post covering this soon.

Right now, we’re targeting well-centered copies of these for $800 or less.

2021 Charizard Celebrations Classic Collections #4

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $180
PSA 10 Value | $550
PSA 9 Value | $190
Gem Rate | 60.8%

Profitability

Expected Value | $307.77
Expected Profit | $127.77
Expected ROI | 71.0%

Notes: This is one of our most bought cards lately. Profitability is great, these are abundant on the market, and they grade well. We’re targeting these for $200 or less.

2025 Team Rocket’s Mewtwo ex Destined Rivals #231

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $510
PSA 10 Value | $1,175
PSA 9 Value | $480
Gem Rate | 56.7%

Profitability

Expected Value | $710.26
Expected Profit | $200.26
Expected ROI | 39.3%

Notes: This was one of our huge winners when we first started grading Pokémon, and it’s still a good buy now. These are very profitable and grade well, just beware of centering on these (but that applies to most Pokémon). We like these around $500 to $550.

Honorable Mentions

• Drake Maye Prizm Silver #329: Surprisingly still profitable around market price, even after the Super Bowl loss.

• 2022 Topps Chrome Cal Raleigh Rookie Auto #RACR: Across the board, Raleigh autos are profitable, and have been since last April.

• Cynthia’s Garchomp ex Destined Rivals #232: Around 30% Expected ROI with abundant supply on the market.

• 2018 Topps & Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani: Wrote about this last week, there are tons of profitable variations of these.

• 2024 Bowman Chrome Draft Konnor Griffin Auto #CPAKG: Similar ROI to the Bowman Chrome Draft Refractor card, but 7x the price point.

Hey everyone. I’m working on building a Facebook page with more card grading content! I’d really appreciate if you dropped a follow. You can find it here.

Managing Concentration Risk

1. Market Research

The first is regular market research. Always be looking for new cards to target, which naturally leads to more diversification. Ultimately, this will be limited by how many profitable cards are on the market at a given time.

2. Track Your Inventory

Keep close track of your inventory and where you have high concentrations. Our spreadsheet automatically generates a table that shows what players/Pokémon we have exposure to, the exact dollar amount we have invested, and the percentage of our total inventory that these cards make up. Having good data allows us to manage our exposure.

3. Setting Concentration Targets

You can also set targets for what you want your maximum exposure to be to an individual card or player. As a general rule, we try not to let any single player or card exceed 10% of our total inventory value.

With that said, the 10% target is more of a guideline than a hard limit. We’ll go a bit above 10% at times, specifically for generational players or when the Expected Profit is unusually strong. We’re also more willing to break it during a sport’s offseason, when injury and poor-performance risk is lower.

You can further diversify by buying different products. Buying Pokémon cards helps us diversify our risk from any one specific athlete (while buying sports cards also diversifies risk from any one individual Pokémon card). Additionally, if we were to expand to One Piece, Topps Chrome Disney, or some other product line, we would be able to diversify further.

4. Changing Profitability Thresholds

The last lever is your profitability targets. We generally target a 25% Expected ROI, but if a player is already at 10% of our inventory, we might require 40-50% ROI before buying more. This means we’re still willing to add exposure, but only if we can buy cards for great prices. This also adds a margin of safety that allows these purchases to remain profitable even if the market falls while the cards are being graded.

To illustrate: if a card has $300 in Expected Value after grading costs and selling fees, here’s how the max purchase price changes depending on the ROI target.

25% ROI Target: $300 / 1.25 = $240.00
40% ROI Target: $300 / 1.40 = $214.29

The Downside of Diversification

Diversification is good, but if you diversify too far away from the most profitable cards, you’ll generate less profit overall. The goal is balance. We buy aggressively when a card has exceptionally strong Expected Value, but diversification helps avoid large ups and downs in our business results.

That said, the diversification framework above assumes you're managing a meaningful amount of inventory. If you're working with a small amount of capital, there's no reason not to concentrate heavily into the two or three most profitable cards available. The boom and bust cycles are easier to absorb at smaller dollar amounts, and if you can only buy a few cards anyway, you may as well buy the most profitable ones. As your inventory grows, that’s where disciplined diversification pays off.

Generally, we like buying cards during the offseason for two reasons.

1. There’s virtually no risk of injury or poor performance.

2. By the time the cards come back from grading, we’re often closer to the regular season giving us a good sell window.

Note that while Caleb is a solid target for us right now, there’s also plenty of cards that aren’t profitable right now. This post will focus on the ones that are.

Try our auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Auction Search Filter

Subscribe now

We’re going to present the cards from cheapest to most expensive. We’ll also be evaluating everything in terms of Expected Value. The formula is written out below, but you can find our full guide to EV here.

Expected Value = PSA 10 Value x Gem Rate + PSA 9 Value x (100% - Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

And here are some other helpful resources before we start:

• Complete Guide to EV

• Complete Guide to PSA Grading

• How to Find PSA 10 Candidates on eBay

1. Prizm Silver #301

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $130
PSA 10 Value | $750
PSA 9 Value | $140
Gem Rate | 19.3%

Profitability

Expected Value | $184.05*
Expected Profit | $54.05
Expected ROI | 41.58%

Notes: This is definitely a solid card to target, but note that these are a tough grade. There’s a reason this card has a gem rate of 19.3%. This entire set is prone to surface dimples (which can still gem), poor centering, and back corner and edge damage.

*Included 15% PSA 8 probability in EV calculation as this card is more prone to low grades than the others.

2. Topps Chrome Aqua Geometric Auto /199

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $450
PSA 10 Value | $1,100
PSA 9 Value | $500
Gem Rate | 58.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $681.54
Expected Profit | $231.54
Expected ROI | 51.45%

Notes: We’ve graded quite a few of these and generally done pretty well. They’re sturdy cards and not prone to corner or edge wear. Make sure you understand the centering since these are not standard borders. The card shown in the picture above is what perfect centering should look like.

Also note that there are a few different /199 variations, including Aqua Geometric, Aqua Sonar, and Aqua. We find these all have roughly the same market values, though Gem Rates vary.

3. Obsidian Black Stained Glass #11

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $600
PSA 10 Value | $1,250
PSA 9 Value | $535
Gem Rate | 71.3%

Profitability

Expected Value | $852.52
Expected Profit | $252.52
Expected ROI | 42.09%

Notes: This is a great set to grade and isn’t prone to any real issues. We like to buy these when we can. The only downside to this card is there’s just not a ton of them available on the market.

4. Donruss Downtown! #21

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $750
PSA 10 Value | $1,700
PSA 9 Value | $800
Gem Rate | 47.7%

Profitability

Expected Value | $966.38
Expected Profit | $216.38
Expected ROI | 28.85%

Notes: The 2024 Donruss Downtown set was a really tough grade, with a lot of these cards being closer to 20% Gem Rates. These edges often came with some pretty severe factory chipping, but this card seemed to have a lot less of that than the others. I’d be aware of the front surface, this material scratches easily but these can still gem with light marks on the front.

For both this card and the Optic Downtown version, the proper top/bottom centering leaves more space at the top between the “Donruss” logo and the top edge, than the bottom between the name plate and the bottom edge. I’ve attached an extra image below with markings to illustrate.

5. Donruss Optic Downtown! #21

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $800
PSA 10 Value | $1,950
PSA 9 Value | $850
Gem Rate | 39.7%

Profitability

Expected Value | $1023.60
Expected Profit | $223.60
Expected ROI | 27.95%

Notes: In general, Optic Downtown! graded a lot better than Donruss Downtown in 2024, but this card is an exception. I’d apply pretty much the same grading notes to this card as the Donruss card above, while noting that back edge issues are much less common on the Optics.

Any card that we decide not to submit, we sell as is on eBay. We generally take small losses on these cards, roughly equal to the cost of eBay fees and shipping. The important thing though, is that we take larger losses if we pay to grade these cards and get a PSA 9 or worse. So while we think that it’s very important to take risks on imperfect cards, it’s also important to avoid submitting cards with extremely low chances of grading as 10s.

And if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read our PSA grading resources:

• The Complete Guide to PSA Grading: How To Get More PSA 10s

• How to Find PSA 10 Contenders on eBay

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the cards we decided not to submit.

Subscribe now

2017 Patrick Mahomes Panini Rookies & Stars

As you can see, this card has two issues: a damaged corner on the front and a dimple on the back.

The corner alone is enough to basically guarantee this card won’t gem. The damage is too large, extending into the surface of the card. I think the impact of the dimple is more debatable. If it’s a factory defect, it’s possible that this alone wouldn’t kill the card’s chances of gemming. But if it’s an indent that damaged the card after production, it certainly would kill its chances. Regardless, this is a card that we are not submitting.

2024 Caitlin Clark Select Silver Prizm

This one is interesting because we’ve actually had cards with larger scratches than this grade as PSA 10s. There are two problems though with this one:

1. The scratch runs fairly deep into the card.

2. This scratch is visible even without direct lighting on the spot of the defect.

If the scratch were a bit harder to see, meaning that without direct lighting it were completely invisible, we might take our chances on this card. Even as is, I think this may have a small chance of grading as a PSA 10 (around 5-10%). With that said, this defect is significant enough that the smarter decision is not to submit it.

2022 Brock Purdy Contenders Rookie Ticket Auto

Like the first card, it’s hard to say if these dimples are a factory defect or represent damage applied to the card by the previous owner. With that said, I find that back dimples are less common than front dimples, and I rarely see dimples on Panini Contenders cards. In general, I think that weird issues are worse than common issues, because they are more unpredictable. Given that this is an unusual issue, and that there is not just one dimple but a cluster of 4, we decided not to submit this card.

2018 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome

While this may look like a small defect, edge issues are tricky, and this one in particular extends deep into the surface of the card. This card is closer to a PSA 8 than a 10.

We’re going to look at some of the most profitable Konnor Griffin cards to buy, grade, and sell. But in order to grade profitably, you need a strong pre-grading strategy. Subscribe now to get our complete guide to PSA grading, sent straight to your inbox.

Subscribe now

As a general rule, we find that cards with positive price momentum and abundant supply tend to be the most profitable to grade. And price momentum doesn’t get more positive than this:

By the way, that’s just a 7-day chart. If we zoom out to 90 days, we can see the hype has been building all off-season long:

With that said, I honestly think the market is overheated, but our philosophy is to buy based on what is profitable to grade right now. And based on that evaluation, Konnor Griffin is a screaming buy (and has been all off-season).

Let’s take a look at a few of the profitable cards you can buy and grade now, based on Expected Value. You can find our Complete Guide to Expected Value here.

Note: This will focus only on the 2024 Bowman Chrome cards. Unfortunately the 2025 Bowman products don’t have enough sales volume in the last week to update market estimates.

2024 Bowman Chrome Konnor Griffin Draft Auto #CPAKG

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $750
PSA 10 Value | $2,000*
PSA 9 Value | $800
Gem Rate | 58.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $1206.66
Expected Profit | $456.66
Expected ROI | 60.9%

Notes: We’ve actually been buying this card all off-season, which feels very lucky right about now. In general these grade quite well. The surfaces aren’t too prone to scratching and the corners don’t ding easily. I’ll note that I feel like there is extra risk buying into a hype cycle this extreme, but honestly we simply don’t pass on Expected ROIs this high. We are not risk averse.

*Used a higher value than the Market Movers chart from the introduction paragraphs. That number looked low based on my research.

2024 Bowman Chrome Draft Konnor Griffin Refractor #BDC22

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $110
PSA 10 Value | $380
PSA 9 Value | $120
Gem Rate | 56.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $193.07
Expected Profit | $83.07
Expected ROI | 75.5%

Notes: I’ve been seeing this card all over my eBay searches lately, but haven’t bought a copy yet, and truthfully it wasn’t on my radar as a buy before I wrote this post. That just highlights the importance of doing continuous market research. That’s how you discover more buying targets.

2024 Bowman Chrome Draft Sapphire Konnor Griffin #BDC22

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $175
PSA 10 Value | $450
PSA 9 Value | $190
Gem Rate | 54.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $250.58
Expected Profit | $75.58
Expected ROI | 43.2%

Notes: Basically the same as above. This wasn’t on my radar as a profitable card to grade before the price spike this week. Now it is.

Takeaways

The Konnor Griffin market is hot, and as long as it stays that way, Griffin will be a big target for us over the coming months. Make sure you subscribe to see future updates on how this market has moved, as well as profitability analysis on other baseball, basketball, football, and Pokémon cards.

This post will look through some of the top rookies from the 2025 class, and assess their profitability to buy and grade. We’ll give a verdict of: Strong Buy, Buy, Weak Buy, or Pass. Note that we target Expected ROIs of 25% of higher.

Lastly, there’s a couple technical things in the EV calculation that I want to highlight before we get started:

1. We Applied a 10% Market Adjustment: We assumed that markets would fall by about 10% between the time we purchased the cards and the time we will sell them. This is something we commonly do for newer sets. You can read about this here.

2. PSA 9 Values are tricky: Some of these cards only have 2 or 3 PSA 9 sales, and in some cases the values were very high relative to raw prices and PSA 10 sales. In these cases, we adjusted PSA 9 values down a bit.

*You can find our Complete Guide to Expected Value here.

Subscribe now

1. 2025 Jaxson Dart Donruss Downtown #14

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $950
PSA 10 Value | $1,780
PSA 9 Value | $970
Gem Rate | 80.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $1,149.49
Expected Profit | $199.49
Expected ROI | 21.0%

Verdict: Weak Buy

Notes: I honestly thought we’d see more Jaxson Dart hype this offseason, especially after the Giants hired John Harbaugh. As it stands, this is not a card that I’m targeting specifically, but I’ll buy gradable copies if I see them for around $900.

2. 2025 Tyler Shough Donruss Downtown #19

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $550
PSA 10 Value | $1,400
PSA 9 Value | $650
Gem Rate | 75.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $897.69
Expected Profit | $347.69
Expected ROI | 63.2%

Verdict: Strong Buy

Notes: This one of my biggest targets right now. We’ve bought quite a few of these, making Tyler Shough one of our biggest player investments right now. I’m fine with that during the offseason, where the risk of owning a year 2 QB is relatively low. For now, I just can’t pass up the 63.2% Expected ROI.

3. 2025 Cam Ward Donruss Downtown #12

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $600
PSA 10 Value | $1,100
PSA 9 Value | $600
Gem Rate | 80.9%

Profitability

Expected Value | $728.69
Expected Profit | $128.69
Expected ROI | 21.4%

Verdict: Weak Buy

Notes: Similar to Jaxson Dart, I thought we might see more hype for Cam Ward after the Titans brought in Robert Saleh as head coach. As the market currently stands, we’re not necessarily targeting this card, but I’ll buy when/if I see them available for $500 to $550.

4. 2025 Shedeur Sanders Donruss Downtown #17

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $550
PSA 10 Value | $1,000
PSA 9 Value | $550
Gem Rate | 85.7%

Profitability

Expected Value | $669.73
Expected Profit | $119.73
Expected ROI | 21.8%

Verdict: Weak Buy

Notes: I’m not exactly sold on Sanders as an NFL quarterback, but my best guess is that Cleveland will roll him out in week 1 next year. Similar to the other quarterbacks above (other than Shough), I’ll buy these if I can find them a bit under market, in the $400 to $475 range.

5. 2025 Ashton Jeanty Donruss Downtown #11

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $400
PSA 10 Value | $860
PSA 9 Value | $450
Gem Rate | 75.9%

Profitability

Expected Value | $534.27
Expected Profit | $134.27
Expected ROI | 33.6%

Verdict: Buy

Notes: The math on Jeanty is very solid here. I’ll buy these at market value whenever I see gradable copies.

6. 2025 Tetairoa McMillan Donruss Downtown #15

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $430
PSA 10 Value | $830
PSA 9 Value | $415
Gem Rate | 90.0%

Profitability

Expected Value | $553.07
Expected Profit | $123.07
Expected ROI | 28.6%

Verdict: Buy

Notes: This one is somewhere between a buy and a weak buy. I’ll take these at market value if they are very clean, but I don’t like my EV calculation relying on a 90% chance of a gem rate. With that said, even at something more like 75% or 80%, this is a decent buy at market price.

7. 2025 Travis Hunter Donruss Downtown #13

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $450
PSA 10 Value | $790
PSA 9 Value | $475
Gem Rate | 76.1%

Profitability

Expected Value | $497.71
Expected Profit | $47.71
Expected ROI | 10.6%

Verdict: Pass

Notes: The 10.6% Expected ROI just doesn’t cut it for me. If I can find these for under $400, that’s where I start considering.

8. 2025 Omarion Hampton Donruss Downtown #16

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $340
PSA 10 Value | $690
PSA 9 Value | $350
Gem Rate | 87.2%

Profitability

Expected Value | $441.64
Expected Profit | $101.64
Expected ROI | 29.9%

Verdict: Buy

Notes: I have similar thoughts on this one as the Tet McMillan card above, but when push comes to shove, if I see a gradable copy for $340 I’ll buy it.

9. 2025 Abdul Carter Donruss Downtown #20

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $220
PSA 10 Value | $525
PSA 9 Value | $300
Gem Rate | 79.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $327.03
Expected Profit | $107.03
Expected ROI | 48.6%

Verdict: Buy

Notes: I was very surprised by the math on this one. I’ve bought a few Abdul Carter Downtown’s now, which is unusual because we almost never buy defensive players. But we will buy at 48.6% Expected ROI anytime.

10. 2025 Matthew Golden Donruss Downtown #18

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $320
PSA 10 Value | $675
PSA 9 Value | $350
Gem Rate | 73.6%

Profitability

Expected Value | $399.30
Expected Profit | $79.30
Expected ROI | 24.8%

Verdict: Weak Buy

Notes: This is another one I was surprised about. Golden didn’t have a particularly good rookie season, but still these cards are a pretty decent buy right now. I’ve gotten a couple of these for around $300.

When To Use Market Adjustments

When a new set is released, we do not buy any cards to grade until about one month after the first PSA 10 copy sells on eBay. There are a few reasons for this:

1. There needs to be graded supply on the market to calculate the Gem Rate.

2. There needs to be graded sales to determine PSA 10 and PSA 9 values.

3. Newer cards tend to fall in value shortly after release as new packs get opened and more cards get graded. We try not to buy too early.

We use Market Adjustments to address the 3rd point, in order to make sure that even if a card falls in value while we’re grading it, we can still make a profit.

Subscribe now

Using Market Adjustments In Expected Value

Applying the Market Adjustment is simple. In our normal EV calculations, we use the PSA 10 Value and PSA 9 Value of the card to calculate the Expected Value. With Market Adjustments, we reduce the PSA 10 & 9 values by the amount we expect the market to fall. The calculation looks like this:

Adjusted PSA 10 Value = PSA 10 Value x (100% - Market Adjustment)
Adjusted PSA 9 Value = PSA 9 Value x (100% - Market Adjustment)

We then use these Adjusted values in place of the original values during the EV calculations. For a more general overview of how to evaluate profitable cards to grade, check out our Complete Guide to Expected Value.

How Large Should The Adjustments Be?

Generally, at the start of our buying window, we use Market Adjustments of about 25%, then gradually decrease it to 10% over the following months. Usually after 3 to 4 months, we will remove the adjustment altogether. Another way to think about this is if the card falls by exactly the amount of your Market Adjustment, you will have estimated the Expected Value perfectly.

Example Calculating EV With An Adjustment

We’ll look at a quick example of this. We’ll do an easy one, where we assume a fixed $40 grading cost, 13% fee costs, and a 10% Market Adjustment.

Market Values & Gem Rates

PSA 10 Value | $400
PSA 9 Value | $150
Gem Rate | 65.0%

Adjusted Values

Market Adjustment | 10.0%
Adjusted PSA 10 Value | $400 x (100% - 10.0%) = $360
Adjusted PSA 9 Value | $150 x (100% - 10.0%) = $135

Expected Value

EV Before Fees | $360 x 65.0% + $135 x 35.0% = $281.25
Grading Costs | $40.00
Selling Fees | $281.25 x 13.0% = $36.56
Expected Value | $281.25 - $40.00 - $36.56 = $204.69

You can see this is exactly the same as the regular Expected Value calculation, except we’ve added an extra step for calculating the Adjusted Values.

Takeaways

While the mechanics of applying Market Adjustments are simple, knowing when to use them is more art than science. It depends on how much risk you want to take for a given product, and on having a subjective feel of how markets move and what supply looks like. Admittedly, we don’t always get this completely right, but the idea is more about reducing risk than being perfect.

So far in 2026 we’ve graded 168 cards and received 112 PSA 10s, good for a 66.7% gem rate, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t had some surprising results. This post will highlight a few of them.

For 3 of the cards, we thought a PSA 10 was unlikely but they graded as 10s anyway. For the last one, we thought a PSA 10 was highly likely, but the card graded as a 9. Let’s look at the cards and see what we can learn.

Note: Gem Probability is the percentage chance we give a card of grading as a PSA 10 before submission.

Subscribe now

2019 Celebi & Venusaur GX #1 - PSA 9

• Projected Gem Probability: 15%

• Grading notes: Perfect besides tons of tiny white dots all around back borders (this was a test card for this specific issue)

This card was nearly flawless except for one thing: small white dots scattered across the back borders. I’ve marked up the top and bottom borders in the image below, which had the best lighting to see them clearly, but really these dots are everywhere. You’ll need to zoom in to spot them since they’re really small.

Normally we wouldn’t worry about dots this small, but there were so many of them that we dropped our probability estimate to 15%. I think this result tells us we can be more aggressive on this type of issue.

2025 Lillie’s Determination #184 - PSA 10

• Projected Gem Probability: 25%

• Grading notes: Top/bottom centering slightly out of range (43/57), back borders have some minor white dots

I’ve circled a couple of the white dots in the image, though there are more. All were very light, and we didn’t expect them to have much impact. The main issue was centering. We measured top/bottom centering on the front at 43/57 with the bottom being a bit larger, which is technically outside PSA’s 55/45 guideline.

The front borders on this card are extremely small, which makes centering tricky. Being slightly off in either direction can technically push them outside of 55/45. I’ve been thinking that visual appearance probably matters just as much as the technical measurement for cards like this, especially now that PSA added this note to their PSA 10 grading guidelines:

“*Centering Note: At the grader’s sole discretion, a small variance may be permitted on occasion based on the card’s overall eye appeal.”

2025 Mega Latias ex #181 - PSA 10

• Projected Gem Probability: 25%

• Grading notes: Top/bottom centering is slightly out of range (56/44), left/right centering also not perfect but still within 55/45. Back borders have some minor issues.

I’ve marked in red how we measured the top/bottom centering. As you can see, this one was slightly top-heavy but the visually the card doesn’t look bad. This matches the conclusion from the card above: for these small borders, visual appeal probably matters just as much as the technical measurement. There was also a white dot and a few other very minor issues on the back borders.

Despite all of this, it gemmed. I gave it just a 25% probability, but I guess I’m not shocked. We’ve been testing submitting things with imperfect centering lately, and the results are promising.

2019 Reshiram & Charizard #20 - PSA 9

• Projected Gem Probability: 60%

• Grading notes: Little/no flaws

This one surprised me. Looking at it in the slab now, I can see a couple possible flaws, although it’s nearly impossible to know what’s on the card versus what’s just reflection or marks on the slab itself without having my original notes in front of me.

The white spot on the left side of the back is almost certainly a minor mark on the card, though not one I’d expect to knock it down a grade. The edge wear visible on the right side would be enough to make this a PSA 9, although I’m not certain if that’s just lighting, or if it’s actually on the card. If that’s the culprit, we either missed it during pre-grading or the card got slightly damaged during shipping to PSA.

This post focuses specifically on rookie cards, structured roughly from cheapest to most expensive. The last card on the list is worth over $30K as a PSA 10, so there’s a wide range here. Note there are many profitable Ohtani cards not included in this list. If I included every profitable Ohtani rookie card right now, this would be a very long post.

All calculations are based on Expected Value. The full EV methodology is described in this post:

• The Complete Guide to EV: How To Grade Cards Profitably

And finally, here are a couple helpful PSA grading resources:

• Complete Guide to PSA Grading: Get More PSA 10s

• How to Find PSA 10 Candidates on eBay

*All market values are as of 2/22/2026.

Try our auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Auction Search Filter

Subscribe now

1. Topps Paper Cards

Notes: Be careful with the paper cards, especially because they are almost 10 years old. Specifically you should look for corner wear, edge chipping, and surface scratching. Note that there are lots of profitable Topps Paper Ohtani cards, so much so that this entire article could have been dedicated to them. Anyone who’s serious about implementing the strategy of buying these cards and grading them should dig into these further.

2018 Topps Shohei Ohtani #US285

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $110
PSA 10 Value | $390
PSA 9 Value | $150
Gem Rate | 62.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $206
Expected Profit | $96
Expected ROI | 87.3%

2018 Topps Shohei Ohtani #700

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $105
PSA 10 Value | $500
PSA 9 Value | $165
Gem Rate | 48.3%

Profitability

Expected Value | $229
Expected Profit | $124
Expected ROI | 118.4%

2. Topps Chrome Cards

Notes: In general, these grade really well. The most common defect you’ll find is surface scratches, so look out for this. But don’t overthink it, there’s a reason the two cards listed below have above 80% gem rates.

2018 Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani #HMT32

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $280
PSA 10 Value | $635
PSA 9 Value | $275
Gem Rate | 84.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $435
Expected Profit | $155
Expected ROI | 55.3%

2018 Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani #150

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $350
PSA 10 Value | $735
PSA 9 Value | $330
Gem Rate | 87.5%

Profitability

Expected Value | $526
Expected Profit | $176
Expected ROI | 50.4%

3. Bowman Chrome Cards

Notes: This section will just look at the Bowman Chrome base rookie card. The most common “defect” is that the back edges often have a weird manufacturer cut (you’ll know when you see it). This is fine. We’ve submitted many like this and gotten mostly 10s. Also pay close attention to front top/bottom centering.

2018 Bowman Chrome Shohei Ohtani #1

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $1,200
PSA 10 Value | $4,150
PSA 9 Value | $1,350
Gem Rate | 55.9%

Profitability

Expected Value | $2,405
Expected Profit | $1,205
Expected ROI | 100.4%

4. Other Interesting Cards

Each of these will get a specific note, written after the EV analysis.

2018 Topps Chrome 1983 Shohei Ohtani #83T-6

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $295
PSA 10 Value | $1,050
PSA 9 Value | $300
Gem Rate | 33.2%

Profitability

Expected Value | $428
Expected Profit | $133
Expected ROI | 45.2%

Notes: This is a cool card but we rarely buy these. They are almost always too off center on the front. With that said, maybe we’re just too picky about centering.

2018 Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani #150 Refractor

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $1,140
PSA 10 Value | $2,450
PSA 9 Value | $1,250
Gem Rate | 69.1%

Profitability

Expected Value | $1,724
Expected Profit | $584
Expected ROI | 51.3%

Notes: This is a great one to target if you have a bigger budget. Beyond just this card, there are many Topps Chrome Refractor variants and most of them are profitable. These include Sepia Refractors, Pink Refractors, X-Fractors, and more. If this is a price range you like to grade in, every one of these variants should be on your radar.

2013 BBM 1st Version Shohei Ohtani JP #183

Values & Gem Rate

Raw Value | $10,000
PSA 10 Value | $30,000
PSA 9 Value | $11,500
Gem Rate | 48.1%

Profitability

Expected Value | $16,935
Expected Profit | $6,935
Expected ROI | 69.4%

Notes: This is out of my budget range for a single card, but it’s a cool card with a huge Expected Profit so I decided to include it. This is Ohtani’s 1st rookie card from the NPB (the Japanese baseball league) before he came to the MLB. If you can manage to find a gradable copy of this one around $10K, you could make quite a nice profit.

This post will highlight Expected Profitability for each card based on Expected Value. While this post won’t go through the math, we calculate EV with the following formula:

• EV = PSA 10 Price x Average Gem Rate + PSA 9 Price x (100% - Average Gem Rate) - Grading Costs - Selling Fees

For the cards listed below, we will assume all cards are submitted at the Value service level for $32.99, there are no upcharges, and the selling fee is 13%.

One thing worth noting is that Value submissions can have unpredictable turnaround times. Some level of timing risk is unavoidable in this business, and we’re comfortable with it when the Expected Profitability is strong.

And lastly, here are some helpful resources before we start:

• Complete Guide to PSA Grading: Get More PSA 10s

• How to Find PSA 10 Candidates on eBay

• Complete Guide to Expected Value

Try our auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Auction Search Filter

Subscribe now

1. Gastly S&V Temporal Forces #177

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $55

• PSA 10 Value: $340

• PSA 9 Value: $60

• Gem Rate: 34%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $107

• Expected Profitability: $52

• Expected ROI: 94.5%

Notes: The low gem rate is the main thing to keep in mind here. At 34%, you’ll be taking losses more often than not, which is fine because you’ll be making a lot when you get PSA 10s. When evaluating these, be careful of the centering. The borders are small which means even if the card looks just a bit off, it may be outside of PSA’s acceptable range. I usually measure these with a ruler if I’m unsure. Also be cautious of whitening on the back corners.

2. Umbreon & Darkrai GX Unified Minds #125

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $55

• PSA 10 Value: $280

• PSA 9 Value: $80

• Gem Rate: 47%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $118

• Expected Profitability: $63

• Expected ROI: 115%

Notes: Be mindful of chipping on the front corners. It looks different on these cards than on more traditional paper Pokémon cards. Additionally, the borders are a bit unusual and can be tricky if you don’t know how to measure them. I’ve marked in red exactly how I would measure the centering on the front.

This one has pretty minimal downside since the PSA 9 value is well above the Raw Value. This means that even if you get a 9, your loss will be small.

3. Groudon S&V Paradox Rift #199

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $75

• PSA 10 Value: $375

• PSA 9 Value: $85

• Gem Rate: 36%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $131

• Expected Profitability: $56

• Expected ROI: 75%

Notes: All the same challenges with grading the Gastly from above apply to this card (and most S&V era cards). This card has high upside, as a PSA 10 increases your value by 5x, but you will take losses about 60% of the time.

4. Umbreon Celebrations Classic Collection #17

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $75

• PSA 10 Value: $300

• PSA 9 Value: $85

• Gem Rate: 57%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $148

• Expected Profitability: $73

• Expected ROI: 97%

Notes: One of our favorite buys in this price range. These have larger borders than most modern Pokémon cards, which makes centering much easier to evaluate accurately. The 57% gem rate is solid, and the math is strong. Like most cards in this era, watch the back for whitening and corner wear.

5. Team Rocket’s Nidoking ex S&V Destined Rivals #233

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $85

• PSA 10 Value: $270

• PSA 9 Value: $100

• Gem Rate: 59%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $141

• Expected Profitability: $56

• Expected ROI: 66%

Notes: Grading concerns are more or less the same as the other S&V era cards, except that this one has a much higher average gem rate. I see these cards a lot on eBay, so this is a good one if you’re looking to buy higher volume.

This one also has pretty minimal downside. The Gem Rate is high, and PSA 9s are worth a decent bit more than raw, so your loss on 9s will be small.

Bonus: Charizard Celebrations Classic Collections #4

Market Values & Gem Rate

• Raw Value (Near-Mint): $170

• PSA 10 Value: $550

• PSA 9 Value: $160

• Gem Rate: 61%

Profitability

• Expected Value: $298

• Expected Profitability: $128

• Expected ROI: 75%

Notes: This is my favorite buy near this price range. It’s a bit above $100 but expected profit is so good I had to include it. The card grades well at 61%, and is basically the same as the Celebrations Umbreon from an grading perspective. Anytime I see a gradable copy for $180 or less, I buy without a second thought.

There is a fundamental tradeoff between seeing all the cards you might be interested in, and being overwhelmed by thousands of listings you will never buy. The more you filter, the more things you might miss, so this is something where you need to find the right balance.

In our case, our goal is to only see Pokémon cards and sports rookie cards that are in a certain price range, and therefore could be profitable for us to grade. We also aim to filter out any cards that are already graded, or any listings from big sellers who grade cards themselves. Some of these filters might be right for you, while some may be too limiting.

And before we get started, I recommend you also check out my Guide to Finding PSA 10 Candidates on eBay here.

Subscribe now

Try our auction filter to find the most profitable players and Pokémon to grade. Updated weekly. This tool contains affiliate links — thanks for supporting The Business of Card Grading!

Auction Search Filter

How to Use eBay Search Filters

Auction vs Buy It Now (BIN) Filters

We use different filters for auctions and BINs because we’re trying to accomplish different things.

For BIN listings, we filter by newly listed. The goal is to buy good deals quickly before others find them.

For auctions, we filter by ending soonest. We typically look at auctions a few hours before they end, assess the card condition and market value, then place our bids. We also set a minimum of 1 bid to filter out overpriced auctions or listings that haven’t generated interest. If no one else is interested in a card, you probably won’t be either. You can see how to do this below.

Minimum Price

In general, it’s not profitable to buy and grade cheap cards. Because there are far more listings in the $0-$100 range than any other price bucket, setting a minimum price filter around $100 is extremely helpful in removing irrelevant listings. You can find this in the side window of your eBay page.

Boolean Searches

This allows you to search for multiple things at the same time. Here’s a simple example. If I search for (Drake Maye, Charizard), I will get results that include either Drake Maye or Charizard.

This has a lot of important uses. For example, if you decide you want to specifically target Drake Maye, Shohei Ohtani, Cal Raleigh, and Victor Wembanyama, you can search for (Maye, Ohtani, Raleigh, Wembanyama).

Compound Boolean Searches

You can also do two Boolean searches in the same search. For example, you can combine the search above with (RC, rookie) to ensure that all results are rookie cards. Note that it’s important to have RC and rookie as search terms because different sellers label their cards differently. In total, the search would look like this:

(Maye, Ohtani, Raleigh, Wembanyama) (RC, Rookie)

Finally, if you want to mix Pokémon and sports, here’s how you can do it.

(Maye, Raleigh, Charizard, Pikachu) (RC, Rookie, Pokemon, Pokémon)

If a listing has any one of the four terms from the left, and any of the four terms from the right, you’ll see it in your search. This will either return a result that is a rookie card (Maye or Raleigh) or a Pokémon card (Charizard or Pikachu).

Exclude Operators

This is very useful in many cases. The most obvious of these is when looking for cards to grade. Because we don’t want cards that are already graded, we use an exclude operator to filter them out. That will look like this:

-PSA -BGS -TAG -SGC -CGC

It’s pretty straightforward. Just use a minus sign then write exactly what you want to exclude directly after.

This can be useful in other instances as well. If you’re looking for a Topps Chrome base card in specific, it can be useful to include “-refractor” at the end of your search.

Excluding Sellers (Advanced Search)

If you’ve read my guide to finding PSA 10 candidates on eBay (linked here), you know we avoid buying from large consigners and sellers who grade cards. You can remove their listings from your searches using advanced search features.

Go to your search and click “Advanced.”

Scroll down to the “Sellers” section, select “Exclude,” and type in any sellers you don’t want to buy from.

Terminology

Card lingo on eBay is very specific, so it’s helpful to know the right search terms. Terms like “RC” for rookie card, “auto” for autograph, and “/25” to signify a numbered card with 25 copies are standard.

In fact, in a lot of cases if I’m looking for a Topps Chrome Rookie Autograph Purple Speckle /199, I’ll just shorten the search to “Topps Chrome Auto RC /199.” There’s an art to figuring out the perfect search term to find what you’re looking for.

Experimenting

You can adjust these filters based on how much time you have to search through eBay listings.

For example, you can do a player-specific search like I showed above, or you can do a general search to look for all Pokémon cards and sports cards. That would look like this:

(RC, Rookie, Pokémon, Pokemon)

You can also increase your minimum price when you have less time and decrease it when you have more time. You can even include graded cards in your searches to look for deals on those as well.

For us, I’ve created a player-specific BIN filter that works well when I’m out of the house and don’t have time to do much research before buying. On Sundays, when tons of auctions are ending, I usually increase my minimum price threshold to save time. Experiment with this and find what works for you.

Our Searches (and why they work)

(rc, rookie, pokemon, pokémon, tcg) -psa -bgs -sgc -lot -cgc -booster -box -set -plush

This is the general filter I use for auctions. I set a minimum price of $70 and filter by ending soonest with at least one bid. This shows all sports rookie cards and TCG cards while excluding graded cards, unopened products, and toys.

Note that this threshold is lower than for BINs, since the listed price reflects the current bid rather than the final sale price.

(caitlin clark, maye, njigba, shai, judge, raleigh, ohtani, caleb williams, wembanyama, garchomp, mewtwo, charizard, konnor griffin, umbreon, nix, trout, yamamoto, skenes, mahomes) (rc, rookie, pokemon, pokémon) -psa -tag -cgc -bgs -plush -booster -book -lego

This one is longer, but the idea is similar. I use this for BINs with a minimum price of $100, filtered by newly listed. This shows rookie cards of sports players we’re targeting and Pokémon cards of characters we’re targeting. This works well when I’m on the road, since I roughly know the market values for most of these cards without doing additional research.

And one final note. Good filters won’t help you grade profitably unless you can find gradable cards. You can find my guide to finding PSA 10 candidates on eBay here.

I would love to hear from you! If you have any questions or comments, or just want to say hi, message me at the link below!