On August 24, 2025, a 1 of 1 signed sports card featuring Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant sold for $12.932 million on Heritage Auctions, a site known for auctioning off prized collectibles, according to “’Holy grail’ Jordan-Bryant sports card sells for record $12.9M,” an article written by Dan Hajducky from ESPN. At roughly $13 million, this Jordan-Bryant 1 of 1 sports card takes the title of the single-highest-selling trading card in history.
A contender separate from the sports cards community is the Pikachu Illustrator card, which sold in mint condition in July 2021 for $5.275 million, according to “A Short History of Pikachu Illustrator, the Most Expensive Pokémon Card,” an article written by Peter Day from TCGPlayer.
One may ask, “Why do people buy these ridiculously expensive trading cards?” And this all boils down to scarcity and the rise in popularity of card collecting ever since its advent.
Over the last five years, card collecting has experienced a resurgence as a hobby for both teens and adults. Current popular trading card brands include Pokémon TCG, The One Piece Card Game, and more. The comeback of this trend can mainly be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove many people to collect cards, either as a hobby to pass the time or as an investment. However, card collecting has roots that stretch back to the 19th century, mainly because of the introduction of the “trade card.”
Trade cards, which are cardboard cards that depict an athlete or character, were popularized around the 1860s, largely due to the rise of baseball as a sport in the United States. Early trading cards solely depicted baseball players and were typically sold with tobacco products and candy.
From the 1870s to the early 1900s, card producers began using multi-color printing more often in the production of trading cards. The colorful and beautiful designs of these cards caught the attention of many consumers, leading to the birth of card collecting. Fellow card collectors would trade cards depending on which ones they didn’t have, thus coining the term “trading card.”
The complexity of sports cards would increase in the 1930s, as baseball cards started to print biographies, records, and player stats on the back of cards. In the 1950s, trading cards started appearing inside chewing gum products, and instead of only portraying baseball athletes, they started to depict football players and TV and movie stars.
In the 1980s, sports card collecting saw a surge in popularity, which led to older cards being seen as rarer. These older cards can often sell for hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions. People saw older cards as investments for the future.
In the next decade, trading card games were introduced to the public, adding a whole new level of nuance to the trading card industry. These trading card games follow their own rules and systems, but all revolve around using one’s cards to battle another’s cards. Notable trading card games include Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!
Recently, trading cards have risen in value because of card grading; grading is a process in which a popular grading service, like Beckett or PSA, ranks a card’s condition on a scale of 1 to 10 (“poor” to “gem mint”). Depending on the score it gets, cards can significantly increase in value.
What used to be a hobby has now become a commercial venture for many. Aside from grading cards, many seek out the business of scalping — buying a product to then resell for high profits. Long lines you see at the store for trading cards mainly consist of scalpers looking to make quick cash.
Ultimately, card collecting has grown from a simple hobby of collecting sports cards with one’s favorite athlete’s image plastered onto them to an investment that can return vast wealth. What started off as a line of sports cards has now transformed into a myriad of different trading card brands separate from sports.
