If you are a member of our private CMG Sports Card Investors Group you know that we teach how to make 10X your investment breaking down and processing complete sports card sets correctly.
In this article I want to share with you 10 of the best sports card sets to break down and process for huge profits. Is there a guarantee that you will 10X your money? If you are looking for guarantees, sports card investing IS NOT FOR YOU! However if you can find these sets in Excellent to NRMt condition, and you follow the steps we teach, I believe the complete sets covered in this article are an easy 3X return on your money, and if you have a super star of two grade out high, 10X returns are definately on the table.
It is no secret, there is an overabundance of sets from the 80s especially but just sets in general. Once you start looking at card shops, shows, or on eBay, you will see lots of package sets vending boxes hand collated sets and if you are a newbie to sports card investing it can become overwhelming.
Even if you are an experienced collector. you’re probably thinking what do I do with all these various sports card sets, there are so many options and so much opportunity.
At CMG Sports Card Investments we buy a lot of these sets and break them down and systematically process them for maximum profit, every week.
The first thing you have to do is step back and just understand the numbers. In this article I’m going to break down ten of the top sports card sets from the 1980s. I am going to cover some of the top sets across all sports so that you know which ones are worth your self-education and research time.
I will share which ones you may want to buy and process as we teach students in our CMG Sports card Investors group.
If you are a member of our private group you should already understand the basic system we teach for maximizing your profit and processing a sports card complete set.
If you are an experienced collector, I hope this article gives you the opportunity and knowledge to make good decisions with the overabundance of 80s & 90’ssets available in the market.
#10 on the list is 1981/82 Topps Basketball
You can find sets for about $250.00 dollars and they include second year cards of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
This set features the first solo card of both Bird and Magic. Each of those players and in high grades can be worth thousands of dollars and there are many more All-Stars in this set.
#9 1982 TOPPS FOOTBALL is a very important release because it’s the first football card, release since 1969. There was a 13-year Gap where Topps didn’t have the rights to use logos on helmets instead to airbrush those on cards so they featured different action photos.
This set features the Lawrence Taylor rookie and Joe Montana’s second year so for about $175 dollars you can go snag a 1982 tops football set
#8 1981 TOPPS FOOTBALL
1981 Topps football comes in at number eight in 81 obviously you have the Joe Montana rookie that is the featured card of the set. A 81 Topps Joe Montana rookie is one of the most iconic football cards that you can get in the modern day era.
It is well worth trying to scavenge out and find a good deal on a 1981 Topps football set in decent condition. It is a great long term investment that should only depreciate, or you can break up and profit from right now.
#7 1980 TOPPS BASEBALL
1980 Topps baseball comes in at number seven at the time of this writing you can invest in this set for less than $700.00.
This set features Ricky Henderson’s rookie card. However this set is full of valuable Hall of Fame players like Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt Rick Sutcliffe Ozzie Smith some valuable second year cards and Hall of Famers. The legendary, 1980 Topps Ricky Henderson rookie absolutely carries the weight of this set.
#6 1986/87 TOPPS HOCKEY
The 1986 87 Topps hockey release is our first hockey release in this top ten list and currently sales for around, $300.00
This is actually one of the larger hockey sets from the early to mid 80s and it only has 198 cards, This set doesn’t include doubles of many players. The main cards in that set were the Mario Lemieux second year card obviously Wayne Gretzky fifth or sixth year, card not to mention the Patrick Roy rookie card. So 1986 87 Topps hockey for about 200 dollars is considered a great investment by many.
#5 1986 TOPPS FOOTBALL
Number five on our list is the 1986 Topps football set. Jerry Rice’s rookie stands out amongst almost any football card as being recognizable by any collector. This set includes first year cards of Steve Young and Reggie White not necessarily their rookies because they had USFL cards the year before but their first NFL cards came in 1986 Topps football again numbers five on the list you can grab a set for around $300.
#4 1985/86 TOPPS HOCKEY
Number four on the list is the 19850- 86 Topps hockey. This is the first set on our list that sales in the $500.00 range.
This set is an extremely simplified design. It’s a smaller set of about 165 cards that was carried by the Mario Lemieux rookie card. This set also features Wayne Gretzky and other All Star players.
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#3 1982 TOPPS TRADED BASEBALL SET
The 1982 Topps Traded baseball set features one very important card and that is the Cal Ripken rookie card.
Yes, he had a card in the 1982 Topps base set but it was a Future Stars card that was not solo. His first solo rookie card came in 82 tops traded and because of that maybe outside of Ken Griffey Jr’s 89, Barry Bonds or Bo Jackson’s 86 the Cal Ripken Jr. 1982 Update rookie card might be the most iconic 80s baseball card of all time.
At the time of this article, this set can be bought for around $300-$400. The chance at a high grade Cal Ripken Jr rookie will make any investment in that set well worth your time. You can click here to learn more.
#2 1980/81 TOPPS HOCKEY
Number two on the list is 1980- 81 Topps hockey, this is a very unique set because it obviously has the second-year cards of Gretzky it also has Ray Bork’s rookie card!
This was tops first and one of their only years of providing scratch off cards on a base Flagship release on the hockey cards themselves. You have the ability of scratching off the card to see position slash player. Depending on if that card is scratched off or not was going to basically dictate the value of that card in modern day prices. An unscratched version in a good condition card makes that card exponentially more valuable than a scratched version. So the 80-81Topps Hockey Set can be a very valuable addition to your collection.
You can find these for between $300 – $400 on the secondary market
#1 1980-81 TOPPS BASKETBALL
Number one on the list is no surprise to experienced collectors. Of course we are talking about the 1980 -81 Topps Basketball set. This is absolutely iconic in the basketball card world. This set features Larry Bird, Magic and Trio rookie cards. This is the first year Topps tried Trio cards and you had a mixture of the way these trios were organized on the cards. Because Bird and Magic were kind of positioned differently on different cards you have kind of multiple variations of their rookie cards but the main rookie being the bird the Julia serving Magic Trio card that is the most iconic card outside of the Jordan rookie in the 1980s for the basketball card Market.
High grades of that card scale way past ten thousand dollars and are very hard to find because of their perforated edges and a lot of the markings on the cards. So 80-81 basketball if you can find complete sets of that you’re normally looking at a minimum investment of $2,500 depending on the condition.
This is the most expensive Topps basketball sets from the 80’s. You can learn more about it here.
So there you go, I have shared 10 sets Topps released in the 80s before the start of the junk wax era.
You will find some very valuable cards in these sets, that you can either sell within the set or you can have these key cards graded and they’re probably will provide you with an awesome ROI.
You can find awesome value in these sets, and I hope that this information will help you identify the sets and cards that are worth doing your due diligence on.