You’ll Have to Excuse Me While I Remove the Horseshoe From My Ass

No one every said I wasn’t crude. When something surprising or shocking happens I tend to resort to vulgarity, such as what happened this past weekend when I opened another $100 worth of sealed Upper Deck 2020-21 Series 1 hockey cards and drew yet ANOTHER Alexis LaFenerie rookie card!

As you may recall, this card is the most sought after card in this current set and is currently selling on ebay “raw” for about $240 on average. By “raw” I mean ungraded by a grading company like PSA or BGS. Graded cards of this set are selling for around $600 each. So imagine my reaction when I’m going through another pack of card and hit again on this prize find!

Seeing that graded cards are selling for over twice the “raw” card and looking into the cost of grading (currently $50 a card for me), I decided to take a gamble and submit BOTH of my Alexis cards to PSA for grading. That means an extra $100 plus tax and insurance investment in hopes that the cards will be returned with 9 or higher grading score. If they do, I’ll have obtained an extra $300 in value for $50 grading fee.

Having said that, I have seen auctions on ebay for this card selling “raw” for as low as $85 on the same day another card sold for $300. There is a HUGE difference between $85 and $300 so I’m trying to figure out what the guy did wrong to only get $85 for a card that’s averaging $240 or what the other guy did right to get $300 for a card that’s averaging $240. Also there is a growing fear that Upper Deck might have produced so many Alexis cards that the longer it goes on and thus the more of his card goes up for sale, the lower that expected value will drop. Obviously if supply exceeds demand the price will plumett. So, I’m crossing my fingers that PSA (with their huge backlog of cards) will get my graded cards back to me SOON and with a 9 or higher grade. If they do, I’m probably selling one immediately while the market is hot.