$7,378: Genius or Idiot?

25 bidders competed for this rookie and finished $277.56 above the card's own matched-comp median.

A 2003-04 Topps Chrome Lebron James rookie in a BGS 9.5 holder sold at auction for $7,377.56 after 25 bids. We scored it against 19 matched sales of the same card in the same grade.

Why it matters

The verdict here rests on the comparable pool, not on the player’s name. That pool of 19 sales puts the median at $7,100.00. The buyer went to $7,377.56, a premium of $277.56, or 1.04x. A price above the comparable market is not a bargain, and the score is built to say so rather than argue around it.

By the numbers

• **1.04x** — what the buyer paid against the $7,100.00 matched-comp median, a premium of $277.56.
• **19 matched sales** — the pool behind that median, with 1 row excluded so the card is never compared against itself.
• **25 bids** — open price discovery, not a quiet fixed-price fill.

The intrigue

The bidding is the strongest thing in this file. 25 bidders competed and still landed within $277.56 of a 19-sale median, so the number was set by a contested auction rather than by one person’s opinion. That takes price discovery 15 of 15, the only component to earn full marks. The trailing move is mildly positive, 2.3% across 11 recent sales, so this was not a buyer catching a falling knife. Comp deviation 30 of 40 and liquidity 9 of 15 reflect a card that trades often enough to exit.

Reality check

Scarcity 0 of 15. No serial numbering, no autograph, and a 9.5 rather than a 10, so not one scarcity point is earned. Trend 9 of 15 is a shrug, not a tailwind. And the pool is wider than the headline comparison suggests: the interquartile spread runs 1.35, from $5,900.00 at the 25th percentile to $7,965.00 at the 75th, while the full pool stretches from $4,599.99 up to $10,700.00. A reader who anchors on either tail will be wrong in a different direction.

What's next

63 of 100, and the verdict is FAIR BUY. Comp deviation 30 of 40, trend 9 of 15, liquidity 9 of 15, price discovery 15 of 15, scarcity 0 of 15. That is a competent, unremarkable fill: the buyer paid roughly what the card is worth, in public, with 25 bidders watching. The thing to track is whether BGS 9.5 copies keep clearing near $7,100.00 or drift toward the top of that spread.

How we track this

How we track this: RazMania monitors completed eBay sales daily and drops multi-card lots, reprints, altered cards, and accepted best offers, which publish an asking price rather than a settled one. The median quoted here is computed from 19 matched sales of the same card in the same grade, pulled on a separate card-specific query, with 1 row excluded so the sale is not compared against itself. This score is built without population data, without sell-through, and without card-level search volume; those inputs are absent, and no figure here stands in for them. Our daily candidate list is drawn from a sample of completed listings rather than a census, so this article makes no claim about what else changed hands. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.