r/sportscards: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

A large share of posts come from people who found a box of cards and want to know what it is worth or how to start selling. They get real answers, and AutoModerator replies to value questions with a pricing guide. The regulars talk in hobby shorthand without explaining it: PC, raw, pop counts, numbered parallels, shipping codes. A beginner question is fine. A value question with no photo or no effort gets one-line answers.

• Collectors showing what they pulled from a retail box or picked up at a show.
• People who inherited or found a collection and want a value and a way to sell it.
• Part-time sellers listing singles and lots with prices, often weekly.
• Player and team collectors hunting specific parallels and asking for help finding them.
• Long-time hobbyists in the comments who answer grading, storage and pricing questions.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/sportscards.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up96%
• Removed by Reddit's filters4%
• Deleted by the author<1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

June 2026 to July 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   No spam

   Don't post irrelevant or spammy content

2. 2

   Use the correct post flair

   Ensure you're choosing the correct flair for your post. This helps keep the sub organized.

3. 3

   No direct abuse or personal attacks

   Everybody love everybody. Keep on topic instead of resorting to insults. Healthy debates are fine as long as everyone is having fun.

4. 4

   No repetitive self-promotion

   No spamming invites to streams or personal accounts including sales on platforms like eBay/Whatnot/Fanatics and others. If you're linking to a sale item add some information rather than a flyby link. Contribute if you want to extract.

5. 5

   Post sports cards

   It shouldn't need to be said, but this is a sub specifically for sports cards.

6. 6

   No scamming

   It shouldn't have to said, but only genuine transactions are permitted. Buyers do due diligence on sellers before agreeing to a sale or trade.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/sportscards has about 132,000 members and moves quickly, at more than 100 posts a day. It has grown from roughly 34,000 members in 2023. Football, baseball and basketball take up most of it, with some soccer. The post is nearly always a photo: a card just pulled from a blaster, a pickup from a show, a binder page with prices, a shoebox from a parent's attic.

It is three rooms in one. There is the show and tell room, where people post pulls and personal collection pieces. There is the appraisal room, where people ask what a card is worth, whether it should be graded and how to sell a pile of low value cards. And there is the marketplace, where about a fifth of posts carry the For Sale flair with an asking price and shipping terms. A bot replies to sale posts with the seller's feedback history, and buyers are told to pay through a protected method.

Posts are short, a median of about 37 words, and comments are shorter, around 13 words. The tone is friendly until it is not. Arguments flare up over grading decisions, how cards were packed, and whether a player is any good. There is a flair for suspected scams, and the comments are quick to ask for proof when a story sounds off.

What lands

• A clear photo of a strong pull with where it came from, such as a low numbered autograph out of a retail box.
• A value or grading question with the card front and back shown and what you have already looked up. The best answers do the maths on raw price, graded price and grading fee.
• A sale post with prices by page or by card, shipping terms and payment methods stated.
• A practical hobby question, like how to clean scuffed magnetic cases or what to do with hundreds of dollar cards.
• An open debate about how the hobby works, such as whether grading sub grades are worth having on the label.

What gets removed or ignored

• We saw no moderator removals in 400 posts, so this list comes from the rules, not from examples.
• Posts that are not about sports cards.
• Repeated invites to your own streams, store or sales account on any platform.
• Bare links to a listing with no information about the card.
• Anything that is not a genuine transaction. The rules put the checking on the buyer, and suspicious posts get a scam flair.

The unwritten rules

• Before asking for a value, check sold listings. AutoModerator posts the pricing guide on value questions, and regulars expect you to have read it.
• Learn the shorthand. PC is a personal collection, raw means ungraded, a number after a slash is the print run, and sale posts use codes for asking price and shipping method.
• Do not expect a full price for bulk. Anyone asking how to offload low value cards is told to expect a fraction of sticker, sold as a lot.
• How you pack a card matters as much as the card. Tape on a holder or a card sent in a plain envelope will be brought up.
• Most posts get a handful of comments. The median is three. Replies come fast or not at all.

Self-promotion

The rule targets repetition, not selling. It bans spamming invites to streams or personal accounts, including sales on marketplaces and live selling apps, asks that a sale link come with some information, and ends with a plain instruction to contribute if you want to extract. In practice individual sale posts are a normal part of the feed and some sellers post a fresh batch every week without trouble. What draws complaints is a link with nothing around it, the same card posted several times, and giveaway posts that ask people to message. About 6% of comments carry a link, mostly to sold listings or photos.

How people write here

Typical post length

37 words

Typical title length

6 words

Titles phrased as a question

23%

Typical comment length

13 words

Comments that include a link

6%

Posts that carry a flair

100%

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/sportscards.

• topps 42 posts
• bowman 37 posts
• card 117 posts
• cards 103 posts
• rookie 24 posts
• panini 21 posts
• psa 35 posts
• ebay 34 posts
• auto 39 posts
• pulled 42 posts
• box 44 posts
• mega 23 posts
• grading 22 posts
• numbered 18 posts
• prizm 14 posts
• collection 31 posts
• asking shipped 11 posts
• blaster 13 posts
• obo 12 posts
• topps chrome 10 posts
• rookies 10 posts
• autos 10 posts
• shipped 27 posts
• sports cards 12 posts
• baseball 15 posts
• sale 30 posts
• bmwt 9 posts
• football 20 posts
• graded 15 posts
• kobe 10 posts
• hobby 19 posts
• shohei 8 posts
• refractor 8 posts
• ohtani 8 posts
• hobby box 8 posts
• donruss 8 posts
• boxes 20 posts
• basketball 12 posts
• pack 20 posts
• sports 22 posts

Recurring topics: rip.

Growth

1. 2018105
2. 2019773
3. 20203k
4. 20218.5k
5. 202334k
6. 202457k
7. 202594k
8. 2026132k

Related subreddits

• r/footballcards
• r/hockeycards
• r/soccercard
• r/soccercards

Common questions