Collectors,
Cooper Flagg’s Rookie Debut Patch Auto sold for $8.04M last week—more than any publicly sold Honus Wagner—and Pete Crow-Armstrong’s bought in $1.1M this week at Goldin. Beyond the insane prices, the real story may be the RDPA itself: Topps essentially invented an instantly important collectible. Is it the biggest trading-card innovation since grading?
But our newsletters are for regular people. So naturally, earlier this week Mantel’s J.R. Fickle (who for the 1,000,000th time IS NOT ME!! I promise!!!), went hunting for the 1978 German Cookie Monster rookie.
That pursuit involved three packs of Sesamstrasse stickers, a philosophical assist from Heraclitus, a disappointing 40th-anniversary screening of The Transformers: The Movie, and an important debate over what actually constitutes a Cookie Monster rookie.
So if you can’t afford an RDPA or a game-worn Michael Jordan jersey, I suggest you read Mail Day, penned by Fickle, who again, is not me. I swear it!
Michael Jordan’s Game 3 jersey from the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $12.3M at Joopiter Tuesday night, setting an NBA jersey record and topping the $10.1M paid for another Jordan jersey from the same Finals. The post-auction chatter was mixed, given the item only received one (irrevocable) bid, but the jersey still sold for an eye-watering number. Congrats to Friend of Mantel, Caitlin Donovan, Joopiter’s global head of sales, on the auction.
A signed Kobe Bryant jersey from the 2003-04 season is headed to auction at The Realest, with expectations it could sell for several million dollars. It’s the only No. 8 Bryant jersey to reach the market with an NBA Finals patch and was photo-matched to at least 17 games (heavy use!), including all three of the Lakers’ Western Conference series-clinching wins. Previously auctioned by the Lakers in 2017, bidding closes Nov. 8.
A federal judge dismissed a 13-count class action accusing Fanatics, MLB, the NBA, NFL and their players associations of monopolizing sports cards. The case was dismissed before discovery because the 18 plaintiffs failed to show they personally suffered higher prices, lower quality or reduced supply from Fanatics’ exclusive licenses. It’s another legal win for Fanatics, though Panini’s separate antitrust lawsuit remains active, with several claims having survived dismissal.
The Athletic: How the Braves and Royals Are Capitalizing on the Growing Game-Used Memorabilia Market
The Atlanta Braves are leaning heavily into game-used collectibles with South End Trading Co., a 1,200-square-foot card, memorabilia and museum space inside Truist Park. The investment is paying off: the team’s authentics business is up 55% this year, while sales from its game-used store have jumped 67%. MLB says teams including the Mets, Pirates and Royals are making similar pushes as clubs increasingly treat memorabilia as part of the in-stadium fan experience. A safe bet is that more than 70% of teams will have an in-venue memorabilia strategy by the time baseball returns from the off-season… whenever that may be.
As we teased up above… Pete Crow-Armstrong’s 1/1 2024 Topps Chrome Update MLB Rookie Debut Patch Autograph sold for $1.098M at Goldin, just $12,000 shy of Paul Skenes’ MLB Debut Patch record. The PSA 10 card contains the patch from Crow-Armstrong’s 2023 MLB debut and sold immediately after his breakout 2026 season, when he became the first Cub and seventh MLB player to post a 40-homer, 40-steal season. What’s interesting is it sold for 1/8 of Flagg’s version of the card, even though PCA is the odds-on favorite for the NL MVP this season, and Flagg has a ways to go before he reaches MVP levels. I’d rather have PCA’s RDPA for $1M than Flagg’s for $8M, but earlier I was talking about being entertained by a newsletter about the German Cookie Monster rookie sticker, so what do I know?
