Est. 1989 · Hockey exclusive · Young Guns, SP Authentic, The Cup · about a year
This is the card manufacturers entry for Upper Deck — one of 75 card types rated on appreciation, liquidity, accessibility and risk instead of being given one vague grade.
Appreciation 85 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 50 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 8 manufacturer card types scored here, its appreciation of 85 ranks 6th of 8, liquidity 80 ranks 5th, accessibility 50 ranks 6th, and risk 15 is the 3rd-lowest. The closest thing to it on the numbers is Wizards of the Coast (MTG), which scores 90 and 78 on the same two axes — if you're weighing one against the other, the difference is in the reasoning rather than the scores.
A one-year horizon means you're betting on a single body of work — one season, essentially. That's a much narrower bet than a career, and it should be sized like one.
Risk is scored 15, 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