2026 LEGACY CARD
REPORT CARD

Before a headline changes your asking price, ask one more question: down compared with what? A summer high? Last month? The same month last year? And are we talking about your exact card—or a collection of different cards carrying the same player’s name?

We promised to return to the legacy cards from our seasonality study and put 2026 under the microscope. Here it is: every completed month from January through September, alongside the same months in 2025 and 2024. Then we bring the results back to your selling plan and Your Card Report Card.

January–March 2026: the median moved from $4,102 to $5,089.54 to $5,195. February rose 24.1%, far beyond February’s 2.4% rise in 2024 and 2.9% rise in 2025. The same month can point the same way without delivering a repeatable size of gain.

April–June: $5,430, $5,999.99 and $8,499. April reversed the declines seen in both earlier Aprils. June alone rose 41.7%. Calling the entire year “seasonal” would hide how exceptional this acceleration was.

July–September: $13,394.27, $10,230 and $8,708.50. The 35.0% fall from July matters. So does September’s 148.8% lead over September 2025 and 291.4% lead over September 2024. Neither comparison cancels the other.

August transactions increased from 24 in July to 51, even as the median fell 23.6%; September had 32. Falling prices did not mean trading stopped. Those counts cannot tell us whether more sellers entered, buyers became more price-sensitive, or both.

The selling lesson: price a sell-now copy against current matching evidence. July’s peak is historical context, not a standing bid. A patient seller can seek more, but needs a reason to expect a different outcome and a date to reassess it.

January–March 2026: $11,250, $11,500 and $12,250. April reached $12,900; May $14,500; June $17,996.96. As with Brady, the prior two years’ April weakness did not repeat. May and June accelerated by 12.4% and 24.1%.

July reached $19,827.60 before August eased to $18,300 and September to $18,000. September was 9.2% below July, yet 87.5% above September 2025 and 150.0% above September 2024. Every completed 2026 month exceeded its matching month in both earlier years.

Now examine the measurement. The all-format median fell 1.6% from August to September. The auction-only median rose 1.2%, from $18,000 across 29 records to $18,216.50 across 24. The direction of that small move changes with the sample. This is a reason to inspect formats and copies, not proof that auctions outperform fixed-price selling.

Total recorded sales increased from 28 in July to 44 in August and 45 in September. Before cutting your Jordan listing because “Jordan is down,” investigate whether your comparison includes similar eye appeal, holder details, sale terms and sale format. A PSA 8 label narrows the field; it does not erase every difference between copies.

January–March 2026: $4,602, $4,360 and $4,605. February fell 5.3%, then March recovered 5.6%. April reached $5,000 and May $5,275.50. June edged up to $5,300. This was a different path from Brady’s and Jordan’s sharp June acceleration.

July–September: $5,500, $5,875.50 and $5,900. While the other two cards retreated from July, Griffey rose 7.3%. August increased in all three years: 0.9%, 6.8% and 6.8%. That is a repeat worth tracking, with only three annual observations behind it.

Another revealing comparison: September 2026 was 43.9% above September 2025. That growth rate was smaller than January’s 84.1% year-over-year increase, even though prices rose between January and September. Why? The 2025 comparison price had also climbed sharply. A slowing growth percentage is not necessarily a falling price.

September recorded 27 sales versus 37 a year earlier. Price rose while recorded volume fell. We do not have the available listings and time-to-sale history needed to say how easy it was for a seller to transact.

The selling lesson: do not import Brady’s correction into a Griffey listing. Equally, three positive Augusts do not establish an automatic August auction date. Use the repeating observation to schedule research, then let the current evidence guide the offer you accept.

The strongest fair test is to keep the years that contradict the story. Brady and Jordan rose in August 2024 and 2025, then fell in August 2026. All three cards weakened in April 2024; April 2025 was down for Brady and Jordan and essentially flat for Griffey. All three rose in April 2026. Those earlier patterns were not dependable calendar rules.

Griffey’s June-through-September monthly direction was positive in each of the three years. Jordan’s May-through-July direction was positive in all three; Brady’s July direction was positive in all three. These are descriptive repeats. The amounts vary greatly, the months were examined after the fact, and a broad upward trend can produce several positive months without a distinct seasonal effect.

My original explanation—travel, school spending and attention moving toward active football—remains a hypothesis. We have no matched active-player basket or buyer-level spending evidence here. The three legacy cards’ different paths do not prove that collectors moved the same dollars from one category into another.

For wider context, the CL50 display rose 18.14% over its July 21–October 21 window, with the latest plotted value dated October 20. That is a different period and metric. Its 50 selected sports and gaming cards are not the entire hobby. A matched monthly broad-market adjustment remains unfinished, so we cannot isolate seasonality from market movement.

An index of 100 matches the benchmark. A result of 97 is 3% below it; 103 is 3% above it. It measures price relative to a defined comparison, not profit or a share of all buyers. Before scoring a real sale, remove your own transaction and make sale terms consistent.

Look at Brady. The market had fallen from July, but this illustrative seller still achieved more than September’s benchmark. A falling market and a below-market sale are different findings. That distinction can change the entire conversation with your team.

For Jordan, a 97.2 score invites an investigation: did the copy deserve a discount, did the channel reach the right buyer, or did we accept too quickly? The score is a starting question. It cannot prove that another buyer would have paid the median for our copy.

You sold above the original month’s benchmark. A year later, the market was much higher. Both can be true: good execution for that month, followed by an opportunity you did not retain. The later index is a hindsight comparison, not proof that you made a bad decision with the information you had.

Now move the hypothetical sale date. A $9,000 Brady sale in June 2026 scores 105.9 against June’s $8,499 median. At its three-month checkpoint in September, it scores 103.3 against $8,708.50. The July peak in between does not mean a seller could reliably have captured it.

That is why we review past cards consistently. Ask what was knowable before the sale, how long we were willing to hold, what alternatives we had, and what evidence would have justified a higher target. Sometimes the later market rises. Sometimes it falls. Keep both outcomes.

A September 2026 sale’s three-, six- and twelve-month checkpoints are December 2026, March 2027 and September 2027. They are pending. Any number placed in those columns today must be labeled a forecast, never a completed result.

The lesson is not “always hold six months.” It is: compare the month you sold, revisit the later market, and use what you learned to write a better plan for the next card.

An event log should distinguish recurring preseason or postseason periods from a one-off retirement, award, record sale, product release or supply change. This study has not isolated those effects. Record dates first; test whether the transactions changed around them instead of supplying a cause after seeing a chart.

For a sell-now card, use recent verified matching sales and current competing listings. For a patient target, write the desired holding period—three, six or twelve months—and the development you expect. A future target is an asking strategy. It does not establish what a buyer will pay or earn.

Channel choice belongs here too. Review where matching copies actually sold and whether your listing reaches that buyer. Low impressions suggest checking discoverability; views without offers suggest checking the copy, terms and price. Neither proves demand is absent. We cannot see competitors’ private view counts, and these records do not identify a universally best auction weekday.

Keep downside, base and upside cases in the plan: weaker matching sales, a broadly stable market, or strengthening evidence. At 30 days, reassess current comps and exposure. At three and six months, compare the realized checkpoint when available. At twelve months, repeat the year-over-year review. Do not turn a three-year seasonal observation into a guaranteed return.

Gravity is the system we want to build to organize these reviews. A spreadsheet can start the habit today. The 2026 evidence gives us a practical standard: check the calendar, inspect the exact card, judge your sale against its own market, then return to learn what happened next. A headline should trigger that work—not replace it.

Every January–September 2026 median for all three cards exceeded the corresponding 2025 and 2024 median. That broad rise is a reason to separate the market’s changing price level from a seasonal effect. It does not promise the next year will repeat.

Brady and Jordan fell from September to October in 2024 but rose in October 2025. Griffey rose in both Octobers; its November direction then differed between the two years. These are useful questions for the next month-end meeting, not a completed October 2026 result.

Historical observations and calculations. The signed-in Card Ladder All Sales lists were reviewed back past January 1, 2024. Monthly medians use platform-reported USD prices across all recorded formats; auction-only medians provide a sensitivity check. Counts describe captured sale records, not the entire market, distinct buyers, available supply or sell-through. The three exact series were retained from the prior study, not selected because their 2026 results agreed.

Transaction quality. This is not a repeated-sale study of the same physical slabs. Centering, eye appeal, special stickers and channel mix remain uncontrolled. Original receipts, payment status, cancellations and buyer premiums were not reconciled for every record. Small movements can be sensitive to composition. Automated values and active asking prices are not substituted for completed-sale records.

Duplicate review. Matching text and image flagged two Jordan entries dated May 13, 2025 at $7,000. Their eBay IDs differ: 226751433760 and 226751189048. Both remain in the primary series pending verification. Removing one changes that month’s median from $7,522 (33 records) to $7,536 (32); the main 2026 comparisons are unchanged. No second aggregator’s rows were appended. This does not certify that every internal relisting or duplicate is resolved.

Access and coverage. Card Ladder supplies the monthly transaction study. Market Movers replication remains outstanding after its sign-in route returned a request-blocked page. A signed-in SportsCardsPro spot check is described on the following supplemental source page; it is not a full monthly replication. Lyons’ own completed-sale inventory was not accessed, so seller-score examples are hypothetical.

Interpretation. No causal link to vacations, school expenses, football attention or releases has been established. There is no buyer-level migration test, matched active-player control group, completed monthly broad-market adjustment or transaction-cost strategy backtest. Two complete years plus partial 2026 do not fulfill a three-complete-year seasonal test. We report individual years rather than presenting a seasonal average as a trading rule.

Future scenarios. Three-, six- and twelve-month targets for future dates remain scenarios. A higher later comp is an opportunity observed in hindsight, not a guaranteed amount that a seller could have captured. The same-month index and later-market index answer separate questions. Fees and selling constraints must be accounted for before converting any gross price pattern into a strategy.