Move over Tom Brady, there’s a new sheriff in town. Patrick Mahomes has officially displaced Brady’s previous record as the most expensive football card of all time. PWCC (a major card selling service) announced that an autographed 1/1 Patrick Mahomes rookie card, featuring the NFL Shield just sold for a staggering $4.3M.
This figure is not only the largest sum ever paid for a football card, but also ranks 4th on the list of most expensive sports cards of all time. The previous football record was held by Tom Brady, whose 2000 autographed rookie card (numbered out of 100) fetched $3.1M at auction.
The purchaser, LJ’s card shop in Ohio, doesn’t plan on reselling the card for quite some time. While the vast majority of cards struggle to ever crack the $100 threshold across the industry, rare inserts have been fetching massive returns on resale platforms like Ebay or Goldin Auctions of late. Rookie cards featuring an on card auto, 1/1 designation, and the NFL shield are largely viewed as the “Holy Grail” of player cards in the industry.
Such massive returns have led to “investors” camping outside of stores like Target or Wal-Mart in an attempt to clean out shelves on restock days. Several videos went viral during the pandemic displaying the lunacy of adults fighting over boxes of NBA/NFL retail packs. Yet for all the hype around new releases, one inarguable fact has become clear: sports cards and collectibles are in the midst of a renaissance the likes of which the industry hasn’t seen since the late 80’s.
The Mahomes 1/1 Rookie now sits behind only a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card ($5.2M), a LeBron James Rookie Patch Auto ($5.2M), and Luka Doncic 1/1 Rookie Logoman (the equivalent of the NFL Shield for basketball which went for $4.6M). In fact all of the top 5 most expensive sales of sports cards have occurred since August of 2020, which demonstrates just how hot the market is for premium sports memorabilia.
While Tom Brady may have gotten the better of Mahomes in the most recent Super Bowl, it appears (for now) that investors are all in on the young signal caller from Kansas City.