One-of-a-Kind LeBron James Card Sells For Sky-High Price The limited-edition card sold at auction for $2.4 million.
By Emily Rella
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LeBron James is no stranger to breaking records on the basketball court, and now the Lakers superstar has clinched another major accomplishment — off the court.
A Lebron James basketball card sold at auction for $2.4 million, the highest price ever recorded for a card found and sold in the same year.
This past weekend sports collectible company Goldin held an auction for the 2020-21 Panini Flawless Triple Logoman LeBron James card, a rare, limited-edition card that features logo patches from three of James' game-worn jerseys (Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers).
The card is one of five in the series, but it is the only card that features only one player.
Card collectors, including rapper Drake, had been on the hunt for what's been dubbed the "holy grail" of cards -- by literally buying boxes of the card and then opening them up to see if they had found the one-of-a-kind piece of cardboard.
"The card stands out like no other card in the history of the industry," said Ken Goldin, founder and executive chairman of collectible company Goldin, which ran the auction, told Bleacher Report. "Typically, it's the older vintage cards that are very valuable. ... But there's really never been a card this popular before it was even pulled from a pack."
The sale of the card fell short of expectations, though, with Goldin suggesting it was valued somewhere between $3 and $5 million.
A Lebron James rookie basketball card that sold for $5.2 million last April tied the second-place record with a Mickey Mantle baseball card that also sold for $5.2 million earlier that year.
The record for the most expensive card ever sold belongs to a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card, which sold for $6.06 million (including a 20% buyers' premium) last August.