The Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James with the No. 55 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft Thursday night, but there's not much faith LeBron James' oldest son is going to become a star.
But what happens if you want to buck that trend? What happens if you think that today will represent the low point for Bronny's memorabilia?
A collector made that exact bet last week with the purchase of a Bronny Bowman U 1/1 Superfractor PSA 10 at Goldin Auctions for $9,150. That's the highest paid for a single Bronny-only card. And the second-highest price overall, only the dual signed Bronny/LeBron card sold for more ($114,000 in March).
So how do you invest?
The answer is complicated because there's not much to buy.
Since Bronny doesn't have an exclusive official autograph deal, the safest bet is to get his autograph on cards.
He is in two cards sets: 2023-24 Bowman University and 2024 Topps McDonald's.
If you want autographed cards that are numbered and graded, expect to pay at least $125 and as much as $1,000, depending on scarcity and variation.
Now you might be asking: If I'm buying an auto, how many has he signed? Well, we don't know the answer to that question. But we do know, thanks to PSA population reports, how many of those cards have been graded.
And the answer is that it's actually not as many as one might think.
To date, PSA has graded 354 signed Bronny cards from the Bowman U set and 186 from the Topps McDonald's set. In the scheme of things, 540 autos are not that many in the 2024 marketplace.
If you make a bet on Bronny, it's a significant one to make given his 4.8 points per game in 25 games at USC. His freshman season got a late start because of a congenital heart defect that he had surgery to correct last summer following cardiac arrest.
But if you think that the Lakers are taking him for any other reason than to keep his father, perhaps Thursday night could be your night.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.