So… Base or Silver?
If you’ll ask any NBA card investor if what card should you buy for your first investment, I’m sure 99.9% of them will answer Panini Prizm.
Panini Prizm has about 41 variants. From the basic, “Base” to the rarest 1/1 you can never go wrong with any of these BUT among these variants, 2 variants are the most common “investment”. The Base and the Silver.
Soon enough, you’ll be faced with the age-old question: Should I buy Base or Should I Buy Silver?
The tale of the two variants
If you’ve done your research, I’m pretty sure you’ve stumbled upon these variants a lot. A lot of say you can’t go wrong with Base or Silver and they are right. These are the best investments you can make at the moment but of course, with your limited budget, you have to choose which to go for right? Let me share with you my thoughts about these 2 and hopefully, these points can help you decide. SPOILER ALERT: My pick is BASE.
NOTE: All prices stated are all PSA 10s
1.) Cost of entry
As mentioned, Silver Prizm is one of the top picks of investors so it doesn’t come cheap. There are thousands of people hoarding and getting these cards so you have to pay big money for it. How big? Let’s look at the 2019 Prizm Cards.
Let’s take a look at the most hyped player in this batch. The number one pick of the 2019 class, Zion Williamson. At the time of writing, Zion Williamson’s Silver cards already declined in prices since it’s the off-season but for you to get a Prizm Silver card of his, you have to spend almost Php 180,000 ($3600)
You might argue that “Of course it’s because it’s Zion! There are other players I can invest in”. Ok, fair point. So let’s look at one of the players who didn’t get much hype for this class. The “lesser” Luka. Spur’s Luka Samanic.
For you to “invest” in a Luka Samanic Silver Prizm card, you have to spend almost Php 9,000 ($175). Still, a hefty price to pay right?
Now imagine putting up this amount of money and then your forecast didn’t happen. The prospect didn’t live up to his hype or worse, he got injured. That money goes down to the drain.
2. ) Flexibility
In my previous blog, I mentioned that you have to keep a budget remember and you have to follow it. For the sake of argument, you have a Php 1 Million budget ($25,000~) and you really want to invest in Zion Williamson and you wanna go all-in.
Let’s take a look at his cards prices first:
Silver — Php 180,000 ($3,600)
Base — Php 28,000 ($559)
With your budget, you can buy 35 pieces of Base or 5 pieces of Silver. So let’s say you really bought these and someone else caught your eye and his cards’ price is moving fast and the investment you’re comfortable with is just spending 10% of your total budget? What can you do?
Well if you’ve invested in Base, you can easily sell around 5 pieces and buy your next investment but in Silver, you don’t have that much freedom also since selling your Php180,000 card means you’ll be stuck with P80,000 cash sitting or you’ll end up investing the whole Php 180,000 despite you being only comfortable investing Php 100,000 (10% of your budget).
The same thing can happen if you’ve encountered an emergency and you only need a small amount of money. You either end up losing money because you have money sitting instead of an investment growing or you will use it for a riskier investment.
3. Let’s talk about the numbers
If we’re talking about investments we have to have a logical approach. So I want to compare two players that, in my perspective, show the growth of a potential investment. I wanna look at the current MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the projected “new face” of the NBA, Zion Williamson.
For the sake of this argument, let’s travel back in August. It’s because the last sold Silver Prizm of Giannis was sold last August 2.
Back on August 12, Giannis 2013 Panini Silver Prizm sold for a whooping Php 2.1M ($42,000)
Let’s look at his Base Prizm back in August. If you bought a 2013 Panini Base Prizm Giannis Antetokounmpo PSA 10 back in August, it will cost you Php 280,000 ($5,600).
Now, let’s use our imagination, and let’s say that Zion Williamson will live up to his hype and his card will reach Giannis’ level.
Zion’s card back in August costs as follows:
Silver — Php 224,950 ($4,499)
Base — Php 42,100 ($842)
How much will be your returns?
Silver — $42,000 / $ 4,499 = 9x
Base = $5,600 / $842 = 6.65 x
So as you see, Silver will fetch you a 9x while a Base will fetch you an almost 7x. Seems pretty close right but of course as an investor you’ll go for 9x right? Everybody will pick that but let me ask you a question.
Look at your Facebook profile right now or your phone contacts.
How many people do you know can spend more than Php 2.1M for a single card?
I’m pretty sure you can only count them in your hands. Now imagine you’re the card owner and you want to sell it. What are your chances of selling it? How long will it sit on your inventory? Well, you can always go online and sell it right? Imagine the feeling of moving a 2.1M-peso card. Imagine the stress and fear you’ll be having when sending that card to the other side of the world.
Now imagine you have a base card. How many of your friends can pay P280,000 for a card? The number jumps significantly right? Let’s say you still can’t find someone buying it on local markets and have to send it across the globe. What if something bad happened to it? I can say that losing a P280,000 is hell but it’s a hella lot easier than losing P2.1M right?
I’m not saying Silver is a bad investment but we have to remember we only have a limited budget and putting all our eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster.
Disclaimer:
All information provided is for educational purposes only. My goal isn’t to tell you how to spend your money but to simply show you my own personal perspective of the hobby.
You are responsible for your own investment decisions. I am not, in any way, an investment professional. I’m just a normal human like you