Topps Chrome · 30+ year track record · The OG · about three years
Topps Chrome Refractor is one of 75 card types scored in The Card Investor, filed under parallels.
Appreciation 92 with liquidity 92 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 42 means you'll pay somewhat over the sensible number but not absurdly so. Worth watching, because this score moves faster than any of the other three.
Set against the 12 parallel card types scored here, its appreciation of 92 ranks 1st of 12, liquidity 92 ranks 2nd, accessibility 42 ranks 5th, and risk 12 is the 1st-lowest. The closest thing to it on the numbers is Prizm Silver, which scores 92 and 95 on the same two axes — if you're weighing one against the other, the difference is in the reasoning rather than the scores.
Three years is long enough that current news is noise. You're buying a trajectory, and the main risk stops being performance and starts being changes in the hobby itself — what people collect, and what they've stopped collecting.
At 12, this is one of the calmer entries in here. Read that as relative: the floor under any card is whatever the next person will pay, and that number can move a long way in a month.
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