6 Baseball Cards You Might Want to Consider Grading (Part I: Year 2023)

When grading cards, there will always be risk to take on and assumptions to be made. There's no way around it. If you want to grade cards by buying raw and submitting, I have a few candidates.

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Disclosure: This is not buying or investment advice. I’m simply reporting the data I’m seeing. Please do your own research and make your own decisions. Just because cards have increased in value up to this point, it doesn’t mean they will continue to do so.

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I’m getting all of this data from either the Market Movers or Card Hedge platforms. There are not my tools—I’m simply a user and affiliate of them. If you want to do your own research, you can grab a free trial to Market Movers with code BALLCARDGENIUS. You’d also get 20% off of your membership forever if you wanted to continue once your trial has been completed. You can also grab a free trial for Card Hedge as well.

These tools aren’t perfect; no tool is. I’ve seen plenty of instances where cards aren’t listed or categorized correctly, or when BIN listed prices are mistaken for sold prices. I can’t stress it enough—trust, but verify.

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I don’t like risk, so I don’t grade a lot of cards.

You probably know this.

If you’re new to the community, welcome—and welcome to my way of thinking about cards!

With that said…

I’m not saying grading never makes sense. I’m not even saying grading rarely makes sense. I just think people need to take more time up front to figure it out.

So, I’ve spent some time for you - up front - to help find a few candidates.

How?

Well, while I use Market Movers for 90% of my research needs, I really like this view from Card Hedge and being able to quickly compare a card’s raw, PSA 9, and PSA 10 values:

Once you know these figures, it comes down to simple math.

From the screenshot above, if I spend $3 on a raw Roman Anthony and $25 to grade it, does a PSA 9 value of $13 and a PSA 10 value of $65 warrant doing so? For me, no.

But if I spend $19 on a raw Paul Skenes and $25 to grade it, and a PSA 9 sells for $33 and a PSA 10 sells for $135, then things get a little more interesting. (I personally would like to see that 9 value higher, but it’s rare when dealing with base rookie/1st Bowman cards).

In either scenario, favorable or not, we still need to make assumptions:

What if you can’t find that Skenes anywhere for $19?
What if you can and you grade it, but the card gets a PSA 8?
What if the market changes by the time you get the card back?

You can’t ignore these things. They can all happen/not happen.

So again, I don’t grade a lot because I find these factors rarely align. You personally might have a different approach, and that’s totally cool too.

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But, it all starts with the opportunity, and I think these tools and data points are helpful in finding that opportunity.

To make things even easier, I’ve scanned pages of cards - hundreds in total - and picked out a few opportunities where the numbers might actually make sense for you to take a chance on grading.

I’ll leave the ultimate decision-making to you!

Also, these are all from 2023 because let’s face it, there are a lot of cards out there. If I didn’t filter by year, I’d probably never finish. So, consider this part I, and if well-received and actionable, I’ll do more (so let me know!)

1. Kristian Campbell 2023 Bowman Draft #CDA-KCA

Risk: 🚨🚨🚨🚨 | Upside: 💰💰💰💰💰

According to Kristian Campbell’s card prices and even nickname, he could be the next Barry Bonds. Of course, we have seen our fair share of those considered to be “the next,” and sometimes they simply don’t pan out. So, anything can happen.

But right now, this is what I’m seeing:

• PSA 10: $425 on 1/23/25

• PSA 9: $129 on 1/22/25

• Raw: $128 on 1/26/25

What makes this tough is the lowest BIN on eBay for a raw copy is $170, so you’ll have to take your chance at auction (or off of eBay). The good news is the lowest PSA 9 BIN is $180 and there aren’t any PSA 10s currently for sale.

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2. Juan Soto 2023 Topps Chrome #UV-9 Ultraviolet AS

Risk: 🚨🚨 | Upside: 💰💰💰

If you’d rather not dive headfirst into the grading pool, this Soto Ultraviolet can provide more of a toe dip to get you comfortable:

• PSA 10: $99 on 1/5/25

• PSA 9: $50 on 12/22/25

• Raw: $12.75 on 1/26/25

There are a few raw copies on eBay for around $20 shipped, and the lowest PSA 9 is $59.95. This might be a red flag given the last PSA 9 that sold was a month ago around the same price. There are not any PSA 10s, currently.

The next card is in the same league…