Card Yield Comparator

Yield is the annualized growth rate on your net position after subtracting carry costs (storage + insurance) and opportunity cost (what the S&P would have earned on the same dollars). A card projected to grow 7% per year that costs 2%/year to carry yields about 5% net — before accounting for the S&P alternative. Yield is the fairest apples-to-apples comparison across cards with different price points, because it normalizes per dollar invested.

Hold Optimizer answers "when should I sell this one card?" Yield Comparator answers "which of these cards should I BUY in the first place?" Collectors often face budget-constrained choices: three cards catch my eye, I can only buy one. Ranking them by normalized annualized yield turns a gut decision into a numeric one — and the results frequently surprise. A cheap rookie often out-yields a pricey grail on a per-dollar basis.

Same engine as Hold Optimizer: sport baseline (football 8%, basketball 7.5%, baseball 5.5%, hockey 4.5%) plus rookie bonus (+2%), era modifier (vintage pre-1990 +3%, semi-vintage +1.5%), and value-tier adjustment (sub-$25 headroom +1.5%, grails $5K+ drag -0.5%). These are directional long-run estimates, not forecasts.

Gross yield = raw appreciation rate (what the card market returns). Net yield = after storage, insurance, and — if enabled — opportunity cost. A card with 8% gross yield but $55/yr vault cost + 1.2% insurance has substantially lower net yield on a $500 buy-in than on a $5,000 buy-in. Storage is a fixed cost; it hits small-dollar cards proportionally harder. This is why the comparator matters: it surfaces cost drag that is invisible on the sticker price.

Yes — that is the point. The comparator applies sport-specific appreciation rates (football higher, hockey lower) automatically, so a Mahomes rookie vs. a Connor McDavid rookie gets compared on their true expected yields, not on a flat rate. Cross-sport comparison is where the tool earns its keep: most collectors anchor to one sport by habit, and the ranked output shows where cross-sport diversification might improve overall return.

Short horizons (1-3 years) emphasize carry-cost drag — small-dollar cards look worse on a 1-year view because storage fees are a larger % of the investment. Long horizons (5-10 years) let appreciation compound past the cost base — often flipping the ranking. The best card at 1 year is frequently NOT the best card at 10 years. Viewing all horizons at once helps match the card to your actual hold intent.