How sports memorabilia is becoming more investable
Headline-grabbing sales of rare sports memorabilia have captured the attention of investors — including those who are not that interested in sports. At the same time, the increasing availability of data on supply is making it easier to put a value on items.
A dizzying array of sports memorabilia is traded by collectors around the world, from trading cards, ticket stubs, trophies and championship rings to the jerseys, sneakers, bats, balls, helmets, hockey sticks, tennis racquets, golf clubs and tees used by players. The list even stretches to racing cars: a 1955 Formula 1 car fetched EUR51.2 million at auction in February 2025.
The top ten list of most expensive sports memorabilia evokes vivid memories of some of the most significant sporting events of the twentieth century. There’s the jersey worn by Michael Jordan in one of his final matches leading the Chicago Bulls to a fifth basketball championship in 1998. Another is the one worn by Argentine footballer Diego Maradona when he scored his infamous “Hand of God” goal against the English team on the way to securing soccer World Cup glory in 1986. Also on that list is the heavyweight title belt clinched by boxer Muhammad Ali in his legendary “Rumble in the Jungle” match-up against George Foreman.
But there is one sport that holds an outsized presence in the fast-expanding sports memorabilia universe: baseball. That’s despite the fact that around the world far fewer people watch baseball than sports like soccer, cricket and tennis. Baseball isn’t even the most popular sport in America anymore, according to the majority of that country’s adult population — it now trails American football by a fair margin. But baseball’s leading position in sports memorabilia makes it a good example of the broader themes in the market.
History and heritage play a big part. Baseball features so prominently partly because of the long history of collectibles associated with the sport. The first baseball cards emerged soon after the inception of the game in the 1860s, and were used by tobacco companies as a promotional tool.
“Think how long ago that was,” said Todd Jablonski, Chief Investment Officer and Global Head of Multiasset Strategies at Principal Asset Management, who collects baseball cards with his 12-year old son. “People have been thinking about collectibles in association with American baseball for over 150 years,” he said.
That kind of longevity fosters the creation of multi-generational connections. Ben Thornhill, an investment advisor who has amassed an impressive collection of bats used by some of baseball’s biggest stars, said that these items “can bring back happy memories, including connections with your father or with your child. Sports are also part of the fabric of the community — it’s sort of a tribal thing.”
This helps explain the distinctive way that some collectors think about sports memorabilia, as something more complex than a purely financial investment. Thornhill said: “I get a multi-faceted benefit out of owning these items and displaying them on my wall, versus owning shares in Berkshire Hathaway, for example.”
Where passion meets profit
Sports memorabilia collectors fall into three broad categories. Some are in it purely for the passion and enjoyment, with no intention to ever sell, while others view it strictly as an investment — a group that has grown following some headline-grabbing sales in recent years. The majority perhaps fall somewhere in the middle.
“It’s the ideal thing, where you love it but if you do it right you can also do well,” said Thornhill.
For Jablonski and his son, it’s a way to participate in sport that they love “from another angle.” “It’s also fun to speculate about what kind of memorabilia might have more value in the future than it has right now. This gives me an opportunity to teach my son lessons about economics, supply and demand constraints, externalities, inflation, the market forces, but in a realm that he can understand.”
Ultimately, like any market, “it all boils down to supply and demand,” said Jablonski.
The demand side of the equation is where there is most potential for speculation in sports memorabilia. As in any market, working out which assets will be most prized in the future is key. “The idea is that you could identify a player who today is not particularly well-known, valued, or renowned for his or her abilities,” explained Jablonski. “But if you can identify talent early, and you can invest in some of that memorabilia, and then the demand comes later, you can find a remarkable surge in price.”
He cautioned, however, that things could just as easily go in the other direction. “When a player becomes unpopular, you can find that value destroyed overnight.”
Thornhill’s approach is to focus on items associated with already established and popular players who are unlikely to see their reputations tarnished. “Quality never goes out of style. It holds its value better. And it’s more liquid. If you own a condo that’s located near a beach city, that’s sellable in a minute. That’s not the case for one that’s in an industrial area, lower grade.”
There are several factors that affect the value of an item associated with a popular player, including whether it was used during a pivotal game or moment in a player’s career, and whether it benefits from clear authentication. “The biggest variable that’s really grown significantly is whether it is photomatched,” said Thornhill, “meaning, do you have, either through video or images, a photo of it being used, where you can match it up specifically?”
In addition to immortalizing one of the most controversial moments in sports history, Maradona’s “Hand of God” jersey benefited from authentication by photomatching firm Resolution Photomatching, which determined that although he had switched shirts during the match, the one auctioned by Sotheby’s was the one he had worn when scoring both historic goals in the second half.
Photomatching was also crucial to the record-setting sale at auction in 2024 of a jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth in 1932 in a particularly iconic moment of his career. When standing at the batter’s box and faced with hecklers from the opposing team’s dugout, Ruth had defiantly pointed to the center field flagpole at Wrigley Field, then hammered the next pitch some 490 feet to dead center. The jersey sold for USD24.12 million — delivering a spectacular return since its last sale in 2005 for USD940,000.
Greater clarity on supply
On the supply side of the equation, there is a wealth of data on high-end trading cards, coins, pins and ticket stubs, where grading and authentication companies like Professional Sports Authenticator publish data on how many of each item exist at a given condition graded from one (poor) through 10 (gem mint). The second most expensive piece of sports memorabilia, a 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card sold in 2022 for USD12.6 million, was graded 9.5 by Sportscard Guaranty Corporation.
PSA has started to provide population reports for bats, although Thornhill noted that they have only done so for a small number of “inner circle” players, and “there’s a lot more to do.” Moreover, bats are, for now, the only game-used items for which PSA has introduced population reports.
In coming years, population reports on game-used items across sports and categories are likely to become more reliable, consistent and widely available. This will make the items more investable.
“That’s what propelled cards,” said Thornhill. “You could start and end the conversation with, ‘I own one of seven cards for this famous soccer player that are graded nine.’ You know right there it’s going to be hard to acquire one of these, and it will probably go up at a faster rate than another card graded eight, where the population is ten times bigger.”
Still, Thornhill acknowledged that it could be difficult to encapsulate in a simple grading system the many esoteric factors that make game-used items like bats appealing to collectors. Among these, “the aesthetics of the item are a primary driver, a key factor,” he said. For example, while the most valuable cards are those in pristine condition, “visible wear always makes game-used items more appealing to collectors.”
“You and I could have a bat from the same player, the same era, but my bat has a lot more visible use, caked in pine tar, everyone’s going to choose my bat over yours,” said Thornhill. “That drives the price for bats. So there’s things like that that you only discover through experience.”
Where to start?
Experience can be a crucial determinant of investment success when dealing with any asset. To gain that experience, an investor could benefit from narrowing their focus to what they know best or care most about.
“I recommend that a new collector or a new participant decide where they think they have some sort of information advantage, decide where they think they have a passion, and then pursue that arena most closely,” said Jablonski.
Thornhill echoed that advice. “It's important to approach something with a plan, but also something that’s meaningful to you. You’ll be happier and get farther that way.”
The options for would-be collectors continue to expand as the markets for new sports and items continue to grow. Though baseball generally leads sales by leading collectibles auction houses Goldin, Heritage and PWCC (which has been acquired by Fanatics Collect), basketball is quickly gaining ground.
Another major recent trend highlighted by Alton Insights, a provider of quantitative analysis across the collectibles market, is rapid growth in sales of vintage sports photos as the market for ticket stubs appears to have cooled.
For now, auction sales of American football memorabilia continue to consistently eclipse those of the world’s biggest game: soccer. And there’s a big gap between the record-setting USD4.3 million fetched by American football player Patrick Mahomes’ rookie trading card and that of Brazilian soccer legend Pelé, which sold for USD372,000.
Because the point of purchasing memorabilia is to own something that can evoke memories of personally significant events and people, this partly reflects the spending power of US collectors, who are willing and able to splash out for items that are meaningful to them. It’s also a function of greater perceived rarity and the sophistication of the markets for collectibles focused on US-centric sports — including better data.
One final question for would-be collectors might be whether the valuation gap between collectibles for more globally popular sports and US-centric ones could narrow in the foreseeable future.
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