Hobby boxes were covered by then-Denver Nuggets superstar Carmelo Anthony over a bright yellow background.
At the time, collectors were hunting for rookie cards of No. 1 overall pick Blake Griffin and James Harden, the electric guard who had just joined the Oklahoma City Thunder alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
There was even the baby-faced portrait of Stephen Curry, a card which has gone on to become one of the most important of the modern era.
An all-new set of images — ones Fanatics Collectibles hopes will resonate just as strongly — will land later this month with the release of 2025-26 Topps Basketball on Oct. 23.
Basketball rights officially turned over to Fanatics on Oct. 1, more than four years after the retail juggernaut stunned the hobby with deals for the NBA and NFL in quick succession.
Fanatics later acquired Topps’ trading card business in 2022 to operate its new licenses, and the company has since built a new team and negotiated direct partnerships with more than 300 current and former players.
Partnerships include the first licensed Topps autographs from LeBron James, who joined Fanatics after roughly two decades as an Upper Deck exclusive, Victor Wembanyama, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Allen Iverson and the league’s most recent No. 1 overall pick, Cooper Flagg.
Fanatics’ deal with the NBA and NBPA adds licensed basketball cards to a rapidly growing portfolio that has either secured new deals or expanded old partnerships with UFC, WWE, the Premier League and Disney within the last two years.
Fanatics will add the NFL and NFLPA early next year, too, pairing two new exclusive deals with its long-held MLB license for a trio of partnerships with North America’s three largest professional sports leagues.
“We believe very, very strongly that getting athletes involved, getting athletes behind this product, is critical,” David Leiner, Fanatics Collectibles’ president of trading cards, told cllct. “We’re all about storytelling and bringing athletes closer to the fans and telling stories through the trading cards we create. This is our medium. This is how we do it.”
Fanatics’ most significant storytelling mechanism to date will make its own NBA debut attached to the front of a jersey when the regular season officially tips off next week.
Launched in 2023 as part of Topps Chrome Update Baseball, the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph program will expand this season to include NBA players.
Created for and worn only during a player’s professional debut, the patches will be removed, authenticated and eventually inserted into 1/1 trading cards with an on-card signature from the featured player. Several cycles into the program, debut patches have become the most coveted rookie cards for MLB’s top stars while delivering record results on the secondary market, including the $1.11 million paid for Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes’ RDPA.
Purchased by Dick’s Sporting Goods, Skenes’ RDPA has since been put on display at one of the retailer’s Pittsburgh-area locations for fans to visit.
Two of the most anticipated upcoming debut patches from the program, which now also includes MLS and UFC debuts and even select WWE events, will likely be seen for the first time Oct. 22 when Flagg and the Dallas Mavericks host No. 2 overall pick Dylan Harper and the San Antonio Spurs. Flagg has been one of the most collectible basketball players in recent months, and his RDPA is expected to easily break his current public record of $97,600 if it ever goes to public auction.
That game will also feature one of the first Gold NBA Logoman Patches when 2024-25 NBA Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle takes the floor for the first time in 2025. Topps launched its Gold Logoman program with Major League Baseball in 2025 to celebrate the most recent American League and National League MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year winners.
Each of those players wore special gold MLB silhouettes throughout the season, which were later removed by Topps and placed into a series of trading cards. The NBA’s version of the program will celebrate the league’s MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexnader), Defensive Player of the Year (Evan Mobley) and top rookie (Castle).
Expanding the RDPA and Gold Logoman programs required buy-in from NBA commissioner Adam Silver as well as officials from the league and NBPA due to the significant logistical requirements, but Leiner believes Topps’ success with other leagues presented a clear win-win for the NBA.
“There was a reason [the NBA] chose us to move forward on a long-term basis with these rights,” Leiner said. “We’re going to bring new, fresh, innovative ideas into the category. We’re going to delight fans and collectors”
It’s currently unclear which sets the patches might appear in, though an educated guess may expect them to mirror their placement for MLB products with Topps Chrome and Topps Chrome Update.
The overall roadmap for Topps’ basketball license is also largely unclear, though it might not be overly complicated. Topps plans to deploy popular brands such as Topps Chrome, Topps Finest and the ultra high-end Dynasty, which in the past has featured just a single card per box but used on-card autographs and game-worn memorabilia.
Leiner says the use of game-worn memorabilia is a priority, and collectors should anticipate high-end sets landing toward the end of each cycle so the manufacturer has time to acquire assets.
“Our portfolio will reflect some of that, and there will be unique brands that we’ll be launching within the NBA portfolio, unique inserts that we’ll be launching,” Leiner said. “We’re going to bring back the Gold Logoman, bring back the Rookie Debut Patch, some of the favorite content and inserts, but definitely some brands that will be new, that will be exciting and bespoke to the NBA and some different takes on existing brands too.”
Topps’ utilization of current brands and the creation of new ones will be something collectors monitor closely. Though collectors had complaints over the years for Panini America, which held the exclusive trading card license for the NBA from 2009 until this fall, the manufacturer undeniably helped revitalize the sport’s market among hobbyists and delivered memorable chases, especially the iconic Kaboom, Downtown and Color Blast inserts.
Panini’s use of inserts and other short-printed case hits have been highly praised, and basketball collectors are likely hoping some of what Panini did well spills into Topps’ future sets.
“We’re always conscious of what our competitors are doing and what’s going on in the hobby,” Leiner said. “We look at, of course, everything that Panini does, we look at what Upper Deck is doing — Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. There’s a lot of competitors doing interesting things.
“We pride ourselves on trying to be stewards of the category, leaders of innovation. … We analyze a lot of data. We’re very critical of our approach, and we’re going to bring a very innovative, good flavor to the NBA.”
One advantage Topps has as it enters its new era of basketball card production is the extensive history it has with the sport. Though it hasn’t produced cards for the category in 15 years, Topps’ history with basketball dates back into the 1950s.
Topps introduced the hobby to parallels and chromium cards with the release of 1993 Finest, and many collectors in the modern era still look back at Topps’ run in the late 1990s as one of the hobby’s greatest.
Leiner says Topps will look to strike a balance between developing new sets for the ultra-modern era while also leaning into the nostalgia collectors have for what they believe to be the hobby’s heyday.
“We’re very conscious of how we use retired content,” Leiner said. “We want to be very thoughtful about it — when you get a Larry Bird, a Magic Johnson or a Shaquille O’Neal, we want those cards to matter and for folks to be excited about those.
“We’re really looking at how we balance the portfolio, how we leverage some of the designs. You’ll see some of the old-school designs repeated. You’ll see some elements of them brought back in a fresh way. It’s incredible to have that heritage and nostalgia to be able to leverage — to have decades of content to go back into and redesign, reuse, refresh. We’re excited.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.