| A few weeks ago I asked the question of whether or not Zendaya was more famous than Sydney Sweeney and you all hated that question. So much. I’m here to apologize; not because I asked it, but because I think I have a worse question for you. So, buckle up. |
| With us collectors and degenerates constantly chasing autographed rookie cards like a cat chasing its own tail, what if celebrities had rookie cards? What if we released 2025-26 Celebrity Prizm hobby boxes and included rookie patch autos in the box? Who, then, would have the most valuable rookie card? |
| Here’s my top 10 celebrity and/or celebrity-adjacent rookies to chase in this makebelieve set: |
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- Olivia Dean: She might be the least problematic human, ever? She has nearly 5 million Instagram followers and coming off the “Best New Artist” Grammy win, I could almost guarantee that in this made up scenario she would bring Cooper Flagg levels of excitement to the hobby.
- EJAE: More famously known as the singing voice of K-Pop Demon Hunters’s biggest star “Rumi,” she would do the thing that we generally disingenuously say (since we really mean that we just want more buyers for our stuff): “bring more kids into the hobby.”
- Connor Storie: Mr. Storie is one of the stars of HBO’s “Heated Rivalry.” Hot take – his rookie auto would likely reach Connor Bedard or Macklin Celebrini levels of “BANG WE TAKE THOSE!!!” energy.
- Keith Lee: Famous for his stellar food reviews on TikTok, Keith Lee is the kind of energy that we need in the hobby. See? We don’t need to scream at people to be loved, breakers.
- The “6-7” Kid: You get it, right?
- Marcelo Hernandez: He’s funny but also, seriously, how many more commercials can this guy be in? He’s like the Eli Manning of comedy.
- Alysa Liu: Oh, wait.
- Zohran Mamdani: Last time I mentioned him in a newsletter some dude lost his mind and sent NSFW hate mail; the context was “how much would his autograph be worth?” I swear he didn’t make the list just for me to piss that guy off, but Mamdani made it because he’s “sports.” Like, you could imagine an Eagles fan emailing me (bad words) because I said Jaxon Dart is better than Jalen Hurts. Sports!
- Artificial Intelligence aka AI: Honestly, I just put this one in for SEO purposes. Hey, you gotta feed the algorithm.
- LeMeme James: The goat.
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| Who would you collect if this made up Prizm hobby box were to be released? And, hey, Leaf don’t get any ideas! |
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 | | Credit: Panini |
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| You have to feel bad for Panini. They announced the launch of the iconic Donruss Basketball set for the 2025-26 season and, man, the cards look terrible. And, to be honest, it’s not just because they don’t have the licensing from the NBA, but the designs look really mediocre. |
| The Slammy shortprint inserts look like they were made with Microsoft Paint. The Downtowns look like they ran out of ideas on how to celebrate each city. They just look so, so bad. |
| Oh, and there’s no Cooper Flagg autos. This feels like a “hard pass” product. |
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 | | Credit: Panini |
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| Speaking of Panini, I’m torn on this one: 2025 Panini Authentically Mahomes Trading Card Box. |
| On one hand, you’re guaranteed three Patrick Mahomes autos – one of which is a rookie buyback auto numbered to /5 or less. |
| The issue I have – or, well, issues – are that we don’t know how the market will react to the buyback rookies; will the purists pursue? At the cost of, at minimum, $12k per box you’d hope so. |
| The price may not be as wild as it looks. The Dutch Auction starts at $25k (lame) and goes down to $12k (lame?), but hear me out: the WNBA Royalty box was a $30k start (absurd) and dropped down to about $4k (lame). |
| In that box you had a 50/50 shot at hitting one Caitlin Clark auto or an Angel Reese auto. Those Reese autos are settling in around $200 at the low end – that’s around a 5% return, depending on what you paid for the box. |
| If this Mahomes box gets to the floor of $12k then you at least know you’re opening up a box that will contain three Mahomes autos, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll see a $1k floor on the worst of his autos in this set. With three of them, that’s a 25% return. |
| I’m not trying to justify anyone buying this set, but I do think the floor is much better than the WNBA Rookie Royalty set that we all lost our minds over. |
| But, also, there is a zero percent chance I buy this box. |
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| You don’t see this often, but check out ALT with the Michael Jordan 1986 Fleer rookie card auction in a PSA 10. Yup, a TEN. That’s likely a $300k+ card with a low pop (just 339 tens in existence). |
| Meaning, those don’t hit the market all that often. Am I crazy to think that a PSA 10 will be worth north of $1 million in 10-15 years? There will (likely) never be more than 339 of those cards and, again, factor in the number of those that are going to sit in someone’s PC for a generation or more. |
| Three hundred thousand seems like a steal, no? What do you guys think, should we split it three hundred thousand ways? |
| Hit me up on Mantel if you want to throw in a dollar! |
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| Finally, K-Pop Demon Hunters cereal has hit the market and they’re already going for nearly twice the original sale price on the secondary market. The first presale was last week, but there’s a second one dropping on February 18th. |
| By the way, Golden Grahams with an absolute miss here. |
