Hobby Musings: DA Card World Lands Six-Figure Zion Williamson Card – The hype for Zion Williamson in the hobby has been all too real this year. Especially now that his NBA-licensed products have hit the market, buyers have seemingly not been able to get wax quickly enough in order to chase the Pelicans rookie’s top hits. Of all his cards to release, Dave and Adam’s Card World recently acquired the top one of them all in his Panini Prizm Black 1/1 rookie card. To find out more about how they got card and what they plan to do with it, I had the chance to catch up with DACW’s Adam Martin.

Hobby Musings: DA Card World Lands Six-Figure Zion Williamson Card

KS: Adam, how did you come to be in possession of this Zion card?
AM: We did several DACW breaks with 2019-20 NBA products, including Prizm, and one of our customers won it in their break spot. I heard about it and thought how crazy it was. The person who won it is a local customer who ironically only occasionally jumps into breaks. He isn’t a big basketball collector and wanted to give his family a nice holiday, so he decided to sell it. We paid a lot for it, but we decided to get it.

KS: Where would you rank it among all of Zion’s cards that have been released so far?
AM: What I’ve been told is that it’s the best Zion card on the market so far, so that’s my understanding at least.

KS: What are your plans for the card now that you have it?
AM: Well it’s interesting. People know that we got it and I have some friends out there who are high-end singles collectors. People have been reaching out to see what we want for the card. We put a press release out that we had acquired the card and listed it on our website. If anyone has interest, they can reach out and make an offer. We’ve gotten some pretty good offers so far, but we’re waiting a little bit. We’ll eventually sell it though.

KS: Will you be selling it as a raw card or will you get it graded?
AM: We talked about getting it graded. Instead of sending it through the mail this time of year and waiting on the grading, we decided to sell it as is and let the buyer decide if they want to grade it.

KS: Putting a number on such a rare card is never easy, but I have to ask, how much do you think it’s worth?
AM: Based on the offers we’ve received so far, it’s a six-figure card. We have it listed on our site as the “Holy Grail” of modern basketball cards. We’ll see what future offers are, but the ones we’ve received so far make us comfortably believe it’s a six-figure card.

KS: It seems kind of crazy to put that kind of a price on a non-autograph, non-memorabilia card.
AM: There are certain brands where the regular old cards are what collectors want. Panini has done a nice job of creating and promoting the Prizm brand. Prizm rookies seem to be the most desirable of the unsigned cards by far.

KS: You’ve been in this business a long time. In your experience, how does the hype for Zion Williamson and his cards compare with other NBA players over the years?
AM: I’ve certainly lived through the LeBron hype and it’s a different world 15 years later with the different cards and products that are around now. Zion Williamson is the most hyped rookie since LeBron James, but LeBron’s 03-04 year was a special year for basketball cards.

KS: Could this year surpass 03-04 basketball?
AM: There’s a couple of different ways to look at it. From a business standpoint, we’ll likely see better sales overall this year. You have to keep in mind though that there were fewer and different styles of products in 03-04 than what we see today. Back then, you could get an $80 box and pull a $12 LeBron rookie card. That just doesn’t exist anymore.

KS: What kinds of sales have you been seeing for collegiate and NBA trading cards featuring Zion and the rest of the rookie class this year?
AM: Well the collegiate items were super strong. Usually their numbers aren’t that great because our international customers normally wait for the products featuring players in NBA uniforms. This year though, we did sell quite a bit of collegiate, especially Prizm, overseas. Now that the rookies have NBA-licensed products on the market, sales have picked up even more. Overall, basketball sales have been tremendous this year.

KS: What kind of effect do you think Zion’s return will have on the NBA card market, especially if he plays well?
AM: I don’t want to speculate what it’ll do if he plays poorly haha. I’m gonna be positive and upbeat. If he puts up good nightly stats and has posterizing dunks, I think we’ll see the prices go up even more on products. Last year’s National Treasures cases featuring Luka Doncic and Trae Young as the top rookies are $10-11K now. This year, we expect the prices on products like that to be the same, if not even higher, because of Zion and the rest of the rookie class.

For more Hobby Musings from Kelsey Schroyer, follow him on Twitter @KelSchroy75.

Hobby Musings: DA Card World Lands Six-Figure Zion Williamson Card
Kelsey Schroyer

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