Sports memorabilia – can this investment hotspot keep its shine?

The market for sports memorabilia is booming, with cards, jerseys and equipment selling for huge sums – and not only in the United States, although the country remains the epicentre of the business. In August 2024 a jersey reputedly worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth during the 1932 World Series was sold for $24.12 million, eclipsing the previous record set by a 1952 Topps baseball card of Mickey Mantle that changed hands for $12.6 million. Even a card from as recent a year as 2009 portraying future basketball star Stephen Curry was bought by a specialist investment fund for $5.9 million in 2021. Could it be time to see what you have in your attic?

Sporting memorabilia has always been valuable, especially in association with an iconic player or event, and particularly in the United States. Until 2024, what was believed to be the most expensive item of sports memorabilia ever was a 1952 Topps trading card of Mickey Mantle, who hit 536 home runs during a 17-year career with the New York Yankees, sold in 2022 for $12.6 million. Not far behind was Michael Jordan’s 1998 NBA game 1 jersey, which changed hands for $10.1 million, also in 2022. But the record was comprehensively broken on August 25, 2024 when a jersey supposedly worn by Babe Ruth during game 3 of baseball’s 1932 World Series was sold at auction in Dallas for $24.12 million – although its authenticity has been questioned. The jersey is associated with Ruth’s famous “called shot”, where he successfully predicted that he would hit a home run off the next pitch. That claim, too, rests only on Ruth’s own word – but in sports memorabilia, legend can be as powerful and lucrative as fact.

In sports memorabilia, legend can be as powerful and lucrative as fact.

Generally speaking, soccer items have proved less valuable than those from top US sports, but the shirt worn by Argentina’s captain Diego Maradona in the team’s 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England was sold for $9.28 million in 2022, two years after his death. More famous than the final won by Argentina against Germany, the match saw the “hand of God” goal, in which the diminutive Maradona out-jumped England’s goalkeeper Peter Shilton to flick the ball into the net with his outstretched hand, unseen by the referee.

Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic Games Manifesto, a 5,000-word, 14-page document in which he set out his original plans to revive the ancient Games tradition in 1892, fetched $8.8 million in 2022; a set of six shirts worn by Lionel Messi during Argentina’s run to win the World Cup in 2022 was sold for $7.8 million just a year later; and a bidder secured Muhammad Ali’s 1974 WBC Heavyweight Championship belt from the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” bout in Zaire (today Democratic Republic of Congo) for $6.2 million in 2022.

Fast-growing market

Calculations of the current size and future growth of the US and global sports memorabilia market vary wildly. Excluding digital assets and sports cards, the US market was by one estimate worth around $3.5 billion in 2024, while turnover in sports trading cards amounted to some $14.9 billion.

Research reports on the market proliferate, and come up with radically different estimates of its size. One suggests that the global sports memorabilia market could reach as much as $270 billion by 2034; another market research firm says the sports market was worth $33.6 billion in 2024, and will nearly triple to $94 billion by 2032. The total for collectibles of all kinds is estimated to have been $601.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $776 billion by 2032.

But the sector is no stranger to boom and bust. It crashed spectacularly during the 1990s, when the US market was flooded with new and overproduced collectibles that caused a glut in the marketplace and resulted in most trading cards from that era being virtually worthless. More recently, prices of non-fungible tokens – digital sports memorabilia images – ballooned at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021 and 2021, but they quickly fell again and NFTs lost their lustre as investments.

Sports memorabilia is very much an off-exchange market. Prices are often determined by how badly an individual wants something.

Determining value

Sports memorabilia is very much an off-exchange market. Prices are often determined by how badly an individual collector wants something. However, various elements are liable to increase the value of individual items. A shirt, for example, tends to be more valuable if it is ‘match-worn’ by a player – as opposed to the unworn shirt of an unused substitute, and especially if the team has won and the match is significant or memorable. Rarity is always a factor in price, as is condition.

It helps if an item has a ‘story’ attached, as with Babe Ruth’s called shot or Maradona’s “hand of God”. An autograph on a glove or a shoe will tend to have more value than a conventional signed shirt. An original contract for a star footballer or a shirt from a player’s last career match are also likely to be worth significantly more.

It is possible to obtain free valuations for sports memorabilia, although sellers should be careful about how much of their potential profit they are willing to cede to an auction house or trader. As with any valuable object, it is worth getting a number of quotations and looking at selling prices for similar items.

Where should I buy?

There is a rich online market for sports memorabilia, including trading platforms such as Firma Stella or Exclusive Memorabilia. Auction site eBay is a popular choice for investors who know what they are looking for and have a good idea about pricing.

There are also sports memorabilia platforms such as Rally, an app from a New York-based company that enables users to buy and sell equity shares in sports memorabilia and other collectibles. In June 2023 Rally opened a museum at its Broadway headquarters featuring items open to investment, ranging from an original 1955 Porsche Speedster to a complete Triceratops skull and an original full set of pristine first-edition Pokémon cards.

Sporting bodies continue to use NFTs to create and distribute sporting memorabilia, often in the form of images or video clips and mostly as part of fan engagement strategies.

Sporting bodies continue to use NFTs to create and distribute sporting memorabilia, often in the form of images or video clips and mostly as part of fan engagement strategies. Transactions are saved on a blockchain, which serves as a record of ownership. However, in view of the market collapse in the early 2020s, they are less likely to be viewed as an investment likely to yield significant gains.

NBA paves the way on NFTs

Top Shot, a scheme devised by the US National Basketball Association, the players’ association and a consumer blockchain company, offers officially-licensed video clips of great sporting moments. A single, 12-second-long highlight of a LeBron James shot in the NBA finals resold for $208,000 on February 22, 2021, on a day when $47.9 million worth of similar video clips were traded on the platform. However, monthly trading volume fell from $226 million in February 2021 to just $3 million in December of the following year. Nowadays most sporting moments sold on the site are available at relatively low cost.

They may offer more pleasure for sports fans than investors; the average sale price of an NBA Top Shot highlight peaked at $181.81 in March 2021, and fell to $12.83 by December 2022. However, other US sports have followed the NBA’s lead by setting up their own NFT digital memorabilia platforms.

Investors can also trade on marketplaces such as Dapper Labs and Candy Digital. A more conventional way to buy sporting memorabilia is at auction, which gives buyers some protection and transparency. As long ago as 1997, Christie’s auctioned a 1907 World Series programme with a guide price of between $4,000 to $6,000, achieving an eventual sale price of £8,625.

But potential investors should always be careful. The sports memorabilia market goes through repeated peaks and troughs, which always attracts fraudsters, and some purchasers have complained about fakes. Those interested in memorabilia need to understand the provenance of individual items; a replica shirt will be worth a fraction of the genuine article, but it can be difficult to tell the difference. Using a reputable dealer and obtaining an authenticity guarantee goes some way to addressing the problem. But ultimately sports memorabilia is more suited to fans than to serious investors looking for long-term returns.