The hockey card market is heating up and this year’s early candidate breakout star seems to be Devils' star forward Jack Hughes who has seen a 49% rise in values over October.
The hockey card market is heating up with the season now three weeks old. Typically, we see some players begin to make their rise in the hobby, and this year’s early candidate breakout star seems to be Devils star forward Jack Hughes.
Through October, Hughes leads the NHL with 18 points and has rocketed himself up near the top of the board at most sportsbooks for league MVP, with only Connor McDavid having shorter odds.
That buzz has led to a 49% increase in Hughes’ card values since the start of the season. We’ll use data from the latest sales of his flagship Young Guns rookie card to further explain how hot Hughes is right now in the hobby and whether or not he’s worth the current acquisition price.
According to Cardladder, a PSA 10 graded Jack Hughes Young Guns sold for $378 CAD on October 2, 2023. Fast forward to the end of the month, and that same card sold for a record-high $615 on October 29th, just two days after Hughes’ impressive four-point outing against the Buffalo Sabres. The last sale of this card was for $566, which is roughly what the median values have been for the past few days.
That is a massive increase in value in a short amount of time.
The real question many hobbyists have now about Hughes is whether it's time to buy, sell, or hold his cards.
Ultimately, the decision is yours, and this is by no means financial advice. However, this simple statement will always ring true: buy low, sell high, and the demand for Hughes right now is sky-high.
Hughes is clearly an extremely talented player, but he seems to be doing the most damage when there’s more time and space available to him on the ice. If you look closely at his 18 points on the year, you’ll see that only five of the 18 are at 5-on-5, where the game is played the most, with the remaining 13 points coming on the man-advantage, 4-on-4, or at 3-on-3. That's the first indicator that he may be punching above his weight right now and that this level of production will start to slow down as the season prolongs and the sample size gets bigger.
Additionally, Hughes is more of a playmaker than a natural scorer, with nearly 60% of his total career points being assists. The Devils knew this and made a splash this offseason to bring in sharpshooting winger Tyler Toffoli to pair up with the 22-year-old superstar.
The plan is working swimmingly so far. Toffoli is off to an amazing start alongside Hughes with seven goals in eight games, but he's shooting at a 23% clip. That doesn’t seem sustainable. In fact, the shooting percentage as a whole when Hughes has been on the ice this season is a whopping 18%, nearly double the league average. That is bound to come down drastically, which will inherently impact Hughes’ production, which could have a negative impact on the value of his card market.
If you’re a collector getting FOMO with Hughes’ card market and think you’ve missed your chance to buy at a reasonable price, here’s something else to consider: There are a lot of them out there.
The basis of any buy-and-sell economic market is supply vs. demand. Hughes has 4,025 PSA 10 Young Guns with an extremely high gem rate of 74%, with only 1,186 grading as a PSA 9. That might not be so great for the values of these seemingly demanded cards in the future if every three of four submitted items continue to come back as a 10 grade. That higher supply of PSA 10’s could water down the market. Not to mention the 722 BGS 9.5s with an 80% gem rate and the influx of Hughes Young Guns being prepped for submission at the Toronto Sports Card Expo later this month with PSA in attendance.
Overall, Hughes may very well still be a perennial 100-point superstar and be in the MVP conversation year after year. However, there is an expected dip in production coming at some point this season, and maybe that’s the better time to buy into the Hughes market if you missed out as opposed to right now when the prices are at all-time highs.
So although the demand is high for Hughes’ cards right now, the supply is plentiful and seemingly growing, which could level out his market a little bit in the future.