A Will Leaves Your Cards to Your Family. A Trust Tells Them What to Do with Them.
Sports card estate planning: what a will can't do that a trust can.
Grace did not grow up collecting cards. She knows I love them. She knows they have value. She does not know the difference between a PSA 9 and a PSA 10, or why that gap could be worth $8,000 on the exact same card.
That thought hit me while I was going through our trust documents. I was reviewing what would happen to our assets if something happened to me, and I realized: the collection is documented on paper, but my family has no idea how to actually navigate it.
They would not know what was sitting in my PSA vault. They would not know who to call or what fair market value looked like. If my kids were fighting over who gets the 1966 Spider-Man #34, there was no document that settled it.
I fixed all of that. This post explains exactly how.
Last week we covered the tax mechanics: the 28% federal rate on collectibles, the step-up in basis at death that wipes out a lifetime of appreciation, and why the IRS treats your card collection differently than every other investment you own.
If you missed it, subscribe and go back and read it. This post builds directly on that foundation.
Today we are covering the legal infrastructure that makes the step-up in basis actually work. The difference between a will and a trust, what a trust can do for a family that does not know what they are holding, why your PSA vault passwords matter as much as your will, and the one insurance strategy that keeps your family from having to liquidate your collection to pay a tax bill.
Grab a mug and pull up a chair, let’s protect your collection.
The Step-Up Was the Tax Play. This Is the Family Play.
A quick recap for anyone who missed last week.
When your collection passes to your heirs, their cost basis resets to fair market value at the date of your death. Every dollar of appreciation you built over your lifetime is wiped clean.
Your kid inherits a card you bought for $500 that is now worth $12,000. Their basis is $12,000. They sell it for $12,000. They owe nothing.
That is a powerful tool. But it only works if three things are true.
One: the collection has a documented, defensible value at the time of death. That means a formal appraisal from a qualified professional, not a screenshot of eBay sold listings.
Two: someone knows where the collection is, what it contains, and what each piece is worth.
Three: there is a legal framework for what happens to it.
Most collectors have one out of three. Some have two. Very few have all three.
Without all three, the step-up in basis is a theory that never gets executed. Your heirs save exactly zero dollars because the paperwork was not in order.
A Will and a Trust Are Not the Same Thing
A will and a trust both determine who gets your assets. That is where the similarity ends.
A will goes through probate. Probate is a court-supervised process that validates your will, pays your outstanding debts, and distributes your assets to your beneficiaries.
In most states, it takes six months to two years. It is public record. And it costs money, typically 2-5% of the estate’s total value in legal and administrative fees.
A trust does not go through probate. It transfers directly to your beneficiaries according to your instructions.
It stays private. It moves quickly. And it can include specific directions that a will cannot.
For a card collector, that timing difference matters.
Imagine you pass with a $150,000 collection. It is listed in your will. Your family now has to wait for the estate to clear probate before they can touch it.
Your family is legally prohibited from selling or managing that collection while it sits in probate limbo.
Meanwhile, the market moves. A player gets injured. A set cools off. A rookie who drove a piece of your collection’s value goes into a slump that lasts eighteen months.
Even worse, your collection goes up in value, and the government gets to benefit.
The state charges your family a 4% probate cost on the collection that now is valued at $200,000. An $8,000 mistake.
If your family doesn’t have the cash for the probate expenses, now they have to sell your collection at a premium above the basis at a 28% gains rate to turn around and pay the government their $8,000.
$11,100 in forced sales just to pay the government, twice. Don’t get me started on the fees on top of the sales to even net $11,000.
With a trust, the collection transfers immediately to whoever you designated as trustee. They can sell, hold, or distribute according to the exact instructions you wrote before you died.
No court delays. No mandatory waiting period. No window for the market to work against your heirs.
For illiquid, market-sensitive assets like a card collection, a trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the right tool.
Not having one set up is like running a company with no HR department. You can get away with it for a while. Then one day it costs you everything.
Your Family Needs a Map, Not Just a Name
Here is the part estate attorneys do not spend enough time on.
Even if you have a perfectly written trust, your family still has to know what they are holding.
A PSA 9 and a PSA 10 of the same Shohei Ohtani rookie card are not worth the same thing. One might sell for $800. The other might sell for $8,000.
That is not a rounding error. That is a decision that requires specific market knowledge your family almost certainly does not have.
Your trust can include more than just who gets what. It can specify how the collection should be appraised, who should handle the sale, and what the floor is for specific pieces.
You can designate individual cards for specific people. The 1952 Mantle goes to your oldest son, who was in the room when you bought it. The set your daughter helped you organize stays with her. The rest gets sold and proceeds distributed equally.
This is not being controlling from beyond. This is preventing your kids from arguing about it at Thanksgiving for the next four years.
I have seen what happens without it. A family friend passed with a six-figure collection and no instructions.
Three siblings. One loved cards and wanted to hold everything. One needed cash immediately. One did not care about cards but felt entitled to an equal share of the value.
It took two years and a mediator to reach resolution. The collection ended up selling for sixty cents on the dollar because they had no documented valuations and were under pressure to settle quickly.
A trust with specific, clear language would have solved all of it before it started.
If the Passwords Die with You, So Does the Access
This is the part of the conversation nobody is having, and it is more urgent than most collectors realize.
Your collection is not only the physical cards in your cases. For most serious collectors today, a meaningful portion of the value sits on a platform.
PSA Vault. Alt. Fanatics Collect. These are digital accounts with real assets inside them. Real dollar values. Graded inventory. Pending sales. And when you die, those accounts do not automatically transfer to your family. They are locked behind credentials that only you have.
Most platforms require account login credentials plus legal documentation to release assets to an estate. Without passwords, your family is looking at a lengthy legal process, potentially months of back-and-forth with a platform’s legal team, and a real risk that the assets are delayed or lost entirely.
I know a collector who passed in 2024. His family knew he collected cards. They did not know he had a vault account with $22,000 in graded inventory sitting inside it. They found out eight months later. It took four more months to gain legal access to the account.
$22,000 that nearly vanished because nobody knew the login existed.
Every platform. Every username. Every password. It lives with our trust documents and Grace knows exactly where it is.
It is one of those things I hope she never has to use. But the cost of not having it in place is too high.
Your estate plan is incomplete without a document covering every platform your collection lives on. PSA vault. Market Movers. Alt. Whatever tools you use to store, track, or sell. If your family cannot get in, your assets may not survive you.
The Life Insurance Move Most Collectors Have Never Considered
This is the one I find most interesting and the least discussed.
When your family inherits your collection and later decides to sell, they owe taxes on any appreciation that occurred after they inherited it. The step-up in basis resets the clock. It does not stop it.
If your $100,000 collection grows to $135,000 in the three years after your heirs inherit it, they owe 28% federal tax on that $35,000 gain when they sell. That is $9,800 to the IRS before their state shows up.
For larger estates, the math gets significantly heavier.
The federal estate tax exemption sits at $13.61 million. Some states have their own estate taxes that kick in at much lower thresholds. Illinois starts at $4 million. Massachusetts starts at $1 million. Oregon at $1 million.
If your retirement accounts, real estate, business interests, and collection combine to approach those thresholds, your heirs could face an estate tax bill due within nine months of your death.
The collection is an illiquid asset. They may have to sell quickly, at whatever price the market gives them right then, just to generate the cash to pay the government.
This is the exact scenario that wipes out collections families intended to keep. Why do you think the Irsay family sold his collection?
The strategy that solves it is the same one used in business succession planning and agricultural estate planning for decades. Life insurance.
A properly structured life insurance policy, ideally owned by an irrevocable life insurance trust so the proceeds stay outside the taxable estate, pays out a death benefit that covers the anticipated tax liability.
The proceeds go to your beneficiaries tax-free. They use that money to pay the estate taxes and keep the collection intact, rather than being forced to liquidate it.
The premium cost is a fraction of the potential exposure. A 55-year-old in good health can typically secure a $500,000 policy for under $300 a month. If that policy saves your family from a forced sale of a collection you spent twenty years building, the math works.
Using myself as an example, I pay $70 a month for $3 million of coverage. If my family needs to sell my collection, I want them getting the true value of it in their pocket.
You do not have to be near the estate tax threshold for this to matter. Even for families that will not face estate taxes, a policy sized to cover the expected collectibles capital gains liability gives your heirs options.
They can hold and wait for the right market. They can sell strategically over multiple tax years. They are not forced into a quick sale at a bad price.
The difference between collectors who planned and collectors who collected is not the size of the collection. It is whether the collection is a gift or a burden when it passes.
What Having a Plan Actually Looks Like
Here is where I am personally. This is the transparent truth about the planning I’ve done.
I have a trust. It includes specific language about the collection: who the trustee is, which pieces go to which family members, and who to contact for independent appraisal. Grace does not need to become a card expert. The document tells her what to do and who to call.
I have a document with every platform login my estate needs access to. PSA vault, eBay, and every tool I use to manage and track the collection. It is stored with our trust documents.
I have a $3 million life insurance policy. It is sized to cover the anticipated tax exposure on the estate, not just the collection, but the collection is part of the calculation.
I always get what I believe my exposure will be, not what it is today. Growth minded individuals should relate to this.
Here’s the brutal facts. We paid $4,500 for our trust before I got heavily back into the hobby. They wanted us to pay $900 per year to “service” the trust. After getting back into the hobby, I started asking questions around the topics that I’m educating you on today.
My attorney did not know the answers off hand. I left and immediately did my own research. I had the same experience with our CPA at the time; I had to find the tax answers myself.
In a moment of reflection, I realized “Wow, I’m a person in financial planning with more insight. The average collector does not know to think about these things or ask these questions. If I personally cannot get the service myself, what are the odds that they can?”
That kickstarted our firm building these services out in-house. Our sister company, Blueprint Business and Tax Advisors, is designed to help collectors with these conversations.
We have our own CPA that can help file and prepare taxes for collectors, card shop owners, you name it.
We have an attorney who can guide the trust conversations. We have software, that we pay for, that allows us to draft trust documents in all 50 states.
Our financial planning firm, Revolutionary Wealth, can help people setup life insurance for pennies on the dollar.
I’d love to tell you that I’m this genius business owner with a savvy mind and big ideas. The truth is that I literally had to do this for myself, first.
Being vulnerable, I felt ripped off that I paid $4,500 for a trust and $800 a year for taxes with people who didn’t understand one of the things in my life I’m most passionate about.
I’m saving, whoever in the hobby is willing to listen; the pain, due diligence required, and cost associated with having a plan for their family and collection.
Everything is designed cost-effectively. Hilariously enough, at the time of this writing our trust setup is 41% of the price of Shohei Ohtani’s 2018 Batting Chrome #1 in PSA 10 condition!
That card is a pop 5,126. Your planning for your collection and family is a 1/1.
If your collection is worth more than $25,000, a conversation with an attorney, accountant, and a financial advisor who understands collectibles is not optional. It is overdue.
Authenticity Guarantee
I drink single origin coffee almost exclusively. If you have never tried it, here is the thirty-second explanation of why it matters.
Most coffee you buy at a grocery store is a blend. Beans from four or five different countries, mixed together to hit a consistent flavor profile and a low price point.
There’s nothing wrong with it. But when something goes wrong in the supply chain, or one origin has a bad harvest, the roaster quietly substitutes and you never know.
Single origin means one farm, one region, one harvest. The bag tells you exactly where the beans came from, the altitude they were grown at, how they were processed after picking, and often the name of the farmer. You can taste the difference.
An Ethiopian Yirgacheffe processed naturally has a blueberry and jasmine character you will not find anywhere else. A washed Colombian from Huila will be clean and bright with stone fruit. They are not interchangeable.
The documentation is the whole point. Provenance is what separates a $6 bag from a $28 bag.
Your collection works the same way. A PSA 10 with documented provenance and a formal appraisal is not the same asset as an ungraded card in a shoebox.
The card might be identical. The documentation is not. One transfers cleanly through a trust. One creates a two-year headache for your family.
Know what you are holding. Write it down. That applies to coffee and cards.
Don’t be cheap, buy the good stuff and shop local.
Cheers!
Disclosures:
This blog contains general information that may not be suitable for everyone. The information contained herein should not be construed as personalized investment advice. There is no guarantee that the views and opinions expressed in this blog will come to pass. Investing in the stock market involves gains and losses and may not be suitable for all investors. Information presented herein is subject to change without notice and should not be considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Revolutionary Wealth LLC does not offer legal or tax advice. Please consult the appropriate professional regarding your individual circumstance. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Asset protection plans should be developed and implemented well before problems arise. Due to the fraudulent transfer laws, asset transfers that occur close in proximity to the filing of a lawsuit or bankruptcy can be interpreted by the court as a fraudulent transfer. Proper structuring of these assets is imperative please seek proper legal and tax advice prior to engaging in re-titling/structuring of any assets. Please note that laws are subject to change and can have an impact on your asset protection strategy.