By the time a head-shaven Victor Wembanyama derobed to hop in an “ice bath” and cut it up with comedian Kevin Hart on stage at Fanatics Fest in June, the basketball card market for the San Antonio Spurs star had already started to rebound after his injury scare a couple of months before.

Wembanyama’s 2023 Panini Prizm Silver rookie card, a more limited and shinier version of his base rookie card, with a Gem-Mint 10 grade from PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) sold for as high as $950 in early February according to Market Movers — an online card sales monitor. Granted, that’s nowhere near the $2,500 price tag examples of this card fetched in March 2024 when Wemby hype was at its peak, but the near $1,000 price displayed growing confidence in the long-term value of his cards.

Predictably, prices for the card tumbled later in February 2025 when a blood clot in his right shoulder sidelined him for the rest of the season. The card sold as low as $620 in late April. Prices volleyed between $650 and $750 until mid-June.

Then came Wemby’s multiple appearances all over New York’s Javits Center on Day 2 of Fanatics Fest. It’s almost as if fans and card collectors needed to witness Wemby in person after his lengthy absence. 

More Fest attendees could find him in a crowd than most athletes given his towering 7-foot-4 frame, whether he was talking with Hart, Tom Brady or LeBron James, shopping for Star Wars cards or playing chess against a line of strangers in a corner of the building. He openly discussed his training methods during his early summer trip to China. He’s practicing as if nothing happened to his shoulder, including a viral monster dunk during a recent intrasquad Spurs scrimmage.

The Athletic’s Zach Harper noted in Monday’s edition of the Bounce: “Wemby is 1) noticeably stronger in general and 2) looking much more physical with the mean streak you wouldn’t expect him to learn from a summer trip with the monks.”

“I’m so much more under control and my conditioning has gotten so much better, but that comes at a price and what I’ve done this summer is world class,” Wembanyama said during Spurs media day last week. “Even in the field of professional sports, I don’t think many people have trained the way we’ve trained this summer.”

The return of Wemby buzz has seemed to light the flame for collectors, with his cards moving toward (if not exceeding) pre-injury prices. His 2023 Prizm Silver PSA 10 rookie cards now sell regularly between $800 and $900.

“I can assure you, nobody has trained like I did this summer,” Wembanyama said. “And this is my best summer so far. I can tell the progress is just incredible. I feel better, I look stronger and the scale says I’m heavier. So everything is a green light.”

That should apply to Wemby’s card market as well.

Even with the period of injury uncertainty, more than $17 million was spent on Wembanyama cards on eBay through the first eight months of this year, according to GemRate, which tracks sales and graded card population data. That’s the sixth most of any athlete over that span, right between Caitlin Clark and LeBron James. 

Another shot of adrenaline into the Wembanyama card market will occur in a couple of weeks when the 2025-26 Topps Basketball flagship set hits shelves. One of the major pieces to Topps producing licensed cards for the first time in more than 15 years will be the inclusion of Wembanyama autographed cards depicting him in a Spurs uniform for the first time. 

Wemby inked an exclusive deal with Topps leading up to his first season in the NBA. This meant Topps could include autographed cards and game-worn relics from Wemby, but they appeared on unlicensed products (meaning no team logos or names on cards). The company even created a high-end Topps Mercury: Victor Wembanyama set, sold in the form of boxes containing eight cards each that regularly sold for at least $10,000 when they first hit the market (a box last sold on eBay in late August for $8,399.99). The Spurs center also autographed cards that were inserted in Topps baseball sets.

Even though Wembanyama will be entering Year 3 in the NBA, there’s little doubt his first licensed autographed cards will not only be highly coveted by collectors, but also command a heavy price tag in the secondary market once pulled from packs. And if he can pick up where he left off and lead the Spurs to success on the court, new highs could be reached. 

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