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What will sell for more? Cooper Flagg's debut jersey or rookie debut patch

The sales of Cooper Flagg's RDPA and debut jeresy will provide critical data points for the hobby

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Flagg made his NBA debut on Oct. 22 agains the San Antonio Spurs. (Credit: Getty)

Cooper Flagg’s NBA debut jersey will sell at Sotheby's in the coming months, and it offers collectors the first data point in what will be an extremely compelling real-life experiment regarding the relative value of cards and jerseys.

That same jersey, one of at least two worn by Flagg during an Oct. 22 game against the San Antonio Spurs, was affixed with a patch that will be used to create the most buzz-worthy card in the hobby.

But which should be worth more: The full jersey worn by a player in a game or a one-of-one trading card embedded with a patch taken from that jersey alongside an autograph?

I don’t know about “should,” but my bet is that the card will beat the jersey.

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The introduction of the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph into Major League Baseball has been a resounding success, and its expansion into other sports is almost certainly going to be a smash hit. We already saw the mania that surrounded the Paul Skenes RDPA, which sold for $1.11 million earlier this year, and the basketball card market — and the hype surrounding top draft pick Flagg — is arguably more powerful than the forces behind that sale.

I believe Flagg’s RDPA would fetch $1.5 million if it hit the auction block tomorrow.

The more interesting question to me, however, is not the hammer price of the card or the jersey, but their relative values.

Regardless of whether my $1.5 million prediction on Flagg’s RDPA, or my estimate that the jersey will probably end around $1 million, are correct, I believe the card will outpace the jersey.

The answer is obviously subjective. Game-worn diehards will cry from the rooftops that jerseys should always reign supreme. And they have their reasons.

Some are more visceral — perhaps it’s a more significant piece of the moment and a more intimate piece of the game — and others come down to preferences such as displayability and aesthetics.

Card collectors will counter with arguments of their own.

There is the simple preference for a larger collector base of cards over jerseys. The one-of-one nature of the card (remember, Flagg wore multiple jerseys in his debut) and other ideas surrounding the value-add of a slab — which, particularly with respect to PSA — has become something akin to the lingua franca of the industry.

What can’t be overstated is the degree to which this will be the greatest possible test, a nearly apples-to-apples comparison, between the two segments of the hobby.

While the RDPA has existed in MLB for two years, the league doesn’t have nearly as robust of a program for its game-worn material as the NBA, which has a deal with Sotheby’s. Skenes’ debut jersey has never appeared at public auction to my knowledge. And, even if it did, the market for baseball jerseys of modern players is far less mature than modern basketball jerseys.

There are so many factors that will go into the results of both the jersey and the card, not least of which is the timing of the sales, which are likely to be separated by at least months. We can do our best to bring objectivity into the equation using past comps which, while imperfect measures, are surely instructive.

Let’s take Victor Wembanyama, the most recent mega-hyped top pick. His debut jersey (also one of at least two worn during the game) sold for $762,000 shortly after the game at Sotheby’s in 2023. It’s worth noting that, while that result remains impressive even in today’s climate, the game-worn market has grown in the years since.

Still, we can compare that to his top card result of $860,100, achieved earlier this year for one of his best 1/1 parallels. The card beat the jersey modestly in this case. But it is not nearly as solid of a comparison as the upcoming RDPA considering the popularity of the Topps 1/1 creation and its immediate connection to the jersey.

Babe Ruth does not have any 1/1 rookie cards, but whatever is considered his best card — perhaps the Baltimore News which fetched $7.2 million in December 2023 — pales in comparison to the $24.12 million paid for his “Called Shot” jersey.

Kobe Bryant’s first NBA jersey fetched $7 million earlier this year. His most expensive public card sale to date (featuring only Bryant and no other players) is $2.4 million for an Exquisite Collection patch autograph earlier this month.

Jordan’s top solo card sale is less than $3 million, outpaced by his top jersey sale of $10.1 million.

The problem with these comparisons is they don’t have the ability to account for the significance and transformative nature of the RDPA, which is truly unlike anything the hobby has ever seen. Sure, patches and jerseys have found their way into trading cards for decades.

In 2003, Donruss purchased one of three pinstripe Babe Ruth jerseys in existence for $264,210 — and proceeded to cut it up and place it into cards.

But even then, there was no comparable 1/1 to those cards as the RDPA. And as anyone in the hobby knows, for better or for worse, the 1/1 stamp, for all its stretched meaning, is just about the strongest value-driver as a descriptor, with the exception, maybe, of “PSA 10.”

Without passing a value judgement on the significance of jerseys versus cards, or arguments as to why they ought to reign supreme, the absurd velocity of the basketball card market, combined with the fanfare surrounding the biggest innovation in trading cards in my lifetime, leads me to believe that the card will defeat the jersey in the battle between cardboard and fabric.

Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.