Okay, so I wanted to figure out what my Aaron Judge cards are actually worth. Had a bunch sitting around, mostly stuff I picked up over the last few years since he came up. You see the headlines, the big sales, and you start wondering, right?
My First Steps – Sorting the Mess
First thing I did was just pull all the Judge cards out. Had ’em mixed in boxes with everything else. Took a while, honestly. Piled them up. Then I started sorting. Put the basic Topps ones here, the Bowman chrome ones there, any shiny looking parallels or numbered cards in another pile. Found a couple of relics, you know, the ones with a tiny piece of jersey. And I looked hard for any autographs, but didn’t find any in my stash this time.
The most important pile seemed to be the rookie cards. Everyone always talks about rookie cards, so I separated those out real careful. Checked the years, looked for that ‘RC’ logo.
Hitting the Interwebs – Where to Look?
Alright, cards sorted kinda. Now what? Fired up the computer. Where do you even start? I just started typing stuff like “Aaron Judge card value” into search engines. Lots of noise came back. Sites wanting me to buy price guides, articles about million-dollar sales (yeah, right, not mine!).
I realized pretty quick the best bet was looking at places where cards actually sell. You know the big auction sites people use all the time. That seemed like the most real-world way to see what people are paying, not just what sellers are asking.
Checking Sold Listings is Key
This was the big thing I learned. Don’t just look at active listings. Anyone can ask crazy money. I specifically filtered searches to show only the sold items. Then I’d type in the specific card I had, like “2017 Topps Chrome Aaron Judge #169” or whatever the card number was.
- I looked at the date it sold. Prices change fast, especially with players like Judge. What it sold for last month might be different than last year.
- I looked closely at the pictures. Compared the condition to my card. Was it sharp corners? Centered nicely? Any scratches? This stuff matters a ton.
- Graded vs. Raw. This was huge. Cards graded by PSA or BGS, especially with high grades like 9 or 10, sell for way, way more than ungraded (“raw”) cards. I checked prices for both raw ones similar to mine and the graded versions just to see the difference. It’s massive.
Condition and Grading – The Big Money Factor
Looking at the sold prices for graded cards made me think about getting mine graded. Looked into it. It costs money, takes time, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get the grade you want. For most of my base cards and mid-level stuff, it just didn’t seem worth the hassle or cost. Maybe for a really clean-looking rookie or a super rare parallel, but I decided against it for now. Just knowing the potential value if graded was good enough for me.
So, for my raw cards, I tried to be honest about the condition. Compared them to pictures of sold raw cards described as “near mint” or “excellent” and tried to find matches. It’s not exact science, more like getting a ballpark figure.
Putting it all Together (Sort Of)
So after hours of sorting, searching, and comparing, I didn’t get like, a perfect spreadsheet of exact values. It doesn’t really work like that.
What I got was a much better idea of which cards were potentially valuable and which were just common. I got ranges. This base rookie might be a few bucks if it’s clean. This numbered refractor? Okay, maybe that’s worth $50 or $100 based on recent sales. That plain veteran year card? Probably not much at all.
It was a process, definitely took some effort. And I know I’ll have to check again later because player performance, hype, it all makes the market go up and down. But hey, at least now I know what I’m looking at when I go through my Judge collection.
