Celebs & Sponsors on Sports Cards

The “next Messi,” aka 17-year-old wunderkind Lamine Yamal, got the Topps Now treatment this week with a card that features him alongside Travis Scott. Per usual, some lucky collectors have the potential to grab numbered parallels and one will end up with the 1/1 auto. 

I am going on record and saying that I absolutely love when they have non-sports stars on baseball cards. 

Or even cross-over cards, like Wemby juggling at Yankee stadium or Jayden Daniels, Juju Watkins and Angel Reese throwing out the first pitch.  

Here are some of my favorite celeb-featured Topps cards: 

• Aubrey Plaza 2016 Topps Update: This one’s great because even Topps, on the back of the card, expected her to do it with her famous-deadpan character vibe. The PSA 10 pop is only 70 which actually makes those cards pretty valuable. 

• Daddy Yankee 2024 Topps Series 2: There’s an auto version of this card as well, which is cool. Some says Walter Johnson, with his 61 career wins against the New York Yankees was the original “Daddy Yankee” because he was their…you know the joke.

• Stephen A. Smith 2023 Topps Now: This one’s awesome because the pitch was brutal. 

• Stan Lee 2015 Topps: Some are mistakenly calling this Lee’s “rookie card” on eBay, except that his true rookie is the 1990 Mr. Marvel card. Plus, there was an Allen & Ginter 2011 card. Lee was 91 when he threw the first pitch. Only to be outdone by…

• Evelyn Jones 2016 Topps: … who was 108 years young when she threw the first pitch in Seattle. 

• Dude Dad 2024 Allen & Ginter: Imagine watching a break on FanaticsLive and hearing the breaker say “And we’ve got a Dude Dad relic… alright, we take those!” 

• Joey Chestnut 2008 Allen & Ginter: Not only is this Chestnut’s rookie card, this also might be the hot dogs rookie card? Scratch that, the 2006 Takeru Kobayashi Allen & Ginter card was the hot dogs rookie card. Hashtag, Free Kobi. 

Finally, I want you to think of a celebrity that you would absolutely be thrilled about pulling while opening a pack. Think really hard. You got a card? OK, keep thinking… is this your card? 

Again, I’m a big fan of the celebrity cards, whether they are First Pitch or Topps Now or in Allen & Ginter, however - and this is a big however - you should never consider a non-sport card auto or relic a “hit” in a box. Especially a relic. But it feels like you’re mostly setting up disappointment. And this is not Shin Lim slander, this goes for about 98% of the celebrities in the set. 

Speaking of Yamal, he’s been a hot riser in the hobby over the last month, with a 42% increase in sales month-over-month according to Alt. 

Even Giannis Antetokounmpo is in the Yamal craze. Watch for Yamal sales on eBay. If the user name is “IWantOutOfMilwaukee” then you might be selling to a future Hall of Famer. 

The Caitlin Clark Gold Vinyl Prizm 1/1 has hit Alt auctions and this card is probably going to break all sorts of records. The timing is perfect, with the WNBA season just underway and Clark coming off a triple-double in the opening game against Chicago. 

She very well might be the league’s MVP in just her second season. And while this 6-figure-plus card likely won’t beat the $366,000 price tag for the Gold Vinyl 1/1 Prizm Auto that sold at the end of March, it’s probably going to become the second most expensive women’s sports card ever. 

Very cool. 

Sponsor patches have officially reached the inside of baseball cards. This one’s for the “boy, cards have really gone too commercial for my taste” crowd. And the “they’ll put anything in cards” crowd as well.

How’s this for a hot hand: We The Hobby pulled seven 1/1’s in a single case of 2024 Clearly Donruss FOTL. Ever since the Backyard Breaks scandal people were starting to wonder where their juiced boxes were ending up, well, I guess we now know! 

(Note: as you know I’m not a juiced-box-conspiracy-theorist. This is very fun to see, IMO).

People are paying over $100 for the 70th Anniversary commemorative Key to Disneyland which was recently launched. It’s a super fun search-for-rewards offering that Disney debuted and I suppose that if you aren’t intending on making your way there this summer then it makes sense to grab one on eBay, but paying $100+ seems a little excessive at this point. Right? 

And finally, Bill Walton’s personal collection of sports and music memorabilia is up for auction, including some incredible grails for any Grateful Dead fans. A portion of the proceeds from the auction will benefit a charity. 

So, if you’re a music and/or sports collector, then take out the old credit card and throw it down, big man.