Topps stunned the hobby Tuesday when it announced the price point for an all-new product dedicated to San Antonio Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama.
Retailing for $8,000 with just eight cards, Topps Mercury: Victor Wembanyama immediately becomes one of the most expensive sets in the sports card hobby.
Mercury, which will focus on one player every year during his or her first professional season, plans to deliver the regular formula of on-card autographs, game-worn memorabilia and super short-printed parallels that ultra high-end products typically have.
But what will these cards actually be worth? And at $1,000 per card — or even more on the secondary market — could this product actually deliver at its price point?
The short answer is maybe ... while the real answer is, of course, complicated.
The hobby won’t truly know how Mercury performs until those cards start selling on the secondary market. There are a number of comparisons that can be made to create a baseline, however, and they start with the product’s biggest issue — it’s currently unlicensed.
With Fanatics not expected to take over exclusive rights to make licensed NBA cards until 2025, Mercury debuts with airbrushed jerseys featuring a complete absence of any team names or logos. Unlicensed products typically carry a significant discount compared to licensed sets, but another recent release shows there’s potential.
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Released last month, the iconic Topps Chrome brand made its much-anticipated return to basketball as an unlicensed set. Featuring Wembanyama’s first professional autographs from a flagship product, the secondary market for sealed boxes of 2023-24 Topps Chrome Basketball exploded in the days after release.
According to data tool Card Ladder, prices for Wembanyama autographs have been extremely strong, too. So far, a 2023-24 Topps Chrome Gold Autograph /50 has sold for as much as $13,700, an Orange /25 fetched $10,588 and an unnumbered refractor sold for $7,000.
At those returns, $8,000 seems more palatable with one Chrome Autograph and one Autograph Relic, in addition to the base cards and inserts, in every box.
But it’s more complicated than that.
Comparing Mercury to Topps Chrome isn’t apples to apples for a number of reasons. The two products are completely different in terms of configurations. The interest around Chrome also was simply massive, with more than a decade passing since its last basketball release.
The fact Mercury is a Wembanyama-focused product also shouldn’t be ignored. There isn’t a long history of single-athlete products, so Mercury might not hold the same value the typical pack-pulled autograph would.
The prices for Wembanyama’s autographs could also be set up for a steep decline due to supply. Based on the current checklist, Mercury includes 6,000 numbered autographs between the Autographs and Autograph Relics. A number of those will be placed onto a secondary market that has already been flooded with ink — a search for “Victor Wembanyama Autograph” in Card Ladder’s sales history tool returned nearly 4,000 results Thursday.
So while a Mercury-to-Topps Chrome comparison isn’t perfect, it does show the appetite for Wembanyama autographs is strong enough to support unlicensed signatures, especially with his exclusive Fanatics deal preventing Panini America from releasing any. If collectors want Wembanyama autographs, unlicensed is what they will get for now.
Acknowledging that a single-athlete, unlicensed product presents its own unique set of variables, there’s also the chance collectors lump Mercury in with other ultra high-end sets, since it does include game-worn memorabilia.
Mercury is currently unlicensed, but it won’t be forever, and there’s always the chance it becomes similar to Panini’s Flawless or National Treasures in the long-term. Collectors have made a lot of compromises over the years, so it wouldn’t be shocking if the challenges the first set faces are accepted by the masses with a shrug more than a scoff.
If that’s the case, what do comparable cards sell for?
From a product perspective, Flawless and National Treasures make sense. From a player perspective, the popularity of Luka Doncic likely matches that of Wembanyama’s most.
Ignoring prices during the hobby’s popularity boom, recent sales of cards like Doncic’s 2018-19 Flawless Rookie Autographs, which don’t include memorabilia, might give collectors pause. A 2018-19 Flawless Luka Dončić Sapphire Rookie Autograph /15 BGS 9/10 Auto sold for just $2,000 last week, and a Ruby /15 PSA 9/10 Auto sold for $5,499 in August.
Other cards such as the 2018 National Treasures International Ink Autograph /99, which also doesn’t include memorabilia, have fared similarly, with a BGS 9.5 selling for $3,500 in July and a PSA 10 fetching $3,650 in June.
Objectively speaking, those cards will likely be held to a higher standard than Topps Mercury, so a number of recent sales well below half of what a box of Mercury costs isn’t encouraging.
The Wembanyama Autograph Relic cards will be the set’s most coveted, though it’s hard to, in good faith, compare them to Flawless and National Treasures RPAs, which are among the most important cards of the ultra-modern era.
Ignoring that fact, Dončić’s RPAs have significantly regressed in value in recent years, with a 2018 National Treasures RPA /99 BGS 8.5 selling for $48,000 at Fanatics Collect in July and a 2018 Flawless Ruby RPA /15 PSA 9/10 Auto selling for $21,500 on eBay in August.
Would collectors be happy to buy in to an $8,000 box if that might be the best-case scenario? It’s hard to tell yet.
Though collectors might initially balk at the notion, the best comparison for Wembanyama’s Mercury cards might be unlicensed Flawless and National Treasures signatures from other superstars.
Panini lacks a license to make trading cards with logos for Major League Baseball, yet key cards for Shohei Ohtani have still performed exceptionally well on the secondary market. A 2018 Shohei Ohtani Flawless RPA /5 graded BGS 9/10 Auto sold for $60,000 in August, and a 2018 National Treasures Material Signatures RPA /10 PSA Authentic fetched $17,690 at Goldin last year.
Can Wembanyama match those prices? His most coveted cards could, but it still seems tough to imagine.
Truthfully, there has never been a set like Topps Mercury before. Unlicensed cards can sell extremely well, but it’s hard to know if that, paired with a one-athlete set, can be successful.
The influx of Wembanyama autographs into the secondary market will also greatly impact prices, and that’s simply hard to predict.
It’s difficult to imagine these Wembanyama cards matching loose price comparisons, but it’s also difficult to bet against Wembanyama, who has consistently captivated casual fans and hard-core collectors alike from the moment he stepped onto the court.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.