For many of the most prominent card companies, their brands are associated with their most historic releases — regardless of what types of products they are selling today.
Think of Upper Deck, which will forever be first and foremost tied to its Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, or Topps, which owes so much of its brand equity to the 1952 Mickey Mantle card.
One of the most successful methods used by these companies over the years to capitalize on their most beloved cards has been the buyback.
Essentially, it involves a company “buying back” one of its previously-released cards and re-inserting it into fresh products, often including newly added autographs and hand-numbered serial numbers.
One of the most famous examples came in 1991 Topps baseball, when Topps randomly inserted a copy of every base card released in the company's history into packs to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Some of the more valuable cards were issued as redemptions. It was also a sweepstakes, with the grand prize consisting of every complete Topps baseball set from 1952-1990.
In April 1992, a New York man named Jack Glenn became the lucky winner, receiving an estimated $125,000 worth of cards.
"At first, I thought it couldn't be possible, that it was a joke," said Glenn in a prepared statement cited by the Tampa Bay Times. "But when I found out that it was true, I jumped so high in the air that my wife told me to take it easy. Then I told her, and she was just as excited. We're still in shock. It really hasn't quite sunk in yet."
Other famous buybacks include the 2006 Fleer Buyback Michael Jordan rookie card.
As part of another anniversary celebration, Fleer issued its 2006-07 set as an homage to the design of its debut 1986 set, famous for containing the Jordan Fleer rookie. As part of the set, Upper Deck — which had purchased the Fleer name for $6.1 million in 2005 — purchased 23 copies of the 1986 Fleer rookie and had Jordan (whom Upper Deck had under contract for collectibles and memorabilia) sign all of them, adding hand-numbered serial numbers as an added bonus.
One of the copies, graded a BGS 8.5/Auto 9, sold for more than $1 million in June 2022 at Christie’s, a record for the card.
As recently as this year, Topps inserted a 1958 Topps Mickey Mantle 1/1 Buyback Autograph card in its 2024 Topps Archives Signature Series.
Other, less famous, examples of buyback promotions have remained a staple of the hobby for years, including in 2016, with the release of Panini Honors Originals Buyback.
Panini purchased an original copy of Tom Brady’s 2000 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket Autograph rookie card ... but the company left it unchanged, as the quarterback had already applied his signature more than 15 years prior.
Instead, the single card was simply re-inserted into the 2016 Panini Honors release as it came in its original product.
The sole pack-pulled copy received a PSA/DNA 10 autograph grade and has sold three times publicly: First in November 2022 via Fanatics (then PWCC) for $22,000. Then, a year later at Goldin for a nearly 50% drop of $13,200. Most recently, CardLadder shows a $24,995 sale of the card in February 2023 on eBay.
Now the card has hit the auction block once again at Goldin. While lacking the traditional appeal of a newly applied autograph, the lot description markets the card as the “only pack-pulled 1/1 signed Brady rookie card known to exist.”
Whether or not that distinction is a bit of a reach for rarity, there’s no doubting the value of an autographed Brady rookie card.
Earlier this month, an original copy of the card, graded BGS 8/Auto 10, sold for over $15,000. For the highest-tier versions of the card, such as the Championship Ticket limited to /100, the record price has exceeded $3.1 million — set by a BGS 9/Auto 10 copy at Lelands in June 2021.
Bidding for the 2016 Panini Honors Original Buyback at Goldin is currently at $31,720 (including buyer’s premium) as of Thursday afternoon, with over a week remaining at auction.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.