One of the most important sports cards from 2024 still hasn’t been found a little more than a year after the frantic chase for it began.
Announced Aug. 10, 2024, the Olympic Games Topps NOW Card No. 26, which celebrated Team USA basketball’s gold-medal victory in the Paris Olympics, arrived with base-card variations ranging from Pearl /199 all the way down to the Gold 1/1s.
One lucky collector would also have their base card replaced with a triple autograph of Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant. It would be the first autograph of James on a Topps card and the first card with a triple autograph of Curry, James and Durant.
Collectors purchased 588,035 copies during the limited release window, a then-record for any NOW card, hoping to win the autograph.
A number of high-dollar bounties for the card, including one for $500,000 and another from Giannis Antetokounmpo, quickly poured in.
Then nothing happened.
Topps confirmed the redemption for the triple autograph was properly mailed — independent audit firm KPMG witnessed the process to ensure it was fair — and the winner was expected to have the card in-hand by late September 2024.
Dozens of the 1,688 sealed packs from the drop that contained short prints, parallels, and possibly the redemption for the triple autograph, flooded the secondary market. According to eBay research tool Terapeak, sealed packs have flipped for as much as $4,000 on the platform.
To date, roughly 40 packs have sold on eBay for $1,000 or more, including sales for as much as $3,200 as recently as June.
So where is the card, a little more than a year after first landing in the hobby’s social media feeds?
Topps confirmed to cllct Friday the card still had not been redeemed.
One year later, the triple auto card with LeBron, Steph and KD still hasn’t surfaced.
— cllct (@cllctMedia) August 15, 2025
Is that a bad thing for the hobby?@michaelrubin says no. pic.twitter.com/f7gjuk8HgL
The most likely and realistic answer is the redemption card remains trapped in an unopened pack. Though the era of social media has made the pulling of big cards a largely public affair, it’s not uncommon for major chases to go unfound for extended periods — some of the hobby’s most important cards ever created are still missing.
Along with the Olympic triple autograph, the 2023 Bowman Draft Tom Brady card, numbered 12 of 50, also remains missing. That card, considered one of the biggest Bowman chases, featured a special inscription from Brady that read, “If baseball doesn’t work out there’s always football.”
Though missing chases might be frustrating to some collectors, Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin isn’t sure it’s something that needs to be fixed.
“I don’t know that we want to solve that,” Rubin told cllct’s Darren Rovell during the 2025 National Sports Collector Convention. “There’s still a percentage of the inventory that’s out there, and I think both of those cards will come to fruition over time.”
“It could be in a box on eBay and who knows,” Rovell replied.
“It could be in a box in the show right here,” Rubin said.
To some collectors, the extended chase has resulted in a loss of interest in the card, though the secondary market likely shows that isn’t the case at the high end.
Considered the second-most important chase from the Olympic card’s drop, the Curry Gold Autograph 1/1, which features his iconic “Night, Night” celebration, sold for $518,500 at Goldin in June. Even more recently was the $85,400 sale of that card’s Orange variation, numbered to just five, at Goldin earlier this month.
The likelihood the triple autograph is finally found increases with each sale of a sealed pack, and though some casual collectors might have forgotten about the rabid chase, recent auction results show interest should return when the card eventually surfaces.
If it ever does.
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.