Reading price charts is the #1 thing that leveled up my flipping. Not timing, or pulling comps, or even picking the right players.

Sound strange?

Billions of dollars trade on Wall Street every day based on nothing but patterns on a price chart. Day traders across the globe stare at those lines to squeeze out profits.

A few years back, it hit me. It's the exact same thing here.

Sure, you've heard of looking up comps to know what a card is generally selling for…

But what has that card done over the past 2 years? Those patterns tend to repeat themselves.

Let me show you how I look at price charts to find cards to flip every week.

You’ll need software that tracks historical pricing on cards (unless you want to plot hundreds of sales from eBay into a graph…).

I’ve been using CardLadder every day for years. Here’s my affiliate link, and use the discount code HCL to get 10% off. (I’d recommend this tool even if I didn’t earn anything)

To see pricing trends, look at cards that are bought & sold frequently. Generally, I’m looking at Prizm or Topps Chrome rookies for this.

Today, let’s look at Luka’s Prizm PSA 10 rookies. His chart looks like this:

Definitely enough movement there to start seeing trends!

Note - even if you’re not interested in buying this specific card, it’s still the best way to get a feel for a player’s overall market.

You can give yourself one of the best sports card educations simply by looking at price charts and breaking down why prices went up or down.

You do this 100 times, and you’ll intuitively understand the best times to buy/sell.

Let’s look back at Luka’s chart:

Here’s what happened to Luka at each of those numbers on the chart:

In other words, it’s all explainable!

Once you notice those trends and patterns, flipping cards becomes much easier.

Except in rare situations, you want to invest while a player is on a downward trend. Makes sense, right? We need room for the player’s pricing to grow, and expecting new highs rarely works out.

In Luka’s chart, we see that he was hitting $250 regularly as the Lakers played well near the end of the season.

Now? He’s been as low as $150 and now sits around $175.

Zoom in to a year view, and it’s pretty obvious what’s happening:

This means we’re likely near an opportunity to jump in!

Now we come to my favorite way to identify cards to flip:

Pricing channels!

Whenever you’re looking at a player that’s established like Luka, you can often find common lows and highs over a few year period.

Look how clean this is:

In the past 18 months, we can see that price hit a high of $250 at two very different windows.

And…

Also hit a low of $150 at two separate times!

This shows us VERY clearly that the market as a whole is saying:

“This card shouldn’t go below $150 or above $250.”

Which gives us a perfect window to invest.

Now, how does this all look in practice?

Then that’s a full-on green light for me.

Let’s do the math:

You buy on eBay at $150 (about $168 after shipping/taxes), and you sell at $250 ($218 after fees)…

Then you net $50 on $168 (30% return!)

That’s the whole game. Buy near the floor, sell near the ceiling, repeat.

Of course, it’s rarely that clean, but even if you buy at $160 or $170 and sell at $240, that’s still a 20%+ return.

Always ask yourself this:

What are the odds that you get killed on this card?

What would have to happen for Luka’s card to drop to $100 or less?

Something catastrophic, right?

In the short term, let’s say the lowest you can resell the card for is $150 (the absolute bottom of the price channel).

You still walk away with about $130 after eBay fees.

You’re not buying a scratch-off ticket or yanking on slot machines…

You’re buying stock in a high-floor investment.

(The reality is that the absolute latest sales on eBay are over $200 now, so we’ve missed the boat on this card. But it’s a perfect lesson of what to look for in your next flip.

Your homework: go look at a Joe Burrow PSA 10 Prizm. Another card that’s too late, but it’s a great example of a pricing channel)