After entering this season supposedly in the best shape of his life, Zion Williamson is hurt — again.
Injury has been the common theme for Williamson, who has missed 52.7% of the New Orleans Pelicans' regular-season games over the six seasons since he was the No. 1 pick of the 2019 NBA Draft.
There’s certainly still hope Williamson will end up having a successful career on the court, but the one-time hobby darling has reached a bottom with collectors that continues to get lower.
According to Card Ladder, which tracks more than 300 cards for the former No. 1 overall pick, Williamson’s market is at an all-time low following news the Pelicans forward is out indefinitely with a left hamstring strain.
Though Williamson will miss multiple weeks with a hamstring injury, the reality is his market has been on a near-constant decline since peaking Oct. 1, 2021, with a score of 1,474. As of Nov. 12, Williamson’s value was down to 190.
Williamson is far from unique in that his card market peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the stunning reality is Williamson’s market has regressed beyond that of his peers.
According to GemRate, Williamson is the 10th-most graded player of all time with more than 500,000 cards, well ahead of all-time greats such as Shaquille O'Neal, Barry Bonds and Mike Trout. Though his rate of growth has slowed, Williamson could realistically pass Tom Brady and Mickey Mantle in the near future.
Once considered one of the most popular athletes in the entire hobby, Williamson’s market has now fallen below the value for other standouts from the 2019 NBA Draft, including Ja Morant (1,144), Darius Garland (816), RJ Barrett (367) and Tyler Herro (209).
Among the biggest drivers of that decline has been Williamson’s key Prizm rookie cards. According to third-party grading tracker GemRate, Williamson’s 2019 Prizm Base is PSA’s 10th most graded card of all time with more than 42,000 total examples and more than 23,000 PSA 10s.
According to Market Movers, that Prizm Base PSA 10 once sold for as much as $1,330, but can now be snagged for less than $40. The fall was just as drastic for the short-printed Prizm Silver PSA 10, which once sold for more than $6,600, but is now closer to a $300 card.
As expected, the collapse has infected Williamson’s high-end market as well, with key cards, including his 2019 National Treasures RPAs, down significantly.
According to Card Ladder, the highest public sale for a Williamson card is the $594,000 paid for a 2019-20 Panini National Treasures RPA /99 BGS 9.5 at Goldin in 2022. So far in 2024, the highest price paid for any Williamson card is $32,000, and the most paid for a 2019-20 National Treasures RPA /99 this year is just $21,887.
That exact National Treasures RPA, numbered 48/99 with a PSA 9/DNA 10 grade, features an easily-traceable decline over the last two years. After peaking with a $99,600 sale at Goldin in 2022, that card sold again for just $26,400 in 2023 before eventually hitting its recent low of $21,887 in October.
It’s not impossible for Williamson to turn his career around and for the card market to mirror that course correction, but at this point it seems more improbable than anything.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.