Since the 2023-24 soccer card calendar is close to coming (except for some exceptionally late Panini releases) to an end and the 2024-25 releases are starting, one of the things I like to do when researching and buying cards is to look for inefficiencies between print runs and prices. Last year I did it with 2022-23 Lionel Messi Case Hits and a lot of people seemed to appreciate it. Since many of the case hits stay the same a lot of those same case hit inefficiencies seem to be happening again in 2023-24 soccer card case hits. This year I decided to look at 2023-24 Select hobby unnumbered cards and for the purpose of this article Lamine Yamal rookie cards since he is the talk of the hobby right now. While I will only be writing about FIFA Select and La Liga since that is the sets that Lamine Yamal rookie cards appear in. I chose Select as I feel some of the unnumbered parallels look better than a lot of the numbered parallels. While this article will focus on Lamine Yamal you can extrapolate the research to all players in the sets, especially where the color matches apply.
Unnumbered Select Lamine Yamal Rookie Cards
There are 4 unnumbered parallels in 2023-24 Select La Liga and FIFA. They are Silver, Red, Multi-Color and Blue. The Multicolor in FIFA are Red-White-Blue and in La Liga Yellow-Red. Blue and Multi-Color are the only 2 that are only in hobby so they are easier to calculate the print runs than the Red and Silver. Red are in International boxes and Silver and in International boxes and Blasters. As far as hobby goes in both FIFA and La Liga the per hobby box configuration is the same, 1 Blue and 2 Multi-Color. There are roughly 1000 La Liga cases and 1250 FIFA cases. That means for the print runs for Blues in La Liga is roughly 48 and 96 for Multi-Color. For FIFA the Blue print run is roughly 60 and Multi-Color is 120. With that known lets look at how that compares to numbered parallel sales from those sets.
Comparing 2023-24 Select Numbered to Unnumbered Parallels
Lamine Yamal has 13 different numbered parallel rookie cards in 2023-24 Select La Liga and 14 in 2023-24 Select FIFA. For the sake of the article we will look at the ones that have print runs similar to the Blue and Multi Color unnumbered parallels. Here are the current comps for Select La Liga. Mind you the awful Chinese sellers have greatly diminished the value of eBay comps, and there aren’t a ton of sales on some of these, so this is far from an exact science. There are also different cards (Terrace, Mezzanine and Field Level) which effect things. I will use a range from recent sales in the last 2 months to give you a basic idea. Just use the ranges as guides to compare among each parallel. I put the unnumbered parallels where they would fall if they were numbered.
Select La Liga
Pink Mojo /115 Raw – $90-115 PSA 10 – $150-250 (Search On Ebay)
Winter Camo /99 Raw – $100-150 PSA 10 – $365 (Search On Ebay)
Multi Color (~96) Raw – $25-35 PSA 10 – $125-175 (Search On Ebay)
Wave Red /65 Raw – $140-200 PSA 10 – No Sales (Search On Ebay)
Orange /49 Raw – $175-240 PSA 10 – $420-510 (Search On Ebay)
Blue (~48) Raw – $20-35 PSA 10 – $150-200 (Search On Ebay)
Tie-Dye /30 Raw – $400-450 PSA 10 – $900 (Search On Ebay)
Look at the values of the Blue and Multi Color compared to those around them. I went down to Tie-Dye because I think those cards have a decent color match with the Barcelona kit much like the Multi Color and Blue. Let’s see if these comps hold up in Select FIFA.
Select FIFA (Only Terrace and Field Level in Spain kit)
Pink Mojo /199 Raw – $40-70 PSA 10 – No Sales
Wave Red /149 Raw – $55-80 PSA 10 – No Sales (Search On Ebay)
Multi Color (~120) Raw – $30-40 PSA 10 – $110-150 (Search On Ebay)
Winter Camo /99 Raw – $125-175 PSA 10 – $285 (Search On Ebay)
Pink /75 Raw – $100-150 PSA 10 – $175
Blue (~60) Raw – $20-35 PSA 10 – No Sales (Search On Ebay)
Orange /49 Raw – $250-300 PSA 10 – No Sales (Search On Ebay)
Tie-Dye /30 Raw – $400-450 PSA 10 – $950 (Search On Ebay)
I only included the Terrace and Field Level because his Mezzanine is in the Barcelona kit and I thought it would be interesting to see how his Spain and Barcelona cards compared. Between the 2 sets he has 3 cards in a Barcelona kit and 2 in a Spain kit in case you were wondering. Unfortunately there aren’t as many PSA 10 sales from Select FIFA since it came out much later than Select La Liga. You can tell for the most part the raw FIFA sales fall in line with what is happening in La Liga.
If you have been around the hobby for any amount of time you know that unnumbered cards don’t get near the respect of numbered cards. A majority of the hobby needs everything spelled out for them aka a number on the card to tell them how many. In the case of Topps usually the unnumbered base parallels aren’t true color (Bubbles, Carbon Fiber, Lava etc.) so that in of themselves makes them less desirable. In these case of these Select cards the Multi Color and Blue are true colors and in my opinion are two pretty good color matches for Lamine’s Barcelona and Spain kits. We know that helps a card’s value. This of course won’t be the case for all players. In the case of Lionel Messi the Winter Camo is an amazing color match for his Argentina kit but the Blue is probably second best while the Multi Color isn’t as good as with Lamine Yamal. I wont go do the full breakdown of the Lionel Messi Blue Select cards, but trust me pretty much the same trend is happening with those.
If you have been reading the Soccer Cards HQ content for a while then you know print runs and unnumbered cards are one of the reasons I started the site. I built this site to help educate soccer card collectors of all levels. I have been doing this long enough to not hold my breath on my unnumbered breakdowns having much of an impact on the market. Why do I keep doing it? It’s for the handful of you that are data junkies like me and appreciate it. For the rest it’s definitely more of a long term play that may or may not eventually pan out. I do think for the savvy collector you can look at some of the data and figure out there are some things around these Select cards that can lead to making money, which I know is top of mind for so many in this hobby.
I do find it very strange that some Select unnumbered parallels like the Peacock and White Sparkles are getting credit. In the case of White Sparkles there are likely more of them than the true White and yet the White Sparkles sell for almost double the price. The Peacock print run is around 10 and it’s getting around the same value of Gold Waves and Mojos. If you are looking to me to make sense of this keep looking because I can’t explain it. I guess at a certain point the print run is small enough for people to pay attention or maybe some influencers are doing a good job of hyping them up. In the meantime I will just keep buying Blues and praying to the hobby overlords that one day people care.
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