A Jordan Insert Sold Twice Friday, $595 Apart

Two copies of the same 1996-97 Fleer Ultra Jordan insert closed Friday at $951.00 and $356.01, and both drew double-digit bidding.

Two copies of the same 1996-97 Fleer Ultra Full Court Trap #1 Michael Jordan sold on eBay on Friday. The PSA 8 closed at $951.00 after 19 bids. An ungraded copy closed at $356.01 after 23.

Why it matters

Most of a $594.99 gap between a slab and a raw copy is the grade itself, and that is not a market inefficiency — it is what buyers pay for certainty. What makes Friday’s pair worth reading is the bidding. It was the only comparison we published where both copies drew double-digit bids, so both figures are contested prices rather than asking prices somebody met.

By the numbers

• 2.67x — what the graded copy took over the raw one, on the same day, in the same insert set.
• $2,650.00 — Friday’s widest gap: a PSA 9 1992-93 Stadium Club Beam Team #1 Jordan at $4,500.00 against an ungraded copy at $1,850.00.
• $535.00 and $799.99 — the median confirmed paid price across the 217 Jordan sales and 66 LeBron sales we tracked Friday.

Zoom in

Six copies of the 2003-04 Topps Draft Pick #221 LeBron James rookie sold Friday, and the ladder does not run in grade order. A PSA 9 took $1,850.00 on 20 bids; a second PSA 9 took $1,677.56 on 24. Below them a PSA 6 closed at $789.99 — under the $800.00 an ungraded copy took the same day. A PSA 4 drew 21 bids and closed at $650.00.

Reality check

The sharpest number of the day never cleared our floors. A junk-wax-era 1988-89 Fleer #17 Jordan drew 47 bids ungraded and closed at $296.00 — within $153.99 of a PSA 8 copy that sold at $449.99 without a single bid. We require a $200.00 minimum gap before we will call something a spread, so it is logged as a near miss instead.

What's next

Same-grade pairs stay scarce: 1 of the 7 comparisons above put two identically graded copies side by side, two PSA 9 FaniMation #506 Jordans at $475.00 and $275.00, neither of them contested. If you hold a raw copy of a card with a live auction market, Friday’s evidence is that a contested raw copy can finish far closer to a slab than the grade ladder suggests. Previous edition: the same-day spreads we tracked on 7 September. More in Sports Collectibles.

How we track this

RazMania compares completed eBay sales of the same card that closed on the same day. Two sales are treated as the same card only when the player, year, set, card number, parallel or photo variation, print-run serial, autograph status and altered status all match — so a Refractor is never compared against a base card. Best Offer sales are excluded entirely, because eBay publishes the seller’s asking price on those and never the settled figure; every price here is a confirmed paid price. Multi-card lots, reprints and customs are filtered out. We quote no comparable-sales median and no 90-day pool — both prices in every comparison closed on the same day. Every pair is also read by hand before publication: one of Friday’s eight qualifying pairs was withheld because the two sides were different 1996 Fleer inserts that happen to share card number #4. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.