There is no such thing as a box of Panini Contenders Championship Ticket. The Championship Ticket is a serial-numbered parallel of the Rookie Ticket autograph found inside regular Panini Contenders football, and it is the card that produced the most expensive football card ever sold. If you have searched for it as a sealed product, this page explains what the card actually is, where it sits in the ticket hierarchy, which years carried it, what the famous examples sold for, and what to buy if you want a shot at one.
No Contenders Championship Ticket products are cached in the catalogue yet — the prices below are the current market ranges, and the eBay link above shows what is listed right now.
Prices update daily from live eBay listings. Prefer to buy in person? Find a local card shop · All NFL sealed
| What it is | A serial-numbered parallel of the Contenders Rookie Ticket autograph |
| Sealed product? | No. It is a chase card pulled from Panini Contenders football boxes |
| Brand | Playoff (1998-2011), then Panini Contenders (2012 onward) |
| First appeared | Playoff Contenders era; the landmark issue is 2000 Playoff Contenders, numbered to 100 |
| Panini-era print runs | Typically /49 or /25, depending on the year and player |
| Last NFL year | 2022; Panini reorganized the ticket tiers for 2023 and dropped the name |
| Where to find one | Panini Contenders hobby boxes, roughly $230-$435 for the 2024 edition |
The only way to pull a Championship Ticket is to open Contenders from a year that carried one. A recent Contenders hobby box is six packs of eight cards, twelve boxes to a case, averaging five autographs, and the 2024 edition listed at $269.95 and released June 11, 2025. Earlier configurations differed - 2021 was eighteen packs of six, 2017 was twenty-four packs of five - but the shape is consistent: several autographs a box, with ticket parallels seeded far more thinly than the base Rookie Ticket.
Contenders FOTL boxes released a week or so ahead of hobby and carried their own exclusive ticket parallels - Red Zone in 2021 and 2022, Red Zone and Goal Line in 2023 and 2024 - alongside four additional autographs. Retail formats exist too: blaster boxes with one autograph or ticket swatch, mega boxes, and fat packs. Retail can produce Rookie Ticket autographs but is a poor route to the numbered parallels.
Realistically, this is how people acquire Championship Tickets. The card is scarce enough that chasing it through sealed boxes is a bad trade for almost everyone, and the secondary market for graded and raw examples is deep and well documented.
| Year | Championship Ticket print run | Tier above it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 Playoff Contenders | /100 | none - it was the top tier | The landmark issue; Brady #144 |
| 2017 Panini Contenders | /49 or /25 | Cracked Ice /25, Super Bowl 1/1, Printing Plates 1/1 | Mahomes, Watson class |
| 2021 Panini Contenders | /49 (a few players lower) | Cracked Ice /21, Super Bowl 1/1, Printing Plates 1/1 | Lawrence, Chase class |
| 2022 Panini Contenders | /49 or /25 | Cracked Ice /22, Super Bowl 1/1, Printing Plates 1/1 | Last NFL year with the name |
| 2023-2024 Panini Contenders | not produced | Super Bowl 1/1, Printing Plates 1/1 | Replaced by Divisional /99, Conference /75, Midfield /50 |
This is the most misunderstood point about the card. In the 2000 Playoff Contenders set the Championship Ticket was numbered to 100 and was the rarest version of the Rookie Ticket - nothing sat above it. In the Panini era it became a mid-to-upper tier parallel numbered to 49 or 25, with Cracked Ice above it and the Super Bowl Ticket 1/1 at the top. So a Championship Ticket is not a one-of-one, and anyone describing it that way is thinking of the Super Bowl Ticket. From 2023 Panini restructured the ladder entirely - Opening Kickoff, Playoff /149, Divisional /99, Ticket Stub /98 or less, Conference /75, Midfield /50, Cracked Ice /23, Week 18 /18, Clear /10, Super Bowl 1/1 - and the Championship Ticket name disappeared from NFL Contenders.
The reason anyone knows the name is Tom Brady. His 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket #144, numbered to 100 and signed on card, is the most valuable modern football card in existence: a BGS 8.5 sold for $2.25 million in April 2021 and a BGS 9 reached $3.1 million two months later. Nothing else in the football hobby has matched it. Beyond Brady, Championship Tickets of quarterbacks who broke out during the 2020-2021 boom traded in the low six figures at the peak, with reported sales around $181,000 for Joe Burrow and $157,000 for Justin Herbert.
It is worth separating the tiers when you shop. Patrick Mahomes' most famous Contenders card is his 2017 Super Bowl Ticket 1/1, which was floated on a fractional platform at a $2.85 million valuation - that is the 1/1, not a Championship Ticket. Below the Championship level sit Playoff Tickets, Ticket Stubs and the unnumbered base Rookie Ticket, which is the version most collectors actually own and which carries most of the volume in the market.
Buying sealed Contenders to chase one loses on the arithmetic. A box averages five autographs out of hundreds of possible subjects, and the Championship parallel of any specific rookie is numbered to 49 or fewer across the entire print run. You would spend many multiples of the card's price working through cases. Where sealed Contenders does make sense is for the base Rookie Ticket autographs, which fall reliably and drive most of the product's value. If your goal is a Championship Ticket of a specific player, buy the card. If your goal is exposure to a rookie class, buy the box - and note that Panini's 2024 edition was the final Contenders football made under an NFL license.
Because the money is concentrated in a handful of cards, Contenders tickets attract forgery and alteration. The common problems are trimmed cards submitted for regrading, forged signatures on unsigned stock, and counterfeit serial numbering added to lower-tier parallels. Buy graded whenever the price justifies it, and verify the certification number against the grader's own database rather than trusting the label in a photo. Check that the print run matches the checklist for that year and player - Championship Tickets are not all numbered the same, and a "/25" on a player whose Championship was /49 is a red flag. On the sealed side, Contenders retail is routinely searched and resealed; blasters and megas are the worst offenders, so inspect the wrap and buy hobby from established shops.
For sealed Contenders, start with the card shop directory, since shops often hold older years at better prices than the open market. Card shows are the right venue for buying a graded ticket card in hand, where you can inspect the signature and the holder yourself. Online, search for the card rather than for a box that does not exist:
No. It is a serial-numbered parallel of the Rookie Ticket autograph found inside Panini Contenders football boxes. If you want a chance at one, you buy Contenders sealed product or you buy the card itself on the secondary market.
No. In the Panini era it is typically numbered to 49 or 25, and the 1/1 in the same set is the Super Bowl Ticket. In 2000 Playoff Contenders the Championship Ticket was numbered to 100 and was the top tier of that set.
In the Panini years that used the name, it ran base Rookie Ticket, then Playoff Ticket, Ticket Stub, Championship Ticket, Cracked Ice Ticket, and Super Bowl Ticket 1/1 with Printing Plates 1/1 alongside it.
The name goes back to the Playoff Contenders era, with 2000 the landmark issue. In Panini NFL Contenders it ran through the 2022 edition; from 2023 Panini replaced it with Divisional, Conference and Midfield tickets.
Tom Brady's 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket numbered to 100. A BGS 9 sold for $3.1 million in June 2021, the highest price ever paid for a football card.
No. The 2024 edition released June 11, 2025 was the last Panini Contenders football, because Panini's NFL and NFLPA licenses both ended March 31, 2026. Topps holds the NFL license from April 2026.
Prices in this guide were last reviewed 2026-08. Live eBay listings above update daily.