Most Valuable NFL Cards of All Time
The record football card sales, from the $4.3 million Mahomes one-of-one and the Brady Championship Ticket to vintage Nagurski, Namath and Rice, and how far the Brady Ticket fell and came back.
The highest price reported for a football card is $4.3 million, paid in a private sale in July 2021 for a one-of-one Patrick Mahomes rookie autograph. The highest football price we can confirm at a public auction is about $3.1 million, for a Tom Brady rookie autograph at Lelands a month earlier. Both are modern autographed rookie cards, and that is the shape of the football market at the top: the best vintage auction result we found is about a tenth of the Mahomes price.
The biggest football card sales
The highest sale we could confirm for each card, plus the 2021 BGS 8.5 Brady that set the record before the BGS 9 broke it:
| Card | Grade | Sale price | Seller and date | Auction or private |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 National Treasures Platinum Patrick Mahomes rookie patch autograph, NFL Shield, 1/1 | BGS 8.5 | $4.3M | PWCC, Jul 2021 | Private |
| 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket Tom Brady autograph #144, /100 | BGS 9 | about $3.1M | Lelands, Jun 2021 | Auction |
| 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket Tom Brady autograph #144, /100 | BGS 8.5 | $2.25M | Lelands, Apr 2021 | Auction |
| 2020 National Treasures Platinum Justin Herbert autograph, NFL Shield, 1/1 | BGS 8.5 | $1.8M | Goldin, Sep 2022 | Auction |
| 2020 National Treasures Platinum Joe Burrow rookie patch autograph, NFL Shield, 1/1 | BGS 9.5 | $1.7M | Sep 2022 | Private |
| 2025 Topps Chrome Honors MVP Award Gold Josh Allen autograph, NFL Shield, 1/1 | Ungraded (a redemption) | $1.35M | Fanatics Collect, May 2026 | Auction |
| 2020 Panini Prizm Black Finite Justin Herbert, 1/1 | BGS 9 | $1.1M | Sep 2022 | Private |
Auction prices include the buyer's premium. The Mahomes sale was reported by Sports Collectors Digest; both Brady results by ESPN; the Herbert Shield on Goldin's lot page and the Herbert Finite by ESPN; the Allen by Yahoo Sports. The Burrow figure comes from a secondary list rather than the original report, so treat it as the least certain row.
Three of the seven were private deals, reported after the fact, and four were set in open auctions where anyone could bid. Mahomes holds the record, while the Brady Ticket has sold for seven figures more than twenty times.
The Brady Championship Ticket, then and now
Brady was taken in the sixth round of the 2000 draft, 199th overall. His Championship Ticket autograph from that year is numbered to 100, and when the BGS 9 copy sold in June 2021, only seven copies had been graded 9 and none higher. It set the auction record two months after a BGS 8.5 had set the previous one at $2.25 million.
Prices for the card then fell hard and have partly come back. A copy sold for $1.2 million in June 2023. In April 2025 a BGS 8.5, the same grade that brought $2.25 million in 2021, sold for $288,000 at Fanatics Collect, about 87% below the 2021 price. Then in July 2026 a PSA 8 with a 10 autograph and an MBA Silver certification brought $1,113,250 at Heritage. By Sports Illustrated's count, that made more than twenty sales of the card above $1 million. The same Sports Illustrated article puts the card's record at $3.8 million for a BGS 9 in February 2022; it does not say where that copy sold, which is why the table keeps the Lelands auction.
Brady's rookies without an autograph sell for far less, and the gap between them is wide. A 2000 Bowman Chrome #236 graded PSA 10 brought $15,600 at Fanatics Collect in April 2026. A 2000 SP Authentic #118, numbered to 1,250, brought $109,200 at Goldin in January 2022 in PSA 10, and Fanatics Collect records a $120,000 sale in August 2026.
National Treasures Shields and other one-of-ones
Four of the seven sales in the table are one-of-one cards carrying an NFL Shield patch or logo, the football equivalent of the NBA's Logoman. The Mahomes is a 2017 National Treasures Platinum rookie patch autograph. His standard National Treasures rookie patch autographs are numbered to 99, and a BGS 8.5 copy sold for $66,000 at Fanatics Collect in June 2025, about one sixty-fifth of what the one-of-one brought in 2021.
The Josh Allen Shield is the newest entry. It came from a 2025 Topps Chrome release as an ungraded redemption and sold for $1.35 million in May 2026, the first football card to pass $1 million since the Brady Ticket's June 2023 sale.
For the rookies being collected now, see the best NFL rookie cards and draft pick card investing.
Vintage and 1970s–80s keys
The older keys sell far below the modern records, and the three oldest have never been found in a PSA 10:
- 1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski #34. The set was the first nationally distributed issue featuring NFL players. A PSA 7 brought $402,600 at Heritage in August 2026, more than double the previous auction record for any card from the set. The only PSA 9 sold privately for $350,000 in 2011.
- 1958 Topps Jim Brown #62. No PSA 10 is known, and copies graded 9 have sold for more than $300,000.
- 1965 Topps Joe Namath #122. No PSA 10 exists and only five PSA 9s; the last PSA 9 to sell brought $264,000 at Heritage in February 2018.
- 1976 Topps Walter Payton #148. PSA has graded 56 at 10, out of more than 16,500, and one sold for $60,000 at Fanatics Collect in August 2025.
- 1986 Topps Jerry Rice #161. Of more than 44,000 graded by PSA, 65 are 10s, and one sold for $84,000 at Fanatics Collect in July 2026. Robert Edward Auctions describes the set as prone to centering, print and edge-chipping problems, which is why so few reach a 10.
Pricing an older football card of your own starts with condition, and vintage card values walks through centering, corners and print defects.
Get a second opinion on a rookie card
A card shop can check a rookie's centering and surface, and tell you whether it is worth grading, before you send it in.