As someone who answers dozens of subscriber questions per week and coaches people live via the Bootcamp….

I'm in a good position to see clear trends in what card flippers do wrong.

Here’s one of the most common:

Taking “flyers” as a core part of their investment strategy.

It’s a card with a low likelihood of actually turning into real profit down the road.

It’s the guy you buy because you’re a big fan of the team and you just want to root for him.

Or, you get sucked into playing the “what if” game…

Like “what if he plays like an MVP the rest of the season?”

Essentially, these are long-odds type investments. Perhaps they’ll pay off well if they hit, but they rarely do.

If you’re looking at a card that has a 50% chance or less of increasing in value, I’d consider that a flyer.

The worst kind, in my opinion, are the “penny stock” cards - the ones that could 10x if they hit, but are much more likely to drop to near-zero.

Now, I’m not one to suck all the fun out of investing in sports cards. There is certainly a hobby and fandom aspect that I never want to fully ignore. After all, you could invest in something blah like Forex.

But here are the main problems with this:

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you love the Cowboys and specifically Dak Prescott. You’re a lifelong fan and think of Jerry Jones as your real-life uncle.

So, you go spend $400 on a nice Prescott card!

Your logic is that he’s:

But here’s the problem:

There are too many issues stacked against him that turn this from a good investment to a high-risk flyer:

That’s his flagship Silver Prizm PSA 10 rookie, which has increased dramatically for nearly 2 years straight without a good reason.

Could that card keep rising enough to make the investment worth it?

Of course. But it seems like the Cowboys would have to be dominant and Dak would need an MVP-type season. It’s possible, but what realistically are the odds of that? 25%?

And here’s the thing:

I like taking flyers! It’s placing a small bet on a player I want to root for.

But the flyers I take still need to be rooted in logic and (mostly) fit proper investing frameworks.

As fun as they are, flushing money down the toilet kind of ruins the whole experience for me.

First, let me share with you what a perfect flip looks like for me:

A flyer is someone who might break a rule or two but still follows most of the frameworks that lead to a likely increase.

I recently bought a Silver Prizm PSA 9 Austin Reaves rookie card.

It’s not a perfect flip candidate by any means. He’s a veteran with no chance of becoming a franchise superstar. He’s in Luka’s shadow and always will be. He’s actually a bit higher in price than he was recently.

But here’s why I did it:

I also like to use flyers to test a hypothesis, which in this case is: how high can a #2 player rise, even on a non-championship team? Plus, I think he’ll put up big stats, and putting some money on his card is another way to root for that.

Investing in something with a higher-than-usual chance to fail is the price I’m paying to continue learning more about the market and flipping as a whole.

For most people reading this, just cutting out flyers altogether is the smart way to go. Wait until you’ve established a rhythm and stacked some wins with your card flipping.

It’s like they say with writing: Once you know the rules, then you can break them.

If you’re already at this stage, my advice is to still stack a few reasons why a card will go up in value.

Buying a card with no legit reason to go up in value is a straight-up gamble. If you can turn your flyers from a 30% chance of working out to 50%+, it’ll limit your losses and keep your overall portfolio more profitable.