Modern Wax Fund surges in debut year as sports cards soar

In its first 10 months, The Modern Wax Fund reflected some crazy times in the sports card world.

How crazy? The Fund's valuation report of the underlying asset holdings during its rookie season shows an overall increase of 195.1 percent, fueled by an explosion of interest for the recent-year NBA assets. Basketball boxes alone jumped 301 percent in a year, while NFL also had a 164-percent jump and "other sports" (in lower total volume) jumped 194 percent.

This first-of-its-kind private-equity fund focused on trading cards is a creation of Attic Investments and Blowout Cards. It started with more than $3 million in unopened product -- some of the rarest and most-desired baseball, basketball, football and other cards from the modern era -- last February with a $25,000 minimum buy-in from investors.

Diving deeper into those numbers from the report (click here to view it all), the power of 2018-19 NBA boxes (Luka Doncic) can be seen above, while 1986-87 (a box of Fleer ... since there's nothing else from that year) also shows the power of a classic release loaded with legendary Rookie Cards (Michael Jordan and many others) in a strong market. The Prizm years -- 2012-13-forward -- are generally also prime performers as well. (A record-setting 2019-20 NBA year isn't reflected much in the Fund as it was established before much was released.)

For the NFL, it's the 2017 releases seeing the most gains thanks to those being the home to Patrick Mahomes Rookie Cards. His march to another Super Bowl this season is only reinforcing all that interest.

Baseball, which has the most units in the fund, had a 72.3 percent gain in the last year fueled by demand for 2016 and 2019 boxes, while the "other" sports' big stars include golf and UFC releases. Golf was fueled by interest in Tiger Woods cards -- and the fact that there generally aren't any new releases to compete with past products. Meanwhile, the only under-performing category was the small "entertainment" releases portfolio, which includes Family Guy, Stranger Things and Garbage Pail Kids boxes. They make up just 212 of 9,202 units (2.3 percent) in the Fund.

For more in the report and its analysis of the markets for the assets, click here to view.

--

Follow Buzz on Twitter @BlowoutBuzz or send email to BlowoutBuzz@blowoutcards.com. 

>> Click here to buy cards on BlowoutCards.com