PART FIVE: Grade Reveal & Final Thoughts
We’d heard PSA wait times were brutal. Turns out, it’s not an exaggeration.
PSA received our card on November 24th. In the months since, we got a front-row seat to watch our bet on Buzelis go sideways in real time. With $74.43 on the line, there were stretches where the Bulls looked like they might sneak into the playoffs and bail us out.
That didn’t happen.
It’s April now. We missed our All-Star break flip window. Chicago is finishing under .500. And here we are.
Still, believe it or not, there’s a path to profit. If the card comes back a gem, recent PSA 10 sales are still moving around $100. Not the $300 we were dreaming about at the start of this, but we’d clear roughly $25 and walk away with a free Buzelis. Any lesser grade and we’re liquidating to cut our losses.
Let’s rip in.
Performance Update
With three games left in the season, Chicago has nothing left to do but think about next year. After coming out of the gate strong, they fell flat for basically all of 2026.
Playing just shy of 30 minutes a game, Buzelis is averaging 16.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1.5 blocks this season. All meaningful jumps from his rookie numbers.
But look under the hood at his shooting percentages and the story gets more complicated. Not much has changed since year one. That can be a flag. Better stats without better efficiency usually means more minutes, not more development.
There's still a lot to like, though. His March numbers (20.7 points, 7.1 rebounds, 1.8 blocks) are legitimate star-player production. The question is whether he can sustain that next season. If he can, the hobby will come around. If he can't, patience is going to be tested.
The Grade
After months of waiting, our Matas Buzelis Red Ice Prizm came back a…
PSA 9. Whomp whomp.
Current market value: $20.50. Less than the cost of grading.
Potential Earnings
Selling both the graded and raw Buzelis cards today gets us to roughly $26.
Against our $74.43 investment ($37.22 per card), that’s a $48.43 loss.
What Will We Do?
We waited this long. Looks like we’ll need to wait a little longer.
Demand is soft right now, especially with the Bulls out of the playoffs. The smarter play is to hold through the offseason and into next season’s hype cycle. We probably still won’t make our money back and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. But we should be able to squeeze a little more out of these cards once the basketball world starts paying attention again.
Lessons Learned
This flip was, definitively, a flop.
But that’s part of it. Every card investing attempt teaches you something, even when it stings. Here’s what we’re carrying out of this one. Take note.
Focus on graded cards when you’re running a quick flip.
The grade-and-flip strategy works well, but it needs a runway.
If you're targeting a mid-season sell window, sending raw cards to PSA at the start of the season is a losing game right now. Turnaround times are just too long to do it.
The smarter move is buying something already slabbed. In our case, it would've let us pull the trigger months ago when we first saw the warning signs. We still would've taken a loss. Just not this big of one.
Going niche on the card selection cost us liquidity.
We love a good color match and the Red Ice looked great. But there's a reason collectors default to the Silver Prizm. It sells for more and it moves faster. The sales comparison between the Silver and Red Ice tells the whole story.
Liquidity matters, especially when you need an exit.
Don’t buy at the start of a season.
This might be the biggest one. We picked the worst possible entry point. Start-of-season is peak hype.
The smarter window is September, when everyone's eyes are on football and basketball card prices quietly cool off. We may have still lost money on Buzelis, but the entry price alone would've softened the blow.
Final Thoughts
Losing money is part of this game. So is learning from it.
Were we happy with how this played out? No. But we still think the logic was sound when we placed our bet on Matas. This player is solid. Our timing just wasn’t.
We learned a lot from this exercise, and we’re carrying those lessons into the next flip project. Whether that one works out is a different story. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
Over to You
We hope you've had as much fun following along as we had putting this together. Now we want to hear from you: should Flip or Flop continue? Our schedule is tightening, and we want to make sure we're spending that time on the stuff our subscribers actually want to read. Take a second to fill out the poll below and your call shapes what we do next.
Table of Contents
Want to catch up or refresh yourself on the series?
You can find all the major installments below 👇
Part 1: The Plan
Part 2: Dropping Dimes
Part 3: Mail Day
Part 4: Grading
Update
Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete's Chrome rookie card, with prices from Market Movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.
Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.