🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨
A collector just spent $2.3 MILLION on Kobe Bryant’s most valuable card ever.
The sale happened privately – shattering the previous record, a 1997-98 Precious Metal Gems Emerald Kobe, which sold for $2M in 2022.
Now, three years later… a new Kobe card… pic.twitter.com/j9vWMoBGoD
— Fanatics Collect (@FanaticsCollect) August 13, 2025
For decades, many fans have been collecting basketball cards, and while it has long been a potentially lucrative hobby, it has become a lot more lucrative in recent years.
The value of basketball cards spiked during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that was especially true of cards featuring late Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant, who passed away along with eight others in a helicopter crash in January 2020.
Any type of memorabilia with Bryant’s likeness has been fetching huge amounts of money lately. This week, one individual spent $2.3 million on a basketball card of Bryant, making it the highest amount of money a Bryant card has ever sold for.
The previous record was $2 million in 2022.
Among the other pieces of Bryant memorabilia that have gone for incredible sums lately are an autographed pair of the sneakers he wore for his first start with the Lakers. They went for $240,000 just a few weeks ago, while a pair he wore during the game in which he tore his Achilles tendon in 2013 sold for $660,000.
In April, the jersey the “Black Mamba” wore for his NBA regular season debut fetched $7 million. In fact, his old locker at Crypto.com Arena (formerly known as Staples Center) was purchased for almost $3 million nearly a year ago.