At 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, Cooper Flagg’s most coveted rookie card stood at $3.5 million. Five hours later, it had sold for $8.04 million.
The Dallas Mavericks star’s one-of-one Topps Rookie Debut Patch Autograph drew 83 bids in Fanatics Collect’s September Premier Auction, according to the completed auction listing. The final price includes buyer’s premium. Fanatics told Heavy that bidding continued into early Friday morning, adding $4.54 million to the card’s price between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.
Fanatics says it is the most expensive basketball card featuring a single player ever sold and the third-most expensive NBA card overall. It also surpassed Paul Skenes’ $1.11 million MLB Rookie Debut Patch Autograph to set a new record for the format.
This sets the record for the most expensive Cooper Flagg card of all time, surpassing the previous record of $366,000.
The historic sale makes it the third-most
Cooper Flagg’s NBA Debut Patch Finds Its Price
The Flagg card is a one-of-one from 2025-26 Topps Chrome Updates Basketball. It pairs his on-card autograph with the NBA Debut logo patch worn on his jersey during his first regular-season game, against the San Antonio Spurs on October 22, 2025. Fanatics’ listing shows the card graded PSA 10, with a 10 autograph grade.
Its path to auction was nearly as public as the sale itself. Rhode Island-based RhodyBreakers pulled the card during a livestream break in August for South Carolina collector Jason Williams. The Mavericks had offered a package headlined by 32 years of premium season tickets to acquire it, while multimillion-dollar offers circulated before Williams consigned it to Fanatics Collect.
Those offers established the hype. The auction established what a buyer would actually pay. Even at $3.5 million on Thursday night, Flagg’s card had cleared the previous debut patch record by more than $2 million. Then came the final five hours.
According to Fanatics, the $8.04 million result is also the highest price paid for a Dallas Mavericks card and the highest for any card sold at a Fanatics Collect auction. The two NBA cards above it on the all-time list feature Michael Jordan alongside another superstar: one with LeBron James and the other with Kobe Bryant.
Dylan Harper and Kon Knueppel Debut Patches Also Sell for Millions
Flagg was not the only rookie to reset his card market in the September auction. Dylan Harper’s one-of-one Rookie Debut Patch Autograph sold for $2.88 million, while Kon Knueppel’s brought $2.34 million. Each result is easily the highest-priced card sold for its respective player.
The three cards brought a combined $13.26 million. They are now the three highest-selling Rookie Debut Patch cards, with each individually topping the previous $1.11 million mark set by Skenes.
Topps introduced Rookie Debut Patches in MLB in 2023 and brought them to the NBA in 2025-26. The premise is simple: a player wears a special patch in his first game, and that patch later becomes part of a one-of-one autographed card. Flagg, Harper and Knueppel were among the first NBA players to receive one.
Flagg’s sale will command the headlines. The other two prices make the auction harder to dismiss as a frenzy over one card.
Cooper Flagg Rookie Card Sells for $8.04 Million After Wild Bidding War