Jalen Brunson Card Lot Sold for $20 — A Good Test for Player Lots

I recently sold a lot of 12 Jalen Brunson basketball cards for $20.

These weren’t cards I bought specifically to resell. I had accumulated them over time as part of the hobby, so I don’t really assign a meaningful cost basis to the lot. They were mostly lower-value cards from brands such as Topps, Finest, Prizm, Mosaic, Hoops, and Donruss.

What made me decide to list them was timing. Brunson had recently won Finals MVP, so it seemed like a good opportunity to see whether a group of relatively inexpensive cards could sell as a player lot while interest was high.

I listed the lot on July 5 for $29.99. On August 23, I accepted an offer for $20.

That means the lot sold in about seven weeks, which I consider pretty quick for cards that individually probably wouldn’t have been worth the effort to list.

What I Learned From This Jalen Brunson Card Lot

The biggest takeaway is that there appears to be a market for inexpensive player lots.

A collector may not want to hunt down 12 different low-dollar cards individually, but a ready-made group of cards featuring one player can be an easy purchase. The individual cards don’t necessarily need to be valuable if the player is someone people actively want to collect.

The next question is how good does the player need to be for this strategy to work?

Brunson was a particularly strong test because interest was elevated following his Finals MVP. Next season, that gives me something specific to watch for: when a player wins a major award or has a big postseason moment, it may be worth gathering the cards I already have of that player and testing another lot.

I’ll also experiment with players at different levels of popularity to see where the cutoff is. Does this work only for stars and award winners, or can a focused lot of a solid but less prominent player still find a buyer?

That’s something I’ll find out over time.

The Sale

Player: Jalen Brunson

Cards: 12

Original asking price: $29.99

Accepted offer: $20

Listed: July 5

Sold: August 23

Time to sell: About 7 weeks

Cost basis: Effectively $0 — accumulated through my card hobby

For me, this was a successful experiment. Instead of letting a stack of inexpensive Brunson cards sit around indefinitely, I turned them into a $20 sale and learned something that I can test again with other players.

Looking for Jalen Brunson cards? See current Jalen Brunson card lots on eBay.

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