Is Josh Allen's $1.35M card sale a sign the NFL market is about to blow up?
· Yahoo Sports
A football card sold for $1 million for the first time in 1,073 days.
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Across other categories, 66 cards have sold for a million or more in that timespan, with baseball, basketball and Pokemon cards regularly selling for seven figures.
Even with the popularity of football and the surging modern card market, no football card had crossed that threshold – until now.
Last Friday, a 2025 Topps Chrome Football Honors MVP Gold NFL Shield Autographed redemption card of Josh Allen sold for $1.35 million through Fanatics Collect.
The card will feature a gold MVP logo patch Allen wore during the 2025 season, after he was named the 2024 MVP. The card doesn't physically exist yet. It's a redemption, meaning the buyer will receive it once Topps produces it.
The Allen card was the first football card to cross the million-dollar mark since a 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket signed Tom Brady rookie card sold for $1.2 million on June 14, 2023.
Since that time, prospecting has cooled in football. In a league driven by quarterbacks, speculation on who will be the next Patrick Mahomes, Brady or Allen burned more people than it helped, and recent major sales suggest collectors are looking to established names (Mahomes, Allen) and legends (Brady) in the high-end card market.
The football card market is navigating a major transition. Topps took over the license from Panini on April 1 and has since produced several products, but none with the chases or allure of 2025 Topps Chrome Football, arguably the most important NFL release of the year.
Besides the Allen card, there have been several significant sales from 2025 Topps Chrome. A Brady Kaiju Superfractor sold for $350,000 on May 7, and a Brady Legend Autograph Superfractor sold for $324,000 on May 22. A Patrick Mahomes variation Superfractor sold for $168,000, also on May 22.
Speculation has always been a big part of card-breaking culture, and that won't change, but these sales show that the football market is rewarding true scarcity.
Even so, the Allen card's value isn't just scarcity — it's also the moment and card itself being tied to a game-used element, one of the biggest marketing draws Topps has leveraged in the weeks since regaining the NFL license.
This sale could be an early sign that football is trending back toward the top of the market. Card Ladder's football index has risen 4.5% since Topps Chrome's release on April 15 – compared to flat growth during the same period in each of the last two years.
Important cards will always sell. And right now, football has one.