Do rookie card prices go down after the first year?

The median raw rookie card was down 52% a year after it first hit the price guide. In PSA 10, the median was down 26%. Only about 1 in 5 cards was worth more a year later (SportsCardsPro monthly values, read Oct 27, 2026).

Do rookie cards lose value after the first year? The short answer

Football fell hardest. The median Prizm Football raw rookie was down 71% at 12 months.

If you’re buying a rookie the month it comes out, you’re usually buying near the top.

How I tracked 137 rookie cards month by month

SportsCardsPro shows a monthly price history for every card, by grade, going back to April 2021. I pulled the top 20 base cards in each set by SportsCardsPro’s default ranking, for three flagship lines:

• Topps Chrome Baseball
• Panini Prizm Football
• Panini Prizm Basketball

I kept rookie cards from 2021 to 2025 sets (Prizm Basketball through 2024). That gave 137 raw price histories and 130 PSA 10 histories. Then I set each card’s first priced month to 100 and tracked it from there.

Not every card is old enough for every checkpoint. 115 raw cards have 12 months of history, and 88 have 24 months.

What happened at 6, 12 and 24 months

Median change from the first priced month (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026):

Source: SportsCardsPro monthly values, Oct 27, 2026. Each card's first priced month is set to 100. Higher is the share of cards worth more than in their first month.

The raw drop happens fast. The median raw card was at 68% of its starting price after one month and 53% after three. PSA 10s slide more slowly, but they keep sliding into year two.

Football vs baseball vs basketball

Median raw change at 12 months (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026):

Source: SportsCardsPro monthly values, Oct 27, 2026. Raw cards with 12 months of history. Higher is the share of cards worth more than in their first month.

Football is the clearest case. C.J. Stroud’s 2023 Prizm #339 in PSA 10 went from $204.21 in Jan 2024 to $43.66 in Oct 2026, down 79% (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 30, 2026). The 2021 class was worse. Trey Lance’s 2021 Prizm #333 PSA 10 went from $122.03 to $6.50, and Justin Fields’ #334 went from $191.50 to $10.50 (SportsCardsPro, first priced month Jun 2022, read Oct 27, 2026).

Baseball held up best in this sample. One possible reason: Topps Chrome comes out after players have already debuted, so some of the hype is priced in before the card exists. That’s a guess. The data doesn’t test it.

Does grading protect you from the drop?

Partly. At 12 months, the median PSA 10 was down 26% vs 52% for raw (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026). So the slab lost about half as much.

But a PSA 10 is not a safe place to park money. By 24 months, the median PSA 10 was down 37%, and only 15% were higher. In basketball, the median PSA 10 was down 56% at 24 months (22 cards).

The bigger the starting raw price, the worse it got. Of the 42 raw cards that started at $5 or more, the median was down 79% at 12 months, and only 1 was higher (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026).

The rookies that went up, and what they had in common

Be careful with the raw “winners.” Of the 22 raw cards that were higher at 12 months, 12 started under $1. A card that goes from $0.25 to $1.25 is up 400%, but nobody made money on it after fees.

The PSA 10 winners tell a cleaner story. Over the full history to Oct 2026 (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026):

Source: SportsCardsPro monthly values, PSA 10, Oct 27, 2026.

What they have in common: all six started between $34 and $52 in PSA 10, and each player’s stock rose after the card came out. The data can show the first part. Nobody could have known the second part on release day.

For contrast, Jackson Chourio’s 2024 Topps Chrome #161 PSA 10 went from $80.86 in Jul 2024 to $46.71 on Oct 27, 2026. After the World Series it was up to $68.56 on Oct 30, and it’s still 15% below its first month (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27 and Oct 30, 2026).

When is the best time to buy a rookie card?

In this sample, not the first month. The median raw rookie hit its lowest point around month 20, at 41% of its first price. The median PSA 10 kept falling until about month 22, at 57% (SportsCardsPro, read Oct 27, 2026). Fewer cards are old enough for those later months, so treat the exact month as rough.

For football, raw rookies bottomed around month 12, at 29% of their first price.

Here’s how I’d use that. In this sample, waiting a year would have saved you money on about 4 of every 5 cards. If you want to chase the release-day market, know that the median card loses value from there.

That matters this month. 2026 Topps Chrome Football hobby boxes were already selling for $620 on the secondary market vs a $439.99 list price (HobbyMonitor, 38 listings as of Oct 28, 2026, read Oct 30).

Did I check the guide against real sales?

Yes, for 8 cards. I compared SportsCardsPro’s current value with the eBay sold listings shown on each card’s page, read Oct 27, 2026:

Source: SportsCardsPro, with eBay sold listings shown on each card's page, Oct 27, 2026. Median sale is the median of the recent sales listed. Sales is how many.

Raw guide values for all 8 were within 15% of recent sale medians. Thinly traded cards were looser. Chourio’s #161 PSA 10 had only one sale in the past month.

How I got these numbers

• SportsCardsPro monthly values are its price-guide estimates built from completed sales. They are not individual comps.
• I picked cards by today’s popularity, so the sample leans toward players who are still relevant. Players who flamed out and fell off the list aren’t in it, which means the real average drop is likely worse.
• The first priced month often catches presale or release-week prices.
• History starts in April 2021, so 2018 to 2020 sets are left out.
• This covers base rookies only, not parallels or autos.