What is the Chase Index?
The Chase Index ranks the players whose cards carry the most value across recent basketball, football, and baseball releases.
We compare cards that collectors actually chase.
The Index uses real prices for scarce cards: numbered parallels, autographs, valuable refractors and major case hits. Plain base cards and inexpensive ordinary inserts count as zero because a break buyer cannot realistically sell them.
Players meet head-to-head.
Players are compared within matching groups from the same product and card type. Overlapping groups connect those comparisons into one ranking. A missing card or sale is treated as missing information, never as a zero-dollar card.
Recent, broad evidence matters more.
Newer products help the Index reflect the current market. No single product can dominate simply because it contains more parallels. The exact weighting and matching rules are proprietary, but the same rules are applied consistently across the board.
New rookies begin with a debut estimate.
A new class cannot wait months for a complete sales history. Draft position and playing position provide a conservative starting point. Fresh sold prices from the debut product then take over, with paid 130 Point checks filling the short delay before broad SCP coverage arrives. The estimate can move quickly as more products and sales arrive, and it is labeled wherever it appears.
Prospects stay separate: Bowman prospect cards and licensed MLB rookie cards represent different stages of a player’s card market. The Index keeps a dedicated prospect board, then Break Lab uses the player population that belongs to the product.
MVP Buyback flags are product notes: The flag identifies a current MVP contender whose eligible Topps Chrome cards may earn store credit. It does not raise the player’s global Index position. Break Lab adds the probability-weighted redemption floor only to the products and cards named by the program.
Chase value has a stated denominator.
On Active, each percentage is that player’s share of modeled card value across the sport’s active top 50. The Rookies and Legacy tabs divide their own displayed fields. This preserves how concentrated each board is: a 19% leader is more dominant within that sport than a 7% leader. It is not a percentage of all card sales or a prediction for one product.
A checklist turns the Index into a break.
Break Lab first selects the live value profile for the rookie class identified by the product checklist. It never guesses from a year printed in the product name. A rookie-year product therefore keeps its rookie-card hierarchy even after the public Index moves to the next release cycle. Those older profiles keep updating from current prices. Break Lab then adjusts for who appears, who signs, which players have rare inserts, and the published format odds. The checklist team is preserved even after a real-world trade.
What “Data strength” means
Data strength describes how many comparable scarce-card groups support a player’s position. It measures breadth of evidence, not certainty that the displayed percentage is exact.