For the first time in more than a decade, the Superfractor 1/1 is no longer baseball’s most important trading card.
And Topps only has itself to blame.
Since its introduction in 2005, the Superfractor — specifically the 1st Bowman Superfractor — has long sat atop baseball’s parallel hierarchy, with collectors coveting the reflective gold finish that can be spotted from across a card show floor.
The hobby is ever-changing, however, so Topps set out to create something different for 2023.
Now, following dozens of auctions and numerous public sales records, some of which have transcended the hobby to capture wider pop culture relevance, it’s clear the market has shifted.
The rookie card crown has been usurped, and the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph is now king.
At least for the moment.
When Topps and parent company Fanatics set out to launch the RDPA, it was clear from the beginning that creating a special patch for a new one-of-a-kind card was the easy part.
Getting uniform maker Nike and MLB to buy into the plan, which would require the patches to be worn on the sleeve of every player making his major-league debut, then removed, authenticated and finally signed directly by the player, was the hard part.
“The rookie card is always evolving, right? We wanted to one-up the RPA,” Topps senior vice president of product Clay Luraschi told cllct in November.
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Fanatics, setting a new standard for collaboration between a card manufacturer and a professional league, has made it work.
Two years after the program’s debut in 2023 Topps Chrome Update, the RDPA has become the clear grail among baseball’s high-end collectors, and the data provides the proof.
No trading card has been talked about more among hobbyists and covered more by mainstream media over the last year than the Paul Skenes debut patch, which sold as part of Fanatics Collect’s March Premier Auction early Friday morning for $1.11 million.
— Topps (@Topps) March 21, 2025
Pulled by an 11-year-old collector on Christmas, the card’s epic journey, which finally ended Friday, included multiple cross-country trips with stops in Los Angeles, New York and even New Orleans for a Super Bowl cameo.
Prior to the auction, the Skenes RDPA offered a potential inflection point for baseball’s rookie card hierarchy. Dozens of debut patches have sold before, but the Skenes RDPA represented the single most important example to reach auction in the program’s two-year existence.
The staggering final hammer price, which is both the most paid for any Skenes card at public auction and the most paid for any debut patch to date, delivered the evidence to validate a shift in sentiment.
The $1.11 million sale, which is the most paid for a modern baseball card since 2022 and the fourth million-dollar sports card sale of 2025, according to Card Ladder, easily eclipses the previous Skenes record of $123,220 paid for his 2023 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Autograph Superfractor 1/1 at Goldin last September.
A significant difference in grade — the Skenes RDPA is graded a PSA 10, Auto 10 while his 1st Bowman Superfractor is graded a PSA 7, Auto 10 — is an obvious factor, though it likely can’t account for the more than 900% premium the RDPA carried over the Super.
An offer of 30 years worth of season tickets by the Pittsburgh Pirates also certainly raised the card’s market value, though it’s hard to know how much an all-access pass to 30 years of pain-watching the Pirates might be.
“I think right now, the market is telling us that it has, but I don’t know if it’s going to remain that way.” supercollector Eric Mandelkern said of the RDPA leaping the Superfractor. “I think that’s the debate that every really high-end collector can have for hours and days and weeks and months.”
Though the Skenes debut patch represents the single most important sale for any RDPA card to date, it’s far from the only key example of the program outperforming key Superfractor sales.
Just as the Skenes debut patch realized a $1 million-plus hammer price, Jackson Holliday’s RDPA sold for $198,000 in the March Premier Auction, setting a public record for any Holliday card while becoming the second-most expensive card from the program.
That debut patch nearly tripled the previous record Holliday sale of $68,527 paid for his 2024 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs Superfractor 1/1 PSA 10/10 at Goldin in September.
The two record RDPA sales at the absolute top of the market aren’t enough to definitively call the program’s success a trend, but an examination of the top 50 sales does.
According to public sales data recorded by Card Ladder, the top 50 debut patch sales have all fetched $3,000 or more.
Of those 50 sales, 46 appear to be public records for the player featured on the card, while just four appear to be cards other than the RDPA. For 17 of those players, the RDPA is the most expensive sale, while a Superfractor from any set is the second-most expensive sale.
If secondary-market prices are the determining factor, the RDPA has easily eclipsed the Superfractor as baseball’s most important rookie card.
The discussion is more nuanced, of course, and according to Mandelkern, who owns more than 20 1st Bowman Superfractors and the RDPAs for Jackson Chourio and Junior Caminero, there will always be a set of collectors who prefer the Super over the RDPA.
“I think that the old school, true Bowman collector still views the 1st Bowman Super as the best card, regardless if the market dictates otherwise,” Mandelkern told cllct. “I think people that are true Bowman collectors will always have that love for the Superfractor, and they just think the market for the debut patch will calm down.”
Mandelkern’s reasoning isn’t unique, either.
Topps’ Luraschi offered a similar sentiment to cllct last November as 2024 Topps Chrome Update was landing in hobby shops and online stores with a historic rookie class.
“Because there’s such a deep connection with the player, I think over time these cards will become the most important,” Luraschi said then of the RDPAs. “I’m not saying that the Superfractor is not going to be important — I think both cards will be highly sought-after — but they’ll feed the needs of different types of collectors. I think as far as connection and storytelling, this card will be the most important.”
The storytelling for the patches, which are seen being worn by the players on TV and in photos as they make their debut, appears to have resonated with collectors so far and resulted in staggering price floors.
When examining the top 50 sales of debut patches logged by Card Ladder, cllct found the second-highest card sale for 25 players appeared to be below $1,000. For 18 players, the second-highest sale appeared to be below $500.
Should that trend hold true beyond the first two RDPA classes, the argument the debut patch has overtaken the Superfractor among the hobby at large will be nearly impenetrable.
Though early evidence points to a shift in sentiment, Topps creating what many believe to be a superior card doesn’t signal the death of the Superfractor by any means. In fact, a number of high-end collectors believe the success of the RDPA will actually raise the floor of the Super.
To many high-end buyers, sales of RDPAs will simply create new benchmarks, with sellers expecting similar prices for 1st Bowman Superfractors.
The two cards are also likely appealing to a wide range of collectors for a number of different reasons, so while the RDPA might have a clear advantage in current market value, many high-end hobbyists view the race as more of a 1a, 1b scenario than first place and second place.
There’s also a sentiment among the hobby’s most high-end collectors that the current success of the RDPA is buoyed by an exceptional class.
The most expensive RDPA to sell from the first class in 2023 is the $17,080 for Kodai Senga’s debut patch at Goldin in March 2024.
The top six public sales of RDPA cards to date are all from the 2024 class, with more yet to hit auction but are expected to in 2025 and beyond.
“I think the rookie class from 2024 is an unprecedented class, and I think it definitely adds to the chase for the collector,” Mandelkern said. “It felt like any patch that came out seemed to be sought after, because there were these enormous patches of players in there like Elly [De La Cruz], Skenes, Chourio, Caminero, Jackson Merrill and [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto that all have significant values. I think it definitely adds fuel to it.”
Next year’s debut patch class is expected to be far weaker than 2024’s, though it does feature top talent such as Dylan Crews, James Wood and Roki Sasaki.
How the market sentiment shifts during a weaker year will be another important data point in what will surely be an ongoing battle between the hobby’s newest Rookie Patch Autograph and its most iconic parallel.
Two seasons in, the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph appears to have the edge.
We’ll see how long it lasts.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.