Does the Connor Bedard Young Guns pre-sale value make sense?

The much anticipated Connor Bedard Young Guns releases on March 6th, but are pre-order prices getting carried away?

How much will the Connor Bedard Young Guns sell for on release day?

This is a question I’ve been asking myself, along with many fellow collectors and card shop owners, over the past couple of months in anticipation of his Young Guns rookie card release with Series Two dropping on Wednesday, March 6^th, 2024.

Bedard has been the most hyped NHL prospect since Connor McDavid and has adequately lived up to those expectations as an 18-year-old, with 17 goals and 40 points through the first 48 games of his career.

If you take a look at the most recent pre-order eBay sales for Bedard's Young Guns, you'll see it selling in the $1300-$1500 range. But does that price point make sense?

The easy answer is no. Not in my opinion at least.

Even a raw Connor McDavid Young Guns doesn’t sell for that much on the open market, with the most recent sale being $1205 (Cardladder data).

So what is a reasonable price point for Bedard's flagship rookie card?

With the insanely inflated cost of a 2023-24 Series Two hobby box, I do think his card value will be set higher than any recent Young Guns upon release. 

The pre-order price of a 2023-24 Series Two hobby box is in the $329 range (which is an increase of 106% from Series One... I'll pick that bone on a later day). Meanwhile, if you look back historically on the price of a hobby box for McDavid's rookie year, it was roughly $120 on release day. So since 2015-16, the price of Upper Deck's flagship set has risen by 174%

Is that a good place to start to try and find a realistic value? 

Cardladder shows McDavid’s first recorded Young Guns sale came in at $304 on release day. Raise that number by 174%, and you get $528. Does that sound right? 

Maybe, but the hockey card market itself is up considerably since 2015— nearly triple, according to sales data.

So if you triple McDavid's value, you get $912. Does that make more sense? Not really once you realize that a raw Auston Matthews rookie card sold on eBay for $800 on February 29, 2024. 

Could you justify paying more for a Bedard Young Guns than Matthews? I’d personally rather purchase the rookie card of the soon-to-be three-time Rocket Richard winner.

However, the amount of money it'll take to 'mine' each Bedard may play a role too. 

There are 50 Young Guns in each set, with an average of six inserted in each hobby box. So basic math would suggest there will be just one Bedard Young Guns per nine boxes on average. That would cost nearly $3000 of hobby money per Bedard card that hits the market. 

That's a lot of dough. You'd have to think collectors and re-sellers will hope to recoup a portion of their losses and take advantage of the Bedard hype, inflating the value higher than expected. 

So the answer is probably somewhere between $500-$900. Which is quite a large gap. Hence, why I've been wondering aloud and trying to get a feel from other hobbyists on what they think the value would/should be. 

Your guess is as good as mine at this point. I suppose we’ll just have to let the market dictate that on March 6^th.

Happy Bedard hunting!