The 1990 Hoops Mark Jackson card gained notoriety throughout the hobby because it featured the Menendez Brothers sitting courtside in the background.
The two were attending a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden following the murder of their parents in March 1989 — a year before their arrest in March 1990 — during the period in which the brothers used the insurance money they inherited to finance a lavish lifestyle.
The card's well-told backstory is bound to come up in your social-media feed as a supposedly unbelievable story. Of course, most collectors can believe it, as the tale has been repeated over and over again for years.
It's origins come from a Reddit poster, who noticed it in the summer of 2018. It spread to Twitter by December, when our cllct's Darren Rovell confirmed the timing.
The price of the card, in raw form, shot up that day from 15 cents to $15 on eBay.
Mass selling of a once common card commenced ... for 48 hours, that is. That was when eBay started to pull listings of the Jackson-Menendez Brothers cards, telling sellers their items violate policy because they are “affiliated with a known murderer.”
The ban was eventually lifted, and sales continued to thrive. So, too, did grading.
Today, PSA has graded 7,077 of the card, representing 10 percent of the entire population graded from the set. (For what it's worth PSA grades them as Mark Jackson cards on the slab, not noting the Menendez Brothers' inclusion).
The only cards graded more from that set? The two Michael Jordan cards.
Earlier this week, Netflix released a series depicting the story of the Menendez brothers called “MONSTERS: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.“ It has ranked atop the streaming service’s shows for days and, in typical true crime fashion, has become the latest pop culture phenomenon.
This renewed interest in the 35-year-old case has once again spilled over into the card market.
Of course, unlike when an athlete hits a milestone, retires, or has a docuseries produced about them (no need to name names. Read: Michael Jordan) and sees a surge in their markets, the Menendez brothers were not professional athletes with cards of their owns. They were murderers who, by the sheer luck of the draw, found themselves on a basketball card that has become far more synonymous with them than Jackson.
A look at the market’s behavior over the past year leading up to the show reveals a stark increase in sales volume and price for the card, measured in the sales for those graded PSA 8 or higher — accounting for a population of more than 5,000.
First, a look at volume, measured by MarketMovers, over the past 365 days, showed increases of 52.5%, 41.6%t and 96.9% for PSA 8, 9 and 10 grades, respectively. Perhaps most astonishingly, the PSA 10s, of which just 212 appear in PSA’s census, have sold 63 times over that time period, accounting for nearly 30% of the entire population.
For reference, the PSA 10 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card, which has 325 examples in the grade, saw 17 sales this past 365 days. That’s around 5% of the total population represented in transacted volume.
It’s quite clear the card has been buoyed by morbid interest in the lead-up to the show, whether from speculators stockpiling copies in anticipation of a market reaction to the series or due to a genuine increased awareness and desirability of the card, exemplified in the liquidity of the market.
But what about price?
With these cards moving as frequently and as suddenly as they have, it would be reasonable to expect a deflationary effect on value, considering the increased supply.
Not only are the cards managing to withstand the volume, the prices for these copies have surged even more intensely than the volume numbers.
PSA 8 copies started below $30 and most recently sold for more than $50, an increase of 87.3%.
More of the same for PSA 9 copies, which were trading around $49 a year ago and most recently sold for $92.49, a rise of 88.8%.
As for PSA 10s, there has been the most clear and somewhat jarring price action. A year ago, the price for a top copy was $265. Earlier this week, that same card cost a collector $530 — a 100% increase in value. A new record was set Wednesday night when another card closed at $600 on eBay.
The question of correlation vs. causation is not without merit. After all, 1990s basketball cards have been hot lately right?
But zooming in to just the last two weeks, when the show’s promotion kicked into high gear and eventually launched, we see price increases of 70.5% and 110% for PSA 8 and PSA 9 copies, respectively. Though the PSA 10 doesn’t appear to have shifted in much the same way over that smaller time horizon (price only increased 6%), that’s easily explained by a limited number of sales (six).
Though this doesn’t mean the Menendez brothers series is the next “Last Dance” in the hobby, capable of driving non-existent memorabilia and card prices for the brothers into the stratosphere, it is indicative of the power of culture and its impact on our collecting choices.
Though at times it might feel like the hobby is a walled garden, it’s anything but, with everything from a Netflix series likely to be forgotten in a matter of months, to the relationship status of Taylor Swift, playing significant roles in the ways in which the winds of the card market blows.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.