Thanks to NIL, college athletes have trading cards, with hard-to-quantify values

Arch Manning hasn’t played a down of college football, yet he is already setting records.

A Manning trading card produced by Panini sold at a charity auction last month for $102,500, a record price for any card that stemmed from a college athlete’s name, image and likeness deal. The one-of-one card also broke a record for the most valuable card sold on Panini’s website, topping one of Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic, which sold for $100,000.

In the two years since a Supreme Court ruling paved the way for college athletes to be compensated for their talents, it has been open season for businesses doing deals with NCAA stars—including trading card companies that can now produce licensed cards featuring college players.

Before NIL, companies such as Panini and Topps would secure contracts with athletes as soon as they declared for the pros. It gave the companies exclusive access to the biggest up-and-coming players in their respective sports, and therefore the ability to release their first autographed cards. In the NIL era, the deals are the same, except the companies no longer have to wait. When NIL became official in July 2021, companies started signing amateur athletes to exclusivity deals immediately. Manning signed one with Panini this summer, days before its record sale.

But while there have been high-profile instances of lucrative sales, the trading card industry is still trying to determine what exactly NIL means for the marketplace, and whether investing in college athletes’ cards is a good bet.

The bidding war over Manning’s card was a frequent topic of conversation at the National Sports Collectors Convention, nicknamed “the National,” which was held near O’Hare Airport in late July. Manning, the nephew of NFL legends Peyton and Eli, is a freshman quarterback who may or may not start for the University of Texas this season, and two years into NIL, everyone from card companies to collectors are trying to determine the place of amateur cards in a supply-and-demand industry.

Cards issued years before an athlete goes pro carry more risk, because variables such as injuries, off-field issues and missed potential can be just as impactful to a card’s value as they are to a player’s career. The long-term value and short-term collectability of the cards are two big questions being asked in a space where everyone craves the hottest product.

Daniel Atkins, the CEO of Nashville-based memorabilia dealer Wild Card, was one of the first people in line for NIL cards. He claims to have had the first NIL cards available in 2021 for then-Alabama quarterback Bryce Young and then-Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler, which debuted at the National that year a few days after NIL became official. Atkins recalled the cards selling for as high as $250 to $300 apiece, depending on whether the card was autographed or part of a numbered set. Wild Card now has more than 200 NIL card deals among baseball, basketball and football players, but Atkins said the business implications have been mixed and the return on investment is “a matrix that we’re still figuring out.”

“NIL has been a two-edged sword,” he said. “There’s a lot of hype and anticipation in the past for these guys’ autographs because they weren’t available previously, and people want to see those on rookie cards. But because of the NIL and them coming out as sort of pre-rookie cards, it kind of dilutes the market.”

That hasn’t stopped the biggest card companies from going all-in. Panini—which has signed Quinn Ewers, who is competing with Manning for the Texas job, and Connecticut basketball star Donovan Clingan to deals—has gradually grown its business while watching the market develop. Lately, it has signed deals with top high school recruits, including Tre Johnson, a top-five basketball recruit in the Class of 2024 who plays for Link Academy in Branson, Mo.

“I think that early on in 2021, we probably had maybe five or six [athletes signed to deals] across even the basketball, football landscape,” said Jason Howarth, a vice president of marketing for Panini America. “In 2022 we increased that, but the number for 2023 is exponentially higher than where it was in 2021.”

Another issue for collectors: The secondary market is still relatively unknown. College sports can reach audiences the pros can’t, but the added risk involved with college cards makes them a tougher sell as an investment.

According to Beckett Collectibles, the industry’s de facto price guide, a 2022 Bowman Chrome University Autographs Superfractors #1 Bryce Young card sold for $12,000 in the past year, but NIL cards have become hard for the company’s database to track with the market still developing. One card dealer at the National said she hasn’t bought any NIL cards for her business after she struggled to move ones of former Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud. Given the lack of interest, she didn’t even bother bringing the Stroud cards to the convention given the limited tablespace a booth provides.

ONIT Athlete, another company making NIL trading cards, could be tapping into a sector of the market that has traditionally been marginalized: women’s sports. The company has team sets for Alabama softball, a national power, with plans to release more with other schools. At the National, multiple dealers said cards of Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark are in high demand, an early indicator of the interest for women’s sports cards.

“If you go look at the trading card customer base and the demographic, it’s mostly young males,” said Jason Belzer, founder of Student Athlete NIL, an agency that connects brands with athletes. “But now that there’s an opportunity to really empower young girls to really engage and follow their favorite softball athlete or favorite gymnast, it’s a huge opportunity and a huge market to tap that trading cards have not traditionally reached.”

It’s impossible to say what will ultimately be worth more down the road: a player’s first NIL card, or his or her first card as a professional. Howarth admitted it’s a conversation topic at Panini, which is why his team is always trying to “drive collectability” with its NIL products.

“It’s probably depending on who you ask in just about any building,” Howarth said. “Clearly there are some people that felt like there could be some concern over what it might do to impact a rookie card. I think the answer on that side is there is definitely a market for the NIL space and the collegiate cards and that’s going to continue to grow and emerge and evolve, and I think it’s going to depend on how it all plays out on the pro side of it. But obviously getting players in their pro uniforms for the first time is definitely what drives collectability from a rookie point of view.”

It will be a dilemma the industry will have to reckon with, because the money and the cards aren’t going anywhere. Russ White, the CEO of Oncoor Marketing, an agency that represents NIL collectives and athletes, speculated that an NIL trading card deal could become “expected, especially for the revenue-generating sports,” the way it is for top NFL and NBA draft prospects as part of their rookie deals.

At the National, Legends Sports and Games of Grand Rapids, Mich., boasted a 2022 Bowman Chrome card autographed by Southern California quarterback and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams. Graded a mint 10, the card comes with a $5,000 price tag. Wil Hunter, an employee for the store, said he and his colleagues will be watching demand for the card closely, especially given the early NFL draft buzz around Williams going into his junior season at USC.

“Caleb Williams is going to the first major test case, since he’s going No. 1 overall,” Hunter said. “I’d like to see the price of that card next April.”

Williams’s card isn’t the best measuring stick for the NIL space as a whole—and Manning’s certainly isn’t, given the quarterback’s last name. But Manning’s first trading card took the market into six figures, and it’s fair to wonder where it could go. In August of last year, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card sold for a record $12.6 million at auction. Could an NIL card ever enter that atmosphere?

“I think we might eventually see it,” said Dave Amerman, head of auctions and consignment for sports trading cards and memorabilia at Goldin Auctions. “It’s just hard to commit that kind of money to someone who hasn’t done much, but eventually we might see that.”