Victor Wembanyama entered his rookie season with the San Antonio Spurs as one of the most highly anticipated prospects of all time across any sport.
Not only did Wembanyama meet those expectations on the court, the NBA Rookie of the Year has become one of the most popular players in the sports card hobby, with a graded card population already among the highest ever.
According to data recently released by third-party grading tracker GemRate, Wembanyama has already topped 280,000 graded cards across the four major authenticators — PSA, BGS, SGC and CGC — and is currently moving up the list with extreme velocity.
Despite just recently finishing his rookie season, Wembanyama already has more graded cards than all-time greats such as Bo Jackson, Peyton Manning, Steph Curry, Tiger Woods and Barry Sanders. He also already has passed ultra-modern stars such as Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto and Anthony Edwards.
As of July 21, Wembanyama was 24th all-time in graded cards, and at his current rate, he could finish 2024 about 10 spots higher.
Wembanyama has averaged a little more than 23,000 graded cards per month over the last 12 months, including partial data from July. At that rate, Wembanyama would finish 2024 as No. 16 all-time with around 400,000 graded cards.
That rate has been rapidly increasing, however, and more recent data shows he could finish 2024 even higher. Across April, May and June, Wembanyama averaged 46,401 graded cards per month. If he maintained that rate for the final five months of the year, he’d finish with more than 500,000 total graded cards and could move into the top-10 all-time.
Should Wembanyama top 500,000 total graded cards, he’d also likely be ahead of stars such as Nolan Ryan, Mike Trout, Ja Morant and Luka Dončić.
According to GemRate, Michael Jordan is the most graded athlete of all-time with more than 2.07 million cards. Jordan is also currently the only athlete with more than 1 million graded cards.
Wembanyama’s volume is impressive on its own, but it’s even more staggering when compared to other high-population players over the last year.
According to data exclusively provided to cllct by GemRate, Wembaynama’s recent 12-month total is almost double the population for hobby stars such as Joe Burrow (146,318) and Justin Herbert (165,800) over that same period of time.
A popular purchase for collectors in recent months, C.J. Stroud’s 12-month total of 171,183 is still staggeringly far off.
As expected, Wembanyama’s 2023 Panini Prizm #136 has been by far his most popular submission with more than 27,000 already graded — that card has also maintained a 61 percent gem rate and is currently trending around $115 in a PSA 10.
Among Wembanyama’s toughest grades, his 2022 Bowman University Best #11 has been graded more than 2,500 times with just 285 gems. His 2023 SI for Kids card has been graded more than 2,100 times without a single gem.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.