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Michael Jordan over giant piles of hundred dollar bills
Modern sports cards are very good at telling collectors exactly how rare something is. Michael Jordan apparently has one card so mysterious that nearly two decades after it was released, nobody can definitively answer a pretty basic question: How many did they actually make?
A 2007-08 Fleer Ultra Autographics Red Jordan has surfaced at Heritage Auctions with a PSA 6 grade, PSA/DNA 10 autograph, and MBA Gold designation. The Heritage auction had already reached $29,000 with 32 bidders or registered phone bidders, and roughly two weeks remaining before the Sept. 18 close.
Nobody Knows If There Are Three Jordans Or Five
That is where this card gets significantly more interesting than another expensive piece of Jordan cardboard.
The 2007-08 Fleer Ultra Autographics set contained signatures in black, blue, and red ink. The red Jordan was not serial-numbered, and no manufacturer documentation has surfaced establishing exactly how many copies were produced.
Collectors who have spent years studying the release generally believe there may have been five or fewer red versions made for each player.
The available evidence is wonderfully incomplete.
Sports Collectors Daily reported that GemRate’s aggregated population data from PSA, Beckett, SGC and CGC shows only three graded copies of the Jordan Red Autographics.
That does not mean only three exist. There could be raw copies sitting in collections, forgotten boxes or some drawer belonging to a guy who bought basketball cards in 2008 and has not thought about them since.
Nobody really knows.
Imagine Topps releasing a one-of-one today and simply forgetting to put the “1/1” stamp on it.
Collectors would need group therapy.
One Collector Pulled His From A $50 Box
The card’s history gets even better.
Australian collector Ryan Saggers owns one of the other graded examples and says he pulled it from a roughly $50 box of regular 2007-08 Fleer Basketball around 2009 or 2010.
His card eventually received a PSA 7 with a PSA/DNA 10 autograph grade. Saggers says he has followed the card for nearly 17 years and has seen only a handful of other possible examples publicly surface.
He has also reportedly declined multiple six-figure private offers for his copy this year.
That gives Heritage an interesting problem when trying to establish a value for the newly surfaced card.
There simply is not much of a market history.
One raw example sold on eBay for $5,545 back in 2015, but the high-end Michael Jordan card market has changed slightly since then. Jordan cards now routinely generate seven-figure headlines, including record-breaking autographs and one-of-one combinations with other legends.
This one has something even modern one-of-ones cannot manufacture: Nobody knows exactly what it is. Maybe five exist. Maybe fewer.