2025 Downtown Football: An Early Review of PSA Grading Results

Early grading results for 2025 Downtown Football have been VERY strong. So far, 1,048 out of 1,265 cards submitted have graded as a PSA 10, good for a 82.8% gem rate.

This is compared to the 2024 Downtown football set, which graded at just 22.5%, and was plagued by all sorts of annoying quality issues like chipped edges and surfaces highly susceptible to scratches and other defects.

Given the high gem rates, we’ve been looking to buy these to grade and resell. Names we’ve been looking at include: Shedeur Sanders, Cam Ward, Jaxson Dart, and Tet McMillan, with Sanders being the most interesting for now.

While I’m still unconvinced that Shedeur will be the long term answer in Cleveland (in part because the coaching staff hates him), sports card ARE largely a popularity contest (see the $1900!!!! sale below as proof), and he may just be the most well known rookie in this class.

This year’s set also features vertical cards, which we will begin to evaluate as more grading and sales data become available.

Note that the lack of high end quarterback prospects makes buying and grading cards from this set a bit more difficult compared to the 2024 draft class, which gave us SIX first round quarterbacks, including 2025 MVP frontrunner Drake Maye.

For a bit more analysis on the profitability side, we GENERALLY see PSA 10 Downtown Rookie Cards go for about a 2x premium over ungraded cards. As an example, 2024 Jayden Daniels Downtown cards are currently selling for about $650 raw and $1,400 as PSA 10s.

As a result, the 2024 set wasn’t very profitable from a grading perspective, but if similar premiums hold in 2025, the 2025 Downtown set could be very profitable for graders.