Over the past two months, the prices for Lionel Messi’s rookie card have surged at an unprecedented rate.
His 2004 Panini Sports Mega Cracks PSA 10 (population of 20) had never sold publicly for more than $336,000 prior to last month. In fact, it had been more than a year since the last copy had traded hands at auction.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a private sale was announced by Goldin for a PSA 10 example at a shocking $825,000 on Aug. 2 — more than double the record for the card and a cool $303,000 more than the all-time Messi record.
But that was just the beginning.
Within a month, Fanatics Collect announced another sale of the same exact copy, with the addition of an eye-appeal sticker, for more than $1 million. Last week, Goldin returned serve with another private sale, reclaiming the record at $1.1 million.
Within 48 hours, Fanatics Collect announced a $1.5 million private sale.
The velocity of the rise of Messi’s top card is sudden — perhaps even unprecedented. So, what is fueling it? And why now?
JUST IN: Lionel Messi rookie sold privately by @FanaticsCollect for $1.5 million.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) September 13, 2025
The top end of this card has nearly doubled in a month.
Did the rich somehow just discover it?https://t.co/wWtDoGJa2t
An easy comparison to another notable grail card with a similar explosive run-up comes from the 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan, which, following the release of “The Last Dance” documentary on Netflix in the spring of 2020, went on its own wild ride.
Prior to the release of the first episode in April, the top sale for the card in its 48-year history was less than $50,000. Within three weeks, one sold for $96,000.
Before the end of the year, the $200,000 threshold was crossed. Eventually, the card ran all the way up to $720,000 in January 2021.
Beyond the aggressive price trajectory, the cards aren’t as similar as you might think.
Messi’s Mega Cracks is far more scarce, with just 20 gem mint copies in PSA’s population report, and only 17 total sales from 2013 to 2024. Jordan’s 1986 Fleer is far more common, with more than 300 total PSA examples and much higher sales volume, even prior to the 2020 run-up.
Because Messi’s Mega Cracks doesn’t have its own “Last Dance” moment to drive interest, there have to be other variables at play. One of those could simply be supply and demand.
Jesse Craig, founder of the high-end concierge service Acquir, which represented the seller of the record-setting Messi in a private deal with Fanatics Collect, said he couldn’t convince owners of PSA 10 examples to sell for $500,000 in the months leading up to the record-breaking sale.
Sean Hayden, head of private sales for Fanatics Collect, faced a similar experience prior to the card’s breakthrough in August.
“What we really saw was guys just refusing to sell,” Hayden told cllct. “And I’ll tell you this, I brought guys offers of $550,000 six months ago, and they laughed at me. Then I brought them $700,000, and they laughed at it. Then I brought them $850,000. Again, same sentiment.”
According to Hayden, the $825,000 sale reshaped buyer and seller sentiment for the card, which resulted in the recent run-up in price.
“It just allowed people to say yes,” Hayden said. “They finally could go, ‘OK, someone has agreed to sell for this number, I can too.' ... That sale allowed people to make offers of that magnitude feeling confident.”
The rapid rise in price could be driven by the incoming 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be played in the United States next summer The first $300,000-plus sale for a Messi Mega Cracks PSA 10 arrived a little more than a month after Argentina toppled France in the 2022 FIFA World Cup final.
A second $300,000-plus sale landed in June 2022, and collectors might believe a similar run could arrive in 2026 if Messi decides to participate and plays well.
“We’ve got this increased buyer pool looking at soccer thinking, ‘Wow, there’s some opportunity here, especially at the high end given the player’s notoriety and the sport’s success globally,’” Fanatics Collect vice president Kevin Lenane said. “And then you’ve also got the World Cup in the distance.”
Craig pointed to the selection of high-end Messi cards, which when compared to contemporaries from other sports like LeBron James, who made his professional debut less than three weeks before Messi, is quite slim.
“He might only have around 50 or 60 of what I consider super high-end, top-tier cards, versus Jordan having hundreds,” Craig said.
Prizm World Cup, which features many of Messi’s most valuable short-printed parallels, only began in 2014, and is released every four years.
To date, the most expensive manufacturer autographs for Messi have arrived in sets including 2016 Panini Flawless, 2022 Panini Eminence FIFA World Cup and 2022-23 Topps Dynasty UEFA Champions League.
The first decade of Messi’s career wasn’t packed with patches and autographs, which, for many other players of his era, represent the pinnacle of their high-end market.
“He has less total rookies graded than pretty much every star you could think of from any era in any major sport,” Matthew Hendler, PSA’s senior brand protection manager and a soccer card expert, told cllct. “So you know, when you concentrate all of that on one card … it's just so much demand on such a little supply that it's a squeeze that essentially happened very quickly in the last two months.”
Then there is the natural comparison of Messi, who many consider to be the greatest soccer player to ever live, to the GOATS of other sports, including Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Babe Ruth, all of whom had multiple million-dollar card sales.
Hendler noticed earlier this year as a few big buyers entered the space, they gravitated toward Messi for this reason.
“They’d always be kind of surprised when they looked at the gap in pricing between those guys,” Hendler said. “[The gap] was so large that I just consider this a correction to correct market value.”
“New collectors are like, ‘Well, OK, yes, it's a million-dollar card. Yes, it's a $1.5 million card, but I can get arguably a top-five card within a sport for that,’” Hayden said. “Look at basketball, you're not getting [a top-five card] for that. Look at baseball, you're not getting it for that. You know, this is like the final frontier, so to speak, of that next level grail card.”
Frank DiNote, who runs private sales at Goldin, said the surge is a matter of savvy buyers looking to buy the best of the best.
“Buyers reacted quickly,” DiNote said. “They thought, ‘Hey, there’s only 20 of these copies, I gotta get my hands on one before they’re all gone.’”
The nuance between each of those 20 examples plays an important role, too. According to Lenane, just two of the PSA 10 examples, including the $1.5 million copy, have eye-appeal stickers.
Some collectors also believe several PSA 10 examples would receive a lower grade if they were authenticated again in 2025, meaning several copies in an already-limited pool are much less desirable.
The most obvious and immediate component caught up in all of this is Messi’s impending retirement.
But one major question remains: Why now? After all, Messi’s retirement was looming a year ago, too. All of the data points around his prices compared to other GOATS, the scarcity of his rookie card and the date of the World Cup have all been true for years — no big announcement, media event or other development brought things into the collective consciousness.
There might not be a crystal clear answer.
“[Collectors] said ‘Let me get ahead of the curve and act now,’” DiNote said. “And once one guy acted, it’s the domino effect.”
“People are just kind of asleep at the wheel. It happens in life, it happens in business, and I think it’s happened for some cards,” Craig said, pointing to the rapid rise in value and relevance for the Jordan Star rookie card after years on the sidelines.
The next major data point for the Messi Mega Cracks PSA 10 market will arrive later this month when an example sells as part of Fanatics Collect’s September Premier Auction. According to Hayden, that copy will be the sixth example Fanatics Collect has sold in recent months, including private deals.
The first example to sell publicly since 2024, the final hammer price will represent to some the true value of the card, with many collectors highly skeptical of private sales in any form.
So far, Messi sellers have been willing to trade the potential upside of public auctions for the guaranteed money in a private deal.
“It takes some courage to go to auction,” Hayden said. “There’s no safety net.”
Truthfully, recent data doesn’t show much need for a safety net, and Messi’s Mega Cracks checks off many of the boxes ultra high-end collectors look for when hunting for grail cards.
There’s the limited gem-mint population, a current price point that appears undervalued compared to other categories, and a decent amount of variance at the top with some copies slightly better than others within the same grade.
Then, of course, there’s the simple fact Messi's Mega Cracks has the looks of a classic card with an iconic image.
“It’s beautifully simplistic, call it nothing else,” Hayden said. “It’s not flashy, it doesn’t have an autograph, it’s not throwing itself in your face. It’s just what it is, and there are a lot of cards like that in vintage. Look at the [1952 Topps] Mickey Mantle. Is it flashy? Is it in your face? Is it loud? No. There’s just no reason to hate it … that’s what makes it so easy for some collectors to go with.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.
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.