As Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks completed their gentleman's sweep of the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday, the hobby, as always, took notice.
While it's an impossible task to conclusively measure the precise state of a player's card market at any given time — despite the arrival of advanced data tools — one of the more popular measures of a market for modern players is how their Silver Prizm rookie card is trending.
In the case of Dončić, a snapshot of his 2018 Silver Prizm sales, via CardLadder, shows a predictable rise in value for a surging superstar.
Six PSA 10 examples were sold between Thursday and Friday morning, four of which fetched $2,000 — the highest price for the card since February 2023.
Dončić’s scheduled foe in the upcoming NBA Finals, Jayson Tatum, has seen little movement in his own Silver Prizm rookie. This is not specific to the card, however, as Tatum's sales volume has been less than 20 percent of Dončić's over the past two weeks.
Though the highly-liquid nature of these cards presents low-hanging fruit for those looking to make quick assessments on the rapidly developing markets of specific players, the Silver Prizm has its own history and trends worth exploring.
In 2012, Panini released its first Prizm Basketball set, a mass-market product aimed at the everyday collector. The set would become a smash hit for Panini soon after it acquired the exclusive NBA licenses in 2009-10.
Rookies included players from both the 2011-12 and 2012-13 draft classes, as the 2011 NBA lockout delayed the prior year’s release. Some of the top rookies from the double class included Anthony Davis, Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson.
The first set, which included a 300-card base checklist, including 100 rookies, introduced the first Silver Prizm parallel (at the time, it was simply known as “Prizm”). These cards fell twice per hobby box, or approximately two in every 120 cards.
Silver Prizms quickly became a hit among collectors, with their rarity attracting high-dollar prices. The most graded Silver Prizm from the inaugural set belongs to Irving, with 239 graded in total (across PSA, Beckett, SGC and CGC, according to third-party grading tracker GemRate).
The gem percentage (portion of cards graded GEM MT) on Irving’s Silver Prizes is 63.6% total and 41.5% for PSA, which has graded 27 PSA 10 examples out of 65 in its census.
As the set cemented itself as the most popular NBA release over the years, the population of Silver Prizms grew substantially.
Here is the population of PSA 10s Silver Prizms for the most graded player by year:
- 2012: Kyrie Irving, 27
- 2013: Giannis Antetokounmpo, 82
- 2014: Joel Embiid, 87
- 2015: Devin Booker, 226
- 2016: Jaylen Brown, 279
- 2017: Jayson Tatum, 869
- 2018: Luka Doncic, 2,297
- 2019: Zion Williamson, 1,763
- 2020: Anthony Edwards, 1,712
- 2021: Jalen Green, 591
- 2022: Paolo Banchero, 613
- 2023: Victor Wembanyama, 1,632
While the print runs for Silver Prizms is not publicly available, it’s clear it has swelled over the years, both in absolute quantity as well as in relation to base cards.
There are 65 total Silver Prizms of Irving present in PSA’s census and 2,190 of his base cards, meaning PSA has graded less than 3% as many Silver Prizms as base cards for that inaugural year.
As the numbers of Prizm cards graded for the subsequent years grew, reaching 42,251 of Williamson’s base cards in 2019, so, too, did the portion of graded Silver Prizms. For the 2019 set, PSA’s total for Williamson’s Silver Prizms equaled 12% of his base cards. The prior year’s census of Dončić cards is 14.2% Silver/Base.
Though it’s impossible to compare apples to apples considering the different markets for each player (and the varied trends over time affecting them), it’s obvious the increased availability of these cards has harmed long-term value.
In 2024, there have been five public sales of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Prizm Silver PSA 10 (population: 82), ranging between $8,100 and $13,300.
Over the same period, Dončić’s Prizm Silver PSA 10 (population: 2,297) sold 196 times between $1,009.00 and $2,050.
Meanwhile, Dončić's backcourt partner in Dallas, Irving, has seen just a single sale take place in 2024, back in April for $1,350. Tatum's 65 sales bottomed out at $660 this calendar year and reached a high last week at just under $1,000.
Even though Tatum has roughly a third of the population of Dončić’s PSA 10 Silvers, the two stars are on different levels of collectibility, so the comparison is a flawed one to suggest any real population-related trends are at play.
Perhaps adding context of two more players — Anthony Edwards, whose popularity surged this season; and Nikola Jokić, who is fresh off another MVP — will provide a more layered understanding.
Edwards’ 2020 Prizm Silver PSA 10 has sold 418 times in 2014 (more than twice Dončić). The high sale approached $2,000 (around the same as Dončić).
His population of PSA 10 Silvers (1,714) sits between those of Tatum and Dončić.
Jokić, whose 2015 Prizm Silver PSA 10 is not the most-graded from his rookie year (he’s behind Booker) might be the best comparison to Dončić as far as star power as anyone on this list.
Jokić’s 2015 Prizm Silver PSA 10 has just 163 examples and has sold just 25 times this year with a peak of $3,650.
The conversation surrounding the Silver Prizm would be completely incomplete without the mention of the COVID boom. While most easily recollected in headlines by the outrageous record sales, the era of “fun money” impacted every price bracket of the hobby.
Collectors, self-styled investors and influencers combined forces to create a mania unlike anything the industry had ever seen before. In March 2021, PSA was so backlogged with submissions, they were forced to suspend Value, Regular and Express service levels to catch up. At the time, PSA was receiving more than 500,000 cards per business week.
According to then-CEO Joe Orlando, who wrote a blog post at the time titled “Taking My Hacks: An Avalanche of Cardboard: An Inside Look at the Surge of PSA Submissions,” that was more than the company used to receive in three months.
That influx came from every direction, whether basketball, baseball, football, and TCG. But it plays a crucial role in the saga of the Silver Prizm.
Collectors around the world started buying and ripping boxes of NBA Prizm like they were hunting for gold.
Of course, the two biggest rookies from recent years, Dončić and Williamson, were the prime targets. Unsurpisingly, the two of them top the list of the PSA 10 Silver Prizms population.
They also stand out due to their outrageous gem rates. Whereas the typical card is pulled from a pack, perhaps placed in a penny sleeve or top holder and kept for a while before being sent for grading (if the collector decides to grade the card at all), these cards travelled through what amounts to a high-speed pipeline from pack to slab, reducing possible condition issues.
The gem rate for Dončić Silver Prizm's is 43 percent, and Williamson's resides at a lower, though still sky-high 34.8 percent.
Another fad of the times was the much-maligned “investor lot,” which consisted of dozens if not hundreds of copies of the same card, displayed at card shows and listed on eBay. The popularity of this phenomenon only fueled populations.
So what does this tell us about the Silver Prizm, both regarding its evolution over time and its qualifications to act as a measure of a player market?
The former is an easy one: production of the once-coveted card has skyrocketed through the years, making the Silver a glorified base card.
As for the latter, the complexity and confusion is, in truth, the answer: Using the Silver as a barometer to compare players across different years is more than just imperfect — as all cards would be for such a task — but uniquely situated as the most poorly positioned measuring stick imaginable.
It's difficult enough to deal with differing population numbers. But add in the decreased desirability of the card due to its explosion in production and grading, we're left with a reference point capable of providing no deeper insight than the comparison of an NBA Hoops card to a Spectra.
The Silver Prizm didn't just change over time.
It's become a different card altogether.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.