The Most Profitable Cards to Buy and Grade #1 (1/13/2026)
Drake Maye, Shohei Ohtani, and Macklin Celebrini lead the way.
This post is going to look at some of the most profitable cards you can buy to grade right now. I’m going to just give you some notes and thoughts before we get into it. You can skip this intro section if you just want to see the cards.
We mainly buy Ultra Modern cards in the $100 - $1,000 range, which is what this article will focus on.
We’re looking at cards that are relatively abundant. I don’t think it would be that helpful for me to tell you that a card numbered /25 is profitable but super hard to find, so this will focus on cards that have supply available in the market.
Generally, cards across all major sports and Pokémon will be covered. We like buying stuff while it’s in demand, so right now we’re buying a lot of football cards while the NFL playoffs are going on.
We are going to be basing profitability based on the average value of the ungraded card. Note that if you want a raw card in great condition, sometimes you will pay more than this value. We look at each individual card on a case by case basis; this is meant to just provide an overview of the cards that we are buying right now.
We use Expected Value to determine the profitability of grading a card. Since this model uses probabilities, this will work best if you grade lots of cards. I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining the methodology, but you can find a detailed guide here.
2024 Drake Maye Prizm Silver #329
Market Values
Ungraded Value: $275
PSA 10 Value / PSA 10 Probability: $1700 / 23%
PSA 9 Value / PSA 9 Probability: $275 / 65%
PSA 8 Value / PSA 8 Probability: $170 / 12%
EV Before Fees: $590
Expected Value
PSA Grading Service: Value Plus ($49.99) with 23% chance of upcharge to Express ($149.00)
Grading Cost: $49.99 + $99 x 23% + $13 = $86
Selling Fees (12%) = $590 x 12% = $71
Expected Value: $590 - $86 - $71 = $433
Profitability
Projected Profit: $432 - $275 = $157
Projected ROI: $157 / $275 = 57.1%
Really we are buying a ton of Drake Maye across all kinds of product lines, but mainly Prizm Silver, Select numbered cards, and auto cards. Most of these are profitable right now, but the Prizm Silver is probably the most abundant out of all of them.
One note is that this is a tricky card to grade. Most of them have manufacturer issues, including front surface dimples and marks, edge chipping on the back, and back corner damage. As a result, we’ve added a PSA 8 probability to our calculation, which is something that our Guide to Expected Value post does not discuss. All this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy this card, in fact we’ve bought a lot and done very well on these, but it does mean you need to be cautious and only buy clean copies.
And for a bit more specific information on this, we generally are okay with a few dimples on the front surface and/or slightly soft back corners. We pass on copies of this card with back edge chipping, clearly damaged corners, and/or other noticeable front surface defects.
2018 Bowman Chrome Shohei Ohtani #1
Market Values
Ungraded Value: $1,100
PSA 10 Value / PSA 10 Probability: $3,000 / 57%
PSA 9 Value / PSA 9 Probability: $1,100 / 43%
EV Before Fees: $2,183
Expected Value
PSA Grading Service: Regular ($74.99) with 57% chance of upcharge to Super Express ($299.00)
Grading Cost: $74.99 + $224 x 57% + $20 = $223
Selling Fees (10%): $2,183 x 10% = $218
Expected Value: $2,183 - $223 - $218 = $1,742
Profitability
Projected Profit: $1,742 - $1,100 = $642
Projected ROI: $642 / $1,100 = 58.4%
There’s also quite a few Ohtani cards we will buy other than the base Bowman Chrome rookie, but this one is the most abundant/profitable. These generally grade pretty well, I think the one warning I’d give is sometimes the Top/Bottom centering on the front looks fine, but is actually not within PSA’s guidelines (55/45) . We’ve mostly gotten PSA 10s when submitting these, but I think most of our 9s are because the card was too off center. Overall, the math is really good on these, and this is a card we’ve been buying for over a year now.
2024 Macklin Celebrini Upper Deck Young Guns #451
Market Values
Ungraded Value: $350
PSA 10 Value / PSA 10 Probability: $1,600 / 29%
PSA 9 Value / PSA 9 Probability: $380 / 50%
PSA 8 Value / PSA 8 Probability: $300 / 21%
EV Before Fees: $717
Expected Value
PSA Grading Service: Value Plus ($49.99) with 29% chance of upcharge to Express ($149.00)
Grading Cost: $49.99 + $99 x 29% + $13 = $92
Selling Fees (12%): $717 x 12% = $86
Expected Value: $717 - $92 - $86 = $539
Profitability
Projected Profit: $539 - $350 = $189
Projected ROI: $189 / $350 = 54.0%
Honestly, I’m cheating a bit on this one. The math is so good, but for whatever reason, we are terrible at grading these Upper Deck Young Guns cards. These edges chip super easily, and we find that most of these cards end up with edge issues. As a result, most that we buy either grade as PSA 8s, or we decide not to grade them at all. Still, the math is so good that I want to highlight this as a potentially profitable card. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it than I do.
Cards We’re Still Buying
This is more of a placeholder section for future posts. This will be a recurring article, highlighting the most profitable cards at different periods of time. With that said, there are certain cards that are profitable for many months in a row. I don’t want you guys to forget about those, so this will serve as a quick reminder section of cards that we’ve mentioned in past posts that we’re still buying.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!