If you’re an NBA card collector, here is your dream team.
Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), one of the leading readers of sports cards and other collectibles, tallied the 10 most-collected cards of current pro basketball players, creating a list of nine NBA stars and one WNBA star. Collectors have sent nearly 269,000 cards total of these 10 players in to PSA for evaluations since the start of the 2024-25 NBA season.
Owned by Mets owner and billionaire Steve Cohen, along with venture capitalist Nat Turner and hedge fund billionaire Dan Sundheim, PSA charges anywhere from $16.99 to $9,999 for its experts to grade a card. The pricing is based on the declared value of the card according to the collector for insurance purposes as it makes the trip to and from PSA’s offices, along with the grading services the card receives. That means these players’ popularity is driving real money within the collectibles industry.
Card values and collector popularity don’t necessarily equate with the best players in the leagues this season; players who didn’t participate in this past weekend’s NBA All-Star festivities in San Francisco are on this list. Most of a card’s value is driven by the card’s overall scarcity, the player’s success and the expectation of whether collectors will still covet the athlete’s memorabilia long after their career. Additionally, collectibles sports cards tend to be valued based on the card’s quality, so a PSA grade of 10—meaning the card is essentially in perfect condition—will be worth the most.
Here are the 10 athletes with the most cards sent in for grading requests.
Victor Wembanyama (113,800 card-grading requests): The Frenchman was taken first overall by the San Antonio Spurs in the 2023 NBA draft and won Rookie of the Year last season. His one-of-a-kind Panini Prizm card sold for $516,000 at auction last year.
Caitlin Clark (47,100 requests): After breaking the men’s and women’s collegiate scoring record, Clark was drafted with the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft last year by the Indiana Fever. She had more PSA card-grading requests than all NBA players except for Wembanyama.
LeBron James (24,900 requests): The all-time great has had a card sell for as much as $5.2 million at auction, a price that, remarkably, doesn’t place among the top 10 most expensive sports collectibles. The four-time MVP has earned more than $1.5 billion playing in the NBA.
Anthony Edwards (20,200 requests): Edwards, a three-time all-star and Olympic gold medalist, is the youngest NBA star to reach 1,000 3-pointers, reaching the mark at 23 years old with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Brandon Miller (16,900 requests): Miller was ruled out for the season in January with a wrist injury, but that hasn’t dampened collector enthusiasm for the former Alabama star and current small forward with the Charlotte Hornets. He averaged 21 points in his 27 games this season.
Stephen Curry (13,800 requests): Curry has the most NBA 3-pointers of all time and has twice been named the league MVP. He turned from a relatively low-rated high school prospect into one of the sport’s most popular players—a tour of China for Under Armour last year had to be called off over government concerns over crowd sizes.
Luka Dončić (11,100 requests): Does the most shocking trade in modern NBA history make his cards more collectible? Probably. Former boss Mark Cuban is reported to have tried to stop the Mavericks trading Dončić, but was told the deal was already firm when he learned of it.
Scoot Henderson (7,700 requests): Henderson missed the All-Star festivities with an injury, but the 21-year old is a full-fledged star, being one of only a handful of players to debut in the NBA in their own custom signature shoe when he started for the Portland Trail Blazers in 2023.
Paolo Banchero (6,500 requests): The Orlando Magic power forward dropped 50 points, a career-high, in October, the fourth Magic player to ever hit that mark. He won Rookie of the Year in 2023.
Amen Thompson (6,500 requests): The 22-year old Houston Rockets forward wasn’t selected as an NBA All-Star this season, a fact many consider the biggest oversight of the mid-season festivities. Advanced statistics suggest Thompson should grow to be a perennial star.
