Issue #11 | March 28, 2026
Comped
The Numbers
Charizard for President
This week the data shows:
–Baseball surprisingly no Opening Day bump
–Basketball 4 week uptrend
–Football up with combine and draft day hype
–Soccer World Cup in 74 days
–Pokemon 11 straight weeks of gains
–One Piece after previous consolidation a few weeks ago, OP has been on a tear
–S&P 500 starting to be concerning
–Gold 4 week negative trend. Early year bonanza close to reversing into a bear market.
–Bitcoin big ouch
When I look at these asset classes, they scream “MILD UNCERTAINTY”
True, fretting uncertainty has strength in gold and other commodities, but this, this is just a directionless signal by equity and futures markets.
The Fed’s decision to forecast fewer rate hikes this year does not give businesses the warm and fuzzies as they revise their quarterly budgets. That interest rate forecast trickles down to businesses, which cascades to hiring and R&D decisions, which waterfalls into consumer spending…It truly is a liquidity spigot that determines how rich we feel and how much we feel we can spend.
Regarding the movements in the baseball markets over the past three months, it’s fascinating to have a live look. The Baseball Index on Card Ladder popped off during February, showed a strong high-volume-but-slow step up the first couple weeks of March, but is now flat with Opening Day now in the books.
Buy the Rumor, Sell the News in practical effect.
I know most of my readers are sports cards guys, but how are y’all feeling about this run-up I reference every week? Interested to know what y’all think when every week I tell you it’s up another 2+%, respond to this email and tell me what that makes you feel.
Be honest, I can take it.
The News
Let’s Get Seasonal
Let’s take a look at America’s [once] Pastime. Baseball is the oldest, most established card market, so it serves as the standard of comparison when forecasting what any other card market can become.
That may be an outdated idea, a carryover from the 80s and 90s, or it could be still true. We’re going to find that out together as I write this.
Let’s first look at market cap for the indexes on Card Ladder. Disclaimer, this is far from perfect, as the indexes only have certain cards, but directionally let’s see what info we glean.
Market Caps for Indexes:
- Baseball: $3.61B
- Basketball: $3.32B
- Football: $833.60M
- Soccer: $150.93M
Woah, basketball is right up there with baseball in the index values! Notice how far off football is from those two juggernauts as well (about 25% of Baseball or Basketball’s market).
I digress. Going back to baseball, there’s common knowledge around seasonality that you buy in the offseason to profit in the regular season. The thing about Common Knowledge, though, is that once it’s truly common there’s no longer an edge to having the knowledge.
I believe we see this starkly in baseball this offseason, as the buying pressure for prospecting took place clearly in February. By March there was a small run up [see chart above] but in the last two weeks there wasn’t much to write home about.
One last thing, Shohei Ohtani’s market is up 50% in the last 3 months (vs. 10% in the broad baseball index). That’s all offseason action, December-March, well after the World Series.
GOAT markets hit different.
The Framework
Thinking differently taxes your brain.
According to Nobel-Prize-winning work from Daniel Kahneman which you can read about in a highly recommended book, Thinking Fast and Slow, we are an autopilot in our thought 96% of the time. This is how we have evolved: we’ve built mental pathways to assess danger and patterns so we can “brain surf” all but 4% of our waking hours.
If you’re reading Comped, you’re already in the elite percentile of those in the card game that put in the time to think about brain-stretching ideas, find data-driven opportunities, and generally those that put in the extra work.
Some of the work I have been doing in the background is specifically (and selfishly) to answer my questions about how the market values players. The picture above, which I posted on my Slabnomics Instagram shows the rookie gem market caps for the 3 biggest rookies of baseball, football, basketball, and soccer from 2017-2022 measured by their silver/refractor PSA 10s.
Although this provides some fun eye candy, it raises more questions than answers for me. Questions like:
- Are Silvers/Refractors Dead in Ultra-modern?
- How wide does the GOAT premium extend through parallels (Does an orange have the same premium for Shohei vs. Judge that a Cherry Blossom has)?
- Will one day these “junk parallels” like winter camo suddenly become worthless as value consolidates to traditional color parallels?
- Adding up all the parallels for players in Ultramodern and comparing them to Modern and Vintage, how much more value is in one vs. the others?
My mission for Slabnomics is simply to answer all my questions, and make those answers available to those that have the same questions. As always, if you have burning questions, give me a shout by replying to this email or hitting me up in the Slabnomics Investor Discord any time.
The tax of thinking differently compounds…Keep building.
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Warren Buffett
Keep Building,
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content reflects the author’s personal opinions and analysis and should not be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any assets. Sports cards and collectibles are speculative investments with significant risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author may hold positions in assets discussed in this newsletter. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with qualified financial, tax, and legal professionals before making any investment decisions. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept these terms.