No matter how successful a collector or flipper may be in the hobby, there is always an opportunity to learn something new or be reminded of something forgotten.

As submissions to top grading companies soar, turnaround times have been extended, forcing a change in market behavior. Rising prices across the board means greater scrutiny to detail to ensure the desired return on investment – enter Ryan Sever.

Sever is a lifelong collector and decades-long seller of trading cards. When it comes to putting a plan together for making money in the hobby, Sever literally wrote the book on it – Cardboard Profit: The Strategic Playbook for Making Money with Sports Cards.

The Amazon Best Seller has taken his tips to the viewing masses on YouTube, cultivating a large following on his Cardboard Profit channel.

Lucky enough for us, Beckett caught up with him for an extended interview covering his collecting journey, purchasing habits, and investing strategies.

Ryan Sever Interview

Beckett: When did you start collecting sports cards, and which sports and/or players were you collecting?

Sever: “I started when I was young. My dad got me into it pretty early. I started with baseball. I was born in the ‘80s and grew up in the ‘90s; I was a big fan of guys like Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter, A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire. I loved that home run chase in the late ‘90s. Now we know how they were able to do all of those things and hit all of those home runs.

“It was baseball from an early age, and I was hooked pretty quickly. My dad showed me cards from the ‘50s and ‘60s, I thought that was pretty cool.

“I liked the idea that cards could change in value over time. That was fascinating to me. I thought then, if I just start collecting and putting away these cards, at the time it was base cards and cards that would not hold value over time, little did I know, but I thought if I started collecting from a young age by the time I was in my 20s or 30s I would be rich from all my cards.

“(Laughs) It didn’t work out that way, but it got me started. It got me started learning about the different cards and different sets, taking care of my cards, and understanding rarity.

“I remember going to a card shop as a kid and dumping all of my chore money into buying packs. I was so excited to get a cool card of one my favorite players. I don’t know why, but I was always kind of money-minded, even from a young age, and thought, ‘How cool is it that this card could actually rise in value if I take care of it over the next handful of years?’

“The older I got, the more I got into cards. A lot of my friends stepped away from cards, but I was a card dork in middle school and high school, and I kept getting more and more into it. It was a lot of fun and something I did throughout my childhood.”

Beckett: What is your collecting philosophy now?

Sever: “It is mostly cards that have some kind of meaning for me. It is almost always something that means more to me than it does to the market. A lot of times, it is not the big expensive cards, it is the little ones that I remember pulling out of a pack as a kid.

“Since then, I have hunted down a graded copy that takes me back to the nostalgia of the early days, going back to the roots and the fun era collecting those cards, especially all the crazy ‘90s inserts that have kind of gone away now. That is the type of stuff that I find the most joy in collecting.

“These days, I get a lot of fulfillment from flipping cards and having cards, at least for a short period of time, and keeping things moving – that is fun.

“I have a Lords of the Diamonds from ’99 Topps, not the Chrome but the base set, it was a really cool insert that has the jagged die-cut tops to the cards. I remember pulling a Sammy Sosa out of the pack, and this is right after the big years – hitting 60 home runs for three years in a row – he was right in the middle of doing that, I remember thinking, ‘This card is awesome. I am rich. I hit the jackpot.’

“Little did I know that was probably a $3 card then and is now a $2 card.

“I hunted down a PSA 10 of that card. I have been looking to get an entire set in PSA 10. It is fun to hunt down something that is hard to get graded a 10 to begin with and then try to do the whole set in Gem Mint condition. It is a tough project. I think I have three or four more to go.

“Another released around that same time – SkyBox Thunder. There is a phone card called ‘Dial 1.’ It is an insert set. I pulled the Mark McGwire, again, right in the middle of the home run chase. They were released 1 in 300 packs. I remember looking at the odds and thinking, ‘This is it. This is the best card in the entire product.’

“I have a high-grade copy of that card now – I think it is a pop 2.

“Going back to remember some of the cards that got me started and that really drove home my love for this hobby, and to now be able to say I own this card in one of the only high-grade copies that exists is great.”

Beckett: As a collector, have you gone back to add vintage baseball cards? If so, which cards have you added to your collection?

Sever: “Vintage stuff has never appealed to me in quite the same way because I love following the players that I have cards of. I am probably the worst fair weathered fan for that reason. I like a lot of teams. If I have a card of this guy, I am kind of interested in this team all the sudden until I sell that card or move onto another player – then I kind of don’t care about that team all the sudden.

“I am probably the worst, and would be the first to admit that, as far as fandom.

“Some of the ones I really enjoy; I have a pretty big Nolan Arendo collection. I invested in him pretty heavily as he was coming up as a prospect and just continued to buy and sell in his market for quite a while.

“I have his full rainbow of his Topps Chrome autograph set in Gem Mint grade or better, up through the out of 10.

“I am missing the 1/1, which is a PSA or BGS 9. There is another one out of five – I am missing those two cards. I would love to hunt those down.

“I have the rest of the set. I can make a lot of money on those cards. I bought them and had them graded, and I just can’t bring myself to sell them because I love them so much.

“I consider myself more of a card investor than collector these days, but that line does get blurry sometimes and that is one of those times. I have learned that the hard way – you gotta draw a real clear line in the sand – what is your collection and what is your inventory.”

Beckett: When did you make that turn from collector to investor?

Sever: “I would start off saying I was bad at it initially. I had to go through that same learning curve that everyone does.

“I went off to college, playing two sports at a small school that no one really cares about, but I didn’t have much time and I didn’t have time for a job. It was about this time when I was just starting to get online with cards.

“I waited until I turned 18; I played it by the rules. I didn’t get on as a kid, but I did sign up the day I turned 18 for an eBay account. I started getting more and more into the online scene. I found the Beckett message boards around that time; that is where it was happening. That is where all the conversations were long before social media.

“I saw people were making money and it seemed like they were doing it consistently. They had some kind of plan. I knew this is it. I don’t know how, but if these guys are doing it and figuring it out, there has to be a way I can figure out how to make some money at this, too.

“Through brutal trial and error, making a bunch of dumb mistakes, I finally figured it out.

“My first profit was $8.91. That didn’t mean that much to me as a kid, that was like a trip to Taco Bell. But what it meant to me was everything.

“My thought was, ‘If I can make $9 once, why can’t I do that more and make $90 and keep going making $900, $9,000, or $90,000?’

“At this point, I have done that and quite a bit more. It opened my eyes to what was possible and gave me proof of concept. I just had to learn the ropes and what worked. Once I learned what worked, just do more of what you just proved, stay the course, and do more of it.”

Beckett: The big question – what works?

Sever: “I think there are a million different ways you can make money with cards. I have tried most of those ways. Some of them work, some of them don’t, some of them are consistent, and some of them are not.

“What I try to lean into now are the ones that you can do consistently that actually work. Specifically, the ones that let me bet on my own skill set rather than needing a player to go out and do something magical or do something outside of my control.

“The three strategies that gives us more control than anything else are finding quick flip opportunities, where you understand the market well enough to identify a card or buy it at a steep enough discount that you can flip it right away for profit.

“A lot of times it is buying it on eBay and flipping it on eBay to a bigger audience. Or finding a bad listing with a misspelled name – Victor Rembanyma [sic] instead of Victor Wembanyama. Or a great copy of a card that they forgot to put in as a Gem Mint PSA 10 or Gem Mint BGS 9.5 and it goes into the listing cheaper than it should.

“The second one is grading. There is no other opportunity anywhere that I have found where you can send a card off, pay a small fee, with the card in good enough condition, and it comes back worth more. That is a pretty special opportunity. And you can do that as many times over as you’d like to.

“The third one that I use all the time is what I call it the “seasonal swing strategy.” That is understanding on the way out of a season cards tend to soften, even key cards of key players, and on the way back into a season all the attention returns back to that sport. Now you have opportunities to flip cards for a profit, sometimes even before a player has played their first game.”

Beckett: Take a player like Konnor Griffin as an example, do you hold any of his cards to sell at a later date?

Sever: “It depends on your confidence. I have had guys over the years where I made a ton of money by speculating on their performance, and I was right. I’ve also had guys that I speculated on their performance, and I was completely wrong and lost a bunch of money. That game can go in both directions.

“What I do these days, I have two sides to my operation at once. On one side, these are the faster turn-around cards for quick flips. I am making grading plays, and I am playing the seasonal timing game, which is usually six months or less.

“On the other side, we are getting cash flow from the first side, now we can invest some of that into the players that I feel confident enough in that I want to invest in. I am willing to accept the risk. I might be right or I might be wrong, but if I am right, the upside is usually pretty asymmetrical to the downside.

“Let the one side of the house fuel the other side.”

Beckett: What is your “keep it raw” vs. “get it graded” philosophy?

Sever: “Through the lens of someone who wants to make money, if you are collecting you can do what you want and what makes you happy – if you are trying to make money, I look at it like a math problem.

“There is so much good data out there, if we use the data that is available we can take a lot of the subjectivity out of it and make sound financial decisions based on whether the money makes sense to spend.

“I created what I call the “2X Rule.”

“What I am looking for is, I want the card to be worth at least double in value in the grade I think it can get. I want it to be worth double the total cost – card cost plus grading fees.

“If I am sending a card to PSA, I want the PSA 10 value to be double the raw price plus the grading fees for me to say, ‘Yes, this is worth my while to grade.’

“What this does, on the lower side of the market, you don’t want to spend $25 to grade something and only make $3 off a 10 grade. That is not a good outcome. And you will probably not win in the big picture because you are not going to get all Gem Mint grades.

“If you follow the 2X Rule, it kind of saves you on some of those low-dollar cards where you are more likely to lose over the long run.”

Beckett: How do you evaluate a card beyond the basics to let you know it is worth getting graded?

Sever: “A lot of times it starts with the upside of a card before even getting to the condition of the card to make sure it satisfies the 2X rule. The cards that have the bigger premiums attached, I am more willing to take a risk on that because there is some human subjectivity in the grading process, and that is okay, it has always been that way.

“That means one day a card might get a 9 and the next day it might get a 9.5 or 10. The graders are very good at what they do, but there will be some variance.

“That means, this is not a black or white question. Is this a 9 or a 10? What are the chances this card gets a 10? You try to put cards out there that will give you the best chance of what you are looking for.

“From a condition standpoint, one of the things that I like to do is, I buy most of my stuff from eBay. People say it can’t be done but I promise it can.

“If I am not sure on the centering, I will look at a PSA 10 or a BGS 9.5 copy – how are the professional graders grading this card? Does this raw copy actually match up with the grade that I want.

“It is simple, but some people don’t think of that right away. Those examples are out there.

“I also like to use the Gem Rate data. I look at the sets that have historically graded well compared to the sets that aren’t. For example, 2024 Prizm for basketball – NBA, WNBA, and NFL – all terrible Gem Rates. I think they are all under 30 percent across hundreds of thousands of cards graded. That is a really hard grade.

“You are setting yourself up for a really big challenge if those are the cards that you are going after compared to a base Topps flagship that will usually be 40, 50, or 60 percent depending on the year. Topps Chrome is usually a bit cleaner than that.

“What I am looking for — are there sets where I can find a 60 or 70 percent Gem Rate to increase the odds that you will be able to find clean grade-able copies out there?

“As an example, I graded a lot of 2018 Topps Chrome Update 1 Juan Soto rookie cards. Those cards have about a 90 percent Gem Rate. If you can find a copy of that and it looks halfway centered, you will get the grade you are looking for most of the time.

“It turns into a short-term money printing machine when you can find those in bulk.”

Beckett: What are some of the more common mistakes you see sellers make with sports cards?

Sever: “Buying what you like instead of buying what the market will pay for it.

“If you are trying to collect, do what makes you happy. If you are trying to invest, you have to have a reason to buy when you are making that purchase. The framework that I use, I call it the ‘Why/When Framework.’

“I want to clearly identify why I think the card’s value will rise and when do I think it will happen.

“If I am buying a card without a timeline, that is no good. Then our money is tied up, and we are just kind of hoping for the best.

“But when you can clearly articulate the reason behind it and the timeline, that is when you know you have a sound strategy and you are no longer buying endlessly. That doesn’t mean you will be right every time, but at least you have a defensible investment piece.

“I feel that is where a lot of people go from aimlessly investing to actually being more predictable with their strategies when they can define that.

“Sending a card off to be graded, we know what the money will look like if you get the grade you are looking for and we know the timeline, roughly. That is the strategy – either it works or it doesn’t, but either way you make that play and go onto the next one.”

Beckett: Do you also look at any factors such as sell-through rate?

Sever: “It can be on the front end; will they be liquid enough and easy to sell on the backend? I try to think in plays rather than card by card basis.

“If I am looking at a grading order, I may have 20 cards in that order; it is not a big deal if I win or lose on every card, I just want to win on the grading order overall.

“Sometimes you will get a 9 or you will get an 8. ‘Okay, cool. Let’s cut our losses on those.’ As long as we are sending in cards with big upsides, and we get the grades we are looking for.

“The graded premiums are huge right now. What is the thing that will pay for any of the non-10 grades or non-Gem Mint grades and still leave you with a healthy profit?

“Don’t worry about taking a loss. Everyone takes a loss here. You will not win on every play, but that is okay if you can zoom out and see the big picture.”

Beckett: What are some of the changes that you’ve seen in the market that other sellers should know about?

Sever: “A couple come to mind. One is that there are so many parallels right now. It is so easy to get bogged down by that. Good for Topps and good for Panini, they want to make their money so they have to print more products so they have to print more parallels, so it is not a desert wasteland of base cards.

“On the secondary market, that creates so much confusion. I think that less is more. We can simplify this.

“There are certain cards that matter more than others, and that has always been the case. I think there are so many parallels that people get flustered by it at times. I think if we say, ‘Hey, there are certain parallels that will be more important than others’ – that is a way you can cut out the noise and just focus on the cards that will really have a market.

“Usually it is the ones with the longer history – the colored parallels. The colors that if you look at this, can you instantly identify it without having to spend a half an hour looking at it, trying to compare between a Blue Wave, Blue RayWave, or a Blue Shimmer – I have no idea.

“What is a Cherry Blosom Prizm? I think someone sent me a picture of a Llama parallel the other day – what are we talking about?

“You have to get to the heart of what your buyers on the backend will want, know exist, and care about enough to spend money on it with you.

“I start with, what will make my life easy when I go to sell and which cards are liquid that are always selling and everyone knows exists.

“A lot of times it is coming back to the basics – the Blue Refractor, the Gold, the Orange Refractor, or base Refractor or Refractor-Autograph.

“Any card that has a long history in Bowman or Topps Chrome, a lot of times, that is where my money is going first before getting into the Shimmers and Waves and all of that nonsense.”

Beckett: What is hot in the trading card market right now?

Sever: “One is pop culture figures. There are now cards of Disney characters, popular YouTubers who have giant followings – there is all kinds of stuff out there now. Everyone has a card.

“There is a Joey Chestnut card – the hotdog eating champion. You can find something of anything these days.

“A lot of times it is just thinking in advance – ‘What gives people nostalgia? What takes them back to their childhood? How can I get a step ahead of the crowd if I am trying to make money or get ahead of the trend?’

“Sometimes it is having the foresight, ‘Okay, this isn’t big yet but could this be the next big thing that catches on based on this particular category or person’s following?’

“I think that is something that will be more prominent in this space as more people join with diverse interest. Yes, sports and TCG will still be a big part of it, but we are seeing all these other products come out – the card manufacturers have to know something, right? If they are continuing to make these products and sell them, there has to be some money there.

“The other thing is more a bigger picture topic – if you look at how many seven figure sales there have been in the past five months of this year as compared to how many there were last year, and the decade prior, it is crazy how much money is being spent on the top end of the market.

“I think what will happen, this is just my prediction, we will see some trickle down there because it resets people’s expectations for what is hot.

“Back in the 2000s, it was Albert Pujols’ (Bowman) Chrome Autograph, that was the coveted card. Nothing could ever touch that until this guy Mike Trout came along and his Chrome Autograph blasted through the ceiling of what people thought was possible. It wasn’t too long after that his teammate at the time, Shohei Ohtani, came over from Asia and now all of his cards are shattering those records.

“I think what that has done is shown people, that people are willing to spend a giant amount of money on cards. This is no longer a side hobby thing. This is worth putting money into as cards are a legitimate alternate asset, and I think that is a trend where people will now say, ‘Okay, I can’t afford a Shohei card but who has a card within my budget that I can go after that maybe will be the next player up?’

“If it is Aaron Judge, maybe he is also outside your budget, but who is the next guy up? Bobby Witt Jr.? If it isn’t Bobby Witt Jr., who is the next guy? Picking those guys that you see having the potential of having great upside.

“It is tricky because even prospects are not hidden anymore the way they were 20 years ago. But you can still find some good value, especially with how many cards are out there. Some cards fly under the radar – you might be able to pick up one at an auction cheaper than it should go for.

“If you catch the right player at the right time, there are people changing their lives because of sports cards. The money that they are making from individual card sales, I find that fascinating.”

Beckett: What prompted you to start Cardboard Profit and take that idea to YouTube?

Sever: “It was probably five or six years ago now when I saw, maybe during the pandemic, I saw a lot of people that were jumping into the market for the first time or for the first time since childhood; the learning curve in this market is tough.

“There are so many directions you can get pulled, there are influencer crowds telling you one thing that may or may not be the right move for you. You have a lot of noise to deal with if you are new and trying to figure it out.

“I got tired of seeing new people join the market, get burned or not figure out where to start, and just leave the market just as soon as they came. That sucks. That is not the outcome that I want to see.

“I figured – ‘I don’t know everything, but I’ve had a lot of success in this market. What if I could just start documenting some of the things that have worked for me, some of the things that haven’t, and just share it?’

“Initially, I started a website. I don’t know anything about web design. I just thought, ‘Hey, I will start a blog. Everyone will come and read this, and it will save the world or whatever.’

“I had no idea how to promote something. I ultimately decided, ‘This won’t work because no one will read it.’ But then I thought, ‘What if I turned this into a book?’

“Then I wrote a book about it. It ended up being an Amazon Best Seller for a year. Then I thought, ‘Okay, there are some people trying to learn this space, more than I expected.’ It was pretty cool to see the response.

“The evolution of that was making content where people could go if they liked the book and wanted more. I eventually got onto YouTube, which is a better format for me because a lot of the stuff in the card market doesn’t do well in short form Instagram type posts. You need to sit there and be ready to learn something. You can’t just mindlessly be scrolling and understand a complex topic about card selection and how the market works.

“The journey has been how to simplify the market and make it more accessible to the average person, if they are collecting with their kids, having fun with it, or trying to make some money. That is cool to me if I can make a tiny sliver of an impact on a person that will help them in the long run.”

Collectors and sellers who are interested in learning more about Sever and his strategies can find him on YouTube at Cardboard Profit.

If attending the Midwest Monster Card Show in Indianapolis October 2-3 or the National Sports Collectors Convention July 29-August 2, you may get to see Sever’s Cardboard Profit strategies in real time!

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