Lacrosse Card Landscape: How Much Are These Things Worth?

The PLL released their 2023 Snapshot trading card set recently and along with it came a flood of emails and Twitter DMs. There were a variety of questions, but the majority concentrated on a singular focus. People wanted to know what their lacrosse cards are worth. 

If you haven’t read my breakdown of the cards, check that out here.

Cards are collected for a variety of reasons, but in my experience only the smallest percentage of collectors can afford to be price insensitive. The reality is that card values are likely to affect your collecting habits.

The most honest answer to the above question is that a trading card is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, and that depends on many different factors. The lacrosse card hobby is still in its relative infancy and these cards rarely attracted much attention prior to 2020.

Many things have contributed to their recent popularity and higher prices have been a natural result. However, much of lacrosse card pricing is still guesswork as we only have a few years of sales history to reference and there are not a lot of modern era issues from which we can draw comparisons.

Still, there are some generalities that can be implemented to determine ballpark values. I must emphasize here that these are generalities based on my years in the hobby. There are exceptions to every rule and please do not base your purchases strictly on this article. I am not an economist nor an expert prognosticator. But you can use this information as a basic guideline when looking to make a purchase or establish a value for a card you wish to sell.

For ease of understanding I will break these subjects up into three main categories: Items that establish card value, items that can make a sudden impact on card value, and items specific to lacrosse that right now even leave the most knowledgeable collectors questioning long term values.

As for takeaways to help in your own collection, after considering the topics below, simply ask yourself the following:

IF YOU ARE BUYING

Can I truly afford this card and will I enjoy it just as much if it does not maintain its current value?

IF YOU ARE SELLING

Will the sale price bring me more joy than the card itself?

If you can answer “yes” to those questions, then you should be safe no matter what prices are assigned to your cards.

ESTABLISHING FACTORS

Rarity

There are two types of rarity in the card world. I call them true rarity and manufactured rarity. The surviving examples of a tobacco card printed in the 1910s would be an example of true rarity. Manufactured rarity would be the low-numbered parallels in modern sets, of which only 1, 5, 10 or some other small number are even produced. Rare cards are typically more valuable than common cards.

That is why many collectors are willing to give away base cards while seeking out low-number parallels of top players. In terms of modern cards, the basic ranking of desirability is as follows, with the lowest serial numbers being most wanted:

BASE → PARALLEL → AUTO PARALLEL

Rookie Cards

Collectors like firsts… First edition books, first appearance comic books, first trading cards…  Rookie cards are usually among an athlete’s most popular and valuable trading cards.

In lacrosse there are wide gaps between nationally distributed sets, resulting in some players never having such a card. However, these players may have locally released team issues. As an example, Casey Powell’s first card is from the 1999 NLL All-Stars set, and he has another in the 2001 MLL set.

Both were printed in far smaller quantities than base cards issued by major manufacturers. Powell’s first nationally distributed cards are part of the 2010 Upper Deck World of Sports issue. It seems incorrect to consider his rookie card to be from a set that features him in a Syracuse uniform and was issued 11 years after his first actual trading card. 

But if you can find a true rookie card, for example in the new PLL set, then that will impact the value.

Other Important Factors

Condition

Condition is of extreme importance in the trading card world. So much so that independent third-party grading companies are reviewing millions of cards every month. Centering, corners, edges, surface, clarity, gloss and other elements are all judged when considering a card’s overall condition, and the tiniest bumped corner might drop an otherwise perfect card from a grade of 10 to 8.

Depending on the specific card, the difference in value can be significant between Grades 10 and 8.  Cards often come straight from the package with flaws, so condition can be a factor of rarity on top of the difficulty of simply finding the card.

Player Position

Position is a significant factor in sports cards. In general, players who score points (quarterbacks, wide receivers, running backs, home run hitters, high scorers in basketball) sell for greater values than defensive players. Jeff Teat and Garrett Epple might both be considered the greatest lacrosse players at their given positions, but all other things being equal, Teat’s cards will generally sell for more money than Epple’s.

FOGO is a particularly interesting position in terms of cards. Top FOGOS like Trevor Baptiste and Mike Sisselberger are absolutely invaluable on the field. Therefore their cards are currently in high demand. In fact, the 2023 Snapshot Mike Sisselberger 1/1 auto rookie card recently sold for more than $1,000 on eBay. However, faceoff rules have been changing frequently in recent years, and a simple rule change could greatly reduce the need for dominant FOGOS. If these players have their most significant contributions regulated out by the rules committee, what would happen to the value of their cards?  

Player Performance

Individual performance is the most obvious factor in determining card value. The more success a player has on the field, the more desirable his or her cards become in the hobby. On the flip side, off-field actions can have the reverse effect. MLB, NFL, NBA and other sports are littered with individuals who were once hotly collected, but got into serious trouble outside of their sport. The result was a significant decrease in hobby popularity and tanking of their trading card values.

Collectors of other sports often speculate on rookies or sleeper veterans they think are prime for a breakout year. Other times collectors will buy into a player who reached a particular milestone, earned an award or otherwise had a notable performance in the hopes of accumulating a large stock before prices rise. The lacrosse hobby is not yet that mature. Player collecting so far seems to follow along the line of “I collect this person because I like them” rather than for speculative reasons.

Exposure

The more people that know about a card, the more it will generally sell for. This boils down to exposure. Though communication is limited between releases, the PLL does a solid job of spreading the word on their website, the PLL app, various forms of social media, at games, etc., when new cards become available They generate a lot of interest around card drops. 

However, a further step that needs to be taken is tying specific players to their trading cards. A handful of collectors take to social media to try and spread the word, but there is nothing from a league perspective. And since the PLL is now producing their own cards, they cannot rely on a card company such as Topps or Upper Deck to do it for them. Unfortunately a lot of great lacrosse cards are simply not known about by the majority of fans. 

It is safe to say that Paul Rabil and Lyle Thompson are the players whose cards generally receive the most interest and sell for the highest prices in the lacrosse space. It makes sense as they are probably the two most talked about players of the last two decades.

People outside of the lacrosse world have likely heard about Rabil and Thompson, and that works in their favour in terms of cards. But there are many players arguably as good, but their cards sell for a fraction of the price. Josh Byrne, Jeff Teat and Tom Schreiber immediately come to mind. 

That lack of knowledge (re: lack of demand) does much to keep prices low. Given the current immaturity of the lacrosse card market, it would be beneficial for the PLL to somehow bridge the gap between their players and trading cards. It might be as simple as framing some of their graphics in trading cards when highlighting a particular player on television or social media. The old adage states that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink. In this situation, I believe the horse is willing to drink but may not yet know about the water.

The other thing to note is that exposure is not a one-time thing. A PSA 10 2022 Topps PLL Lyle Thompson Patch Auto /25 recently sold on eBay for $2,400. Even with his popularity, I would all but guarantee that the card would not sell nearly as well if lacrosse card talk had not been all over social media for the previous 10 days surrounding the PLL’s release of the 2023 Snapshot set. Another old adage rings true here: Out of sight, out of mind.

UNDETERMINED FACTORS

Box vs Field

We have two versions of the men’s sport for which cards have been issued, but are these actually two different sports? The answer probably depends on who you ask. But consider this… Gary Gait’s first box lacrosse card can be found in the 1993 STX set, while his first field lacrosse card is part of the 2001 MLL set. The hobby recognizes that Bo Jackson has separate baseball and football rookie cards, but should the same train of thought apply to lacrosse?

Along those lines, many players are active in both the NLL and PLL, but only have trading cards for one version of the sport. Josh Byrne has cards in each of the four PLL sets. Byrne was voted NLL Most Valuable Player of the 2023-24 NLL season, but he is yet to have a box lacrosse trading card. If the NLL produces a card set for the 2024-2025 season, will Byrne have a new rookie card issued in his sixth year in the league?  Or will the hobby consider a lacrosse card of any type to be his rookie issue?

Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame induction has a significant effect on trading card prices. Some collectors in other sports base their entire collections on Hall of Fame players. I’ve mentioned this issue in past articles, but the “Lacrosse Hall of Fame” situation is extremely confusing and there is yet to be a definitive Hall of Fame for the hobby to adopt. This is not much of a factor yet, but could become more significant as the lacrosse card genre grows.

History

Major League Baseball and the National Football League have long and generally linear histories. Legendary players from decades past are very much known and recognized. Lacrosse is not so fortunate. Professional leagues have started, stopped, changed names, skipped years and crossed international borders. There are dedicated historians who have spent countless hours researching the greats of yesteryear, but their work is not easily accessible. This brings us back to the discussion above on exposure and how values are suppressed when the hobby does not recognize the greatness of the player in question.

All of this is to say that we still have a long way to go before the lacrosse card genre can be considered mature and values become more predictable. There are certainly individuals who are making money selling lacrosse cards, but even the most experienced of them still employ a lot of guesswork in their pricing.