Reminiscing On The Cal Raleigh Glory Days…
As Cal Raleigh slumps and his market falls, it’s a good time to look back at how we did buying his cards last season, when Cal was seemingly emerging as one of the best players in baseball.
Last year during Raleigh’s breakout campaign, we bought his cards pretty aggressively. As his market rose, the Expected Value of grading kept improving, and we found ourselves winning nearly every auction we bid on.
There was also a ton of gradable supply hitting the market. People were taking profit on ungraded copies and graders had never cherry-picked the cleanest copies, since grading them hadn't been profitable before last season. As a result, the supply flooding eBay was mostly in good condition.
In total, we bought and sold 32 Raleigh cards across 2025 and 2026, which is a lot of exposure to one player. The first 17 sold in 2025, and here’s how those looked:
Purchase Price | $4,110
Grading Cost | $552
Sale Price | $7,845
Profit After Fees | $2,537
ROI | 61.7%
Out of these 17 cards, we submitted 11 to PSA and sold 6 raw. Deciding not to submit 6 out of 17 is unusually high for us, but we more than made up for it in grading: 9 of the 11 submitted cards came back as PSA 10s.
This brings us to probably the most important concept in our business: buying into hype windows.
When a player is in the middle of a breakout, raw supply tends to flood the market, giving you cards to buy and grade, while PSA 10 values rise faster than raw values. That combination creates a window where grading is unusually profitable. Raleigh was one of our biggest targets in the second half of 2025, and the numbers reflect that.
The remaining 15 cards were bought between late 2025 and early 2026. All 15 were sold in 2026 due to the typical 3-month lag between submission and sale.
As you probably know, Raleigh’s market has fallen sharply on the back of a slow start to the season. The results on these 15 cards reflect that, as they generated just $460 of profit on $5,570 of sales. That's well below our usual targets, but staying profitable in a sharply falling market is a good result.
This reflects the core logic of buying with strong Expected Value: in a rising or steady market you make strong profits, while your downside in a falling market is close to breakeven.
Top Cards We’re Buying To Grade Now
These are a few of the most profitable cards to grade now, based on Expected Value. We may receive commission for completed purchases, at no cost to you. Thanks for supporting BCG Cards!
1. 2023 Shohei Ohtani All Aces #AA-11
PSA 10 For Sale | PSA 9 For Sale | Raw Copies For Sale
2. 2018 Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome #HMT1
PSA 10 For Sale | PSA 9 For Sale | Raw Copies For Sale
3. 2023 Victor Wembanyama Prizm Silver #136
PSA 10 For Sale | PSA 9 For Sale | Raw Copies For Sale
4. 2026 Mega Gengar ex Mega Evolutions #269
PSA 10 For Sale | PSA 9 For Sale | Raw Copies For Sale