Is Now the Time to Invest in Cal Raleigh Rookie Cards?
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Cal Raleigh just finished arguably one of the best statistical seasons by a catcher in baseball history. He slashed .247/.359/.589 with 60 home runs (the most by a catcher in a single season) and 125 runs batted in (RBI). He also made his first All-Star team, earned his first Silver Slugger Award, and was voted a close second for the American League MVP.
And as a player's performance goes, so does the value of their cards (most of the time). When you explore sales data from Card Ladder, you can see that that sentiment rang true for Raleigh in 2025.
But as we take a closer look heading into the 2026 season, is now the right time to buy some Cal Raleigh cards?
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2019 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autograph - Graded PSA 10
When evaluating Raleigh's card market, using his 2019 Bowman Chrome prospect autograph (graded a PSA 10) seemed fitting. The Bowman Chrome 1st autograph tends to be the industry standard when measuring a player's value, as it's generally more collectible than a player's rookie card.
According to Card Ladder, Raleigh's 2019 Bowman Chrome 1st autograph saw an incredible 272.73 percent in growth in the last year. On March 26, 2025, this card sold for $220, and even dropped to $208 on April 13, 2025. But after that sale, the market started to believe that his early season success was sustainable and you can see that after that first sale of $220, the card has averaged $775 per sale over the last 365 days.
While an overview of one year shows an incredible growth for Raleigh's market, the last three months paint a different picture, and shows why now might be the time to grab some Raleigh cards before the 2026 season starts.
Card Ladder's data shows a 25.45 percent drop since the beginning of October. Over that time frame the first sale of the card was $1,100 while hitting a three-month high of $1,199. But the next two sales showed a decline, which is typical during the offseason. While it's hard to believe that this card would ever get to it's 1-year low of about $200, with it being the offseason, Raleigh isn't on the field to exceed expectations and make the card start to rise in price again.
Baseball Is On The Rise
It's early in the year, and we're about 30 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting to their respective Spring Training complexes. But already you can see on Card Ladder, that in the last two weeks the Baseball Index has risen about a percentage point. Which in the grand scheme of things is miniscule. However, this hobby is about hype, and now is when people start to think about baseball and collectors begin to speculate who might have a good 2026 season, and start buying.
Point being, if you were wanting to buy Cal Raleigh, it might be a good time to start looking at your options, before the Big Dumper slugs his first home run of Spring Training.
After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 2008, Cole worked as an advertising copywriter until shifting to print journalism a few years later. Managing three weekly newspapers in the Dakotas, Cole won numerous awards from the North Dakota Newspaper Association including Best of the Dakotas and, their top award, General Excellence. He returned to collecting in 2021 and has since combined his passion for writing with his love of cards. Cole also writes for the Sports Cards Nonsense newsletter and has made guest appearances on multiple sports card collecting podcasts including Sports Cards Nonsense, and the Eephus Baseball Cards Podcast. IG: coleryan411 X: @colebenz