Sports cards are a variety of

trading card A trading card (or collectible card) is a small card, usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which usually contains an image of a certain person, place or thing (fictional or real) and a short description of the picture, along with other t ...

, small cards usually made of

cardboard Cardboard is a generic term for heavy paper-based products. Their construction can range from a thick paper known as paperboard to corrugated fiberboard, made of multiple plies of material. Natural cardboards can range from grey to light brown ...

, which feature an image of an athlete or athletes along with identifying text. The earliest sports cards were promotional materials usually included with tobacco products and candy and often bearing an advertisement on the reverse. The value of a sports card depends on a combination of the card's condition, the subject's popularity and the scarcity of the card. In some cases, especially with older cards that preceded the advent of card collecting as a widespread hobby, they have become collectors' items of considerable value. The two priciest cards are

baseball card A baseball card is a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic. In the 1950s, they came with a stick of gum and a limited number of cards. These cards feature one or more baseball players, teams, s ...

s, followed by three

basketball card A basketball card is a type of trading card relating to basketball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic. These cards feature one or more players of the National Basketball Association, National Collegiate Athletic Association, Olympi ...

s. The first sports card to sell for one million dollars was a

T206 Honus Wagner The T206 Honus Wagner baseball card depicts the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner, known as "The Flying Dutchman", a dead-ball era baseball player who is widely considered to be one of the best players of all time. The card was designed and issu ...

which went for $1,265,000 at auction in 2000 (). , the industry brings in over one billion dollars annually for manufacturers and retailers. The current record price for an individual sports card is the US$12.6million paid for a 1952

Mickey Mantle Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995), nicknamed "the Mick" and "the Commerce Comet", was an American professional baseball player who played his entire Major League Baseball (MLB) career (1951–1968) with the New York ...

baseball card (

Topps The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures trading cards and other collectibles. Formerly based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of Baseball card, baseball and other sports and Non-sports tradi ...

; #311) on August 28, 2022, breaking all previous records.

List of highest prices paid

This list of items is ordered by

consumer price index A consumer price index (CPI) is a statistical estimate of the level of prices of goods and services bought for consumption purposes by households. It is calculated as the weighted average price of a market basket of Goods, consumer goods and ...

inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of

United States dollar The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

s in .The Wikipedia template uses a yearly average inflation. Using monthly averages gives slightly different numbers, most significantly for paintings sold early or late in a year with significant inflation. This list includes only the highest price paid for a given card and does not include separate entries for individual copies of the same card or multiple sales prices for the same copy of a card. Thus, for example, the T206 Honus Wagner is represented on this list by one particular card's 2021 sale and does not include the same card's 2012 sale for $1.2 million or the Jumbo Wagner and its $3.12 million sale price. Cards are evaluated by third-party services, most often

Professional Sports Authenticator Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) is a US based sports card and trading card grading company. History The PSA was founded in July 1991 by David Hall, owner of the coin grading company Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS), as a th ...

(PSA), Beckett Grading Services (BGS), or Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC), and given a grade on a ten-point scale based on condition. The images below do not necessarily represent the individual specimen sold but are representative of the given cards.

Notes

References

{{Sports cards Auction-related lists Sports cards Trading cards

cards {{Redirect, CARDS, other uses, Cards (disambiguation){{!Cards The CARDS programme, of Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation, is the EU's main instrument of financial assistance to the Western Balkans, covering spec ...

List of highest prices paid

See also

Notes

References