National Treasures / Immaculate · The king of rookie cards · about two years
RPA (Rookie Patch Auto) is one of 75 card types scored in The Card Investor, filed under autographs.
Appreciation 96 with liquidity 80 is the combination worth looking for: room left to run, and a market deep enough that you could act on a change of mind. It's also the combination that attracts the most competition, which is usually why accessibility is the score that suffers.
Accessibility of 12 is the catch. That score tracks whether you can buy near MSRP or you're already paying a premium to someone else, and at 12 you are paying up. A card with real upside bought at double MSRP is a worse purchase than an ordinary one bought at retail.
Set against the 10 autograph card types scored here, its appreciation of 96 ranks 1st of 10, liquidity 80 ranks 4th, accessibility 12 ranks 6th, and risk 35 is the 7th-lowest. The closest thing to it on the numbers is Playoff Ticket Auto, which scores 82 and 68 on the same two axes — if you're weighing one against the other, the difference is in the reasoning rather than the scores.
Two years gives the situation time to develop past its first impression, which is usually when the price is set by whoever shouted loudest. It also means two years of not touching it, including through the stretch where it looks wrong.
Risk is scored 35, toward the low end of anything in the tool. Low risk in trading cards is still not low risk in any sense your bank would recognise — it means the identifiable ways for this to go wrong are fewer, not that they're absent.
Every entry gets four separate scores instead of one grade, because a single grade hides the thing you needed. Full explanation in the guide: what Kabooms, Downtowns and Color Blasts are worth.
Or browse all card types · how these scores are built