Sports cards are a variety of trading card, small cards usually made of cardboard, which feature an image of an athlete or athletes along with identifying text. The earliest sports cards were promotional materials usually included with tobacco products and candy and often bearing an advertisement on the reverse. The value of a sports card depends on a combination of the card's condition, the subject's popularity and the scarcity of the card. In some cases, especially with older cards that preceded the advent of card collecting as a widespread hobby, they have become collector's items of considerable value. The two priciest cards are baseball cards, followed by three basketball cards.
The first sports card to sell for one million dollars was a T206 Honus Wagner which went for $1,265,000 at auction in 2000 (). , the industry brings in over one billion dollars annually for manufacturers and retailers.
This list of items is ordered by consumer price index inflation-adjusted value (in bold) in millions of United States dollars in .
This list includes only the highest price paid for a given card and does not include separate entries for individual copies of the same card or multiple sales prices for the same copy of a card. Thus, for example, the T206 Honus Wagner is represented on this list by one particular card's 2021 sale and does not include the same card's 2012 sale for $1.2 million or the Jumbo Wagner and its $3.12 million sale price.
Cards are evaluated by third-party services, most often Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Beckett Grading Services (BGS), or Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC), and given a grade on a ten-point scale based on condition.
The images below do not necessarily represent the individual specimen sold but are representative of the given cards.