Shedeur Sanders has everything an NFL franchise could want in its future quarterback.
He has the arm talent and accuracy, to start. Sanders is extremely popular off the field, too.
Then there’s the famous family. His Hall of Fame father, Deion, has been a major factor in keeping his son, for better or for worse, in the media spotlight even when their Colorado Buffaloes likely didn’t deserve to be.
Those elements all add up to what could be a franchise QB on the field as well as the most popular player from the incoming rookie class among sports card collectors.
Despite all of those parts, the sum in recent weeks, both on the field and in the hobby, seems far less certain than it did months ago.
Once among the potential No. 1 overall picks for the 2025 NFL Draft on Thursday, some experts now believe Sanders is a candidate to endure a Day 1 fall should he slip beyond the New York Giants at No. 3 or the New Orleans Saints at No. 9.
Truthfully, a draft-day tumble shouldn’t impact Sanders much among collectors, but that’s because the canary has long left the coalmine.
Collectors have traditionally placed significantly more value on professional cards than collegiate or amateur releases, but an evolving card market in recent years has shown a shift in sentiment.
College cards don’t match the prices of their professional counterparts, but the best cards for the best players from those sets can still deliver impressive secondary-market prices.
So far, Sanders’ card market has only delivered warning signs.
To date, the most paid for any Sanders card at public auction, according to data tool Card Ladder, is $5,321 for his 2023 Bowman University Chrome Prospect Superfractor Autograph 1/1 PSA 9 on eBay in December 2024.
Not only is that price underwhelming compared to Sanders’ peers in other sports, but the sale feels uninspiring because it was the card’s third auction in four months.
After originally selling for $4,670 at Goldin in September 2024, the card was resold in mid-November for $5,100 before peaking at its high in early December.
Cards often realize their best prices when they are sold to a “forever home” to become what some collectors call a “coffin card” — something they plan to take to their grave — and the earliest indicators show collectors have been more interested in flipping Sanders’ best card than holding it.
The delta between Sanders and record sales for other top college stars, such as Cooper Flagg and Paige Bueckers, is also alarming at this stage in their careers.
To date, the record public sale for any Flagg card is the $85,400 paid for his 2024 Topps Chrome McDonald's All-American Half-Court Offense Signatures Superfractor 1/1 PSA 10 at Goldin in April.
Bueckers achieved her record price recently, too, with her 2023-24 Bowman University Chrome Prospect Autographs Superfractor 1/1 PSA 10 fetching $31,787 at Goldin last week.
Both Flagg and Bueckers have had significant interest in their collegiate cards prior to the release of their flagship professional sets.
Sanders, meanwhile, has just nine four-figure sales in 2025, with a high of $2,561.
There’s a difference in interest at the low-end of the market, too, with Flagg and Bueckers both outpacing Sanders in terms of volume. Market Movers has logged more than 4,700 sales for Bueckers over the last year, more than 4,300 for Flagg and 4,100 for Sanders.
Sanders isn’t considered the prospect for his respective sport that Bueckers and Flagg are for theirs, but it’s important to take into consideration other factors, especially when the overall volume of sales is so low.
Bueckers might be a better WNBA prospect than Sanders is an NFL prospect, but it’s fair to wonder if the popularity of college football should have made up the difference in their sales volume.
Flagg is considered the heavy favorite to be selected No. 1 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft, but his most important collegiate cards, which come from 2024-25 Bowman University Chrome Basketball, only just released during the NCAA Tournament.
So far, Flagg’s key card sales have almost all been from the 2024 Topps Chrome McDonald’s All-American set, which isn’t at the top of the pre-professional card hierarchy.
Comparing Sanders to other top prospects in college football and basketball also doesn’t yield incredible results.
Sanders’ 4,100 sales tracked by Market Movers easily outpaces the 2,500 over the last year from likely top pick Cam Ward, but Ward isn’t considered one of the most popular players in college athletics.
Arch Manning, who is the expected to start at quarterback for Texas this upcoming season, had more than 5,700 sales tracked by Market Movers over the last year, while Sanders’ Colorado teammate Travis Hunter had more than 4,700 tracked.
Sanders has been a much better seller in terms of volume than USC women’s basketball star JuJu Watkins, who has had 1,300 sales logged by Market Movers over the last 365 days — but Watkins’ high sale of $40,260 provides significantly more confidence at the high end of the market than Sanders’ top sale.
The early signs seem troubling when collectors aren’t scooping up key cards for a player who has undeniably been one of college football’s most popular over the last two years.
Collecting has long been much more nuanced than a simple popularity contest, and on-field production must always be paired with the right personality off the field.
Maybe Sanders can deliver that, maybe he can’t.
The overall lack of success at Colorado, now paired with the widespread feeling his number was undeservedly retired by the school, could have rubbed collectors the wrong way, and that is hard to fix.
Regardless of the reasoning, the collecting community, at least so far, hasn’t heavily attached itself to Sanders the way one might expect.
All of the pieces that make a great quarterback can also make a hobby superstar, and it’s simply not hard to look at Sanders and see a player who could be one of the faces of the NFL if he delivers great play for the right franchise — cllct did rank Sanders as the No. 1 most collectible prospect from the 2025 NFL Draft, after all.
But it also isn’t hard to see the hobby, which has long been filled with complicated, fickle collectors, passing on him completely. The ceiling for Sanders’ card market could be as high as anyone’s in this draft, but the floor could be much lower than anyone else, too.
In the ultra-modern era of collecting, the hobby’s top stars often see secondary-market success before ever making a professional play. Even if the most important cards for a player haven’t arrived yet, the signs for success are often there.
The signs for Sanders really haven’t arrived yet, and it’s possible they won’t.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.