What Are The Five Most Expensive Trading Cards Ever?

Trading cards and stickers are hobbies that people enjoy and get into in no small part because they are inexpensive.

There are a lot of games out there which you can start collecting for a very low price, and you can even use flashcard printer online and make your own game if you have the creativity.

However, part of the appeal of trading cards is their rarity, and as a result, some people have spent astronomical amounts to get cards of which very few high-quality examples are known to exist.

Due to a combination of rarity and demand and condition, here are the most expensive trading cards in the world.

Blastoise (£269,000)

Pokemon cards have been a playground institution for over 20 years. However, due to its popularity, most of the cards depicting the uniquely colourful collection of critters are not exceptionally valuable.

However, with more attention coming onto the original set of cards thanks to a series of popular streamers, the first edition of cards have started to increase in value.

The most expensive of these was a prototype card depicting Blastoise, of which there are only two in the world.

It was initially meant to showcase the card to shop owners but has since sold at auction for $369,000, beating a first-edition Charizard sale for $266,000 (£194,000) just two months before.

Black Lotus Alpha (£372,000)

One of the most infamous cards in the history of Magic the Gathering, Black Lotus is the one card that every person who plays the first-ever trading card game seeks to collect.

This is in part because of its rarity, as only 4400 were ever printed, and only 1100 of those are of the highly desirable “Alpha” set.

The other part is its infamous power, which was said to make every single deck in the game better. It and eight other supremely powerful cards got the nickname “Power Nine” as a result.

In January 2021, a signed mint condition version of the Black Lotus sold for $511,000, making it the most expensive TCG card ever made.

Honus Wagner 1909-11 T206 (£2.42m)

Often considered the single most desirable trading card ever, the 1911 cigarette card ended up becoming rare out of circumstance. Wagner, consider to be one of the greatest baseball players ever, did not want children to buy cigarettes to get a card of him so it was discontinued.

As a result, only 50 to 200 cards were ever produced, and only 47 exist today. As a result, a mint condition version of the card ultimately sold for $3.12m, making it at the time the single most expensive card ever sold.

Mike Trout Signed Bowman Rookie Card 2009 (£2.87m)

A card just 12 years old rarely ends up becoming a hugely rare one, but in the case of a 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractor card, it turned out to be because that card was one-of-a-kind.

A gambling consultant, “Vegas Dave” Oancea, bought the card for the not-inconsiderable sum of $400,000 in 2018, just two years before breaking the record for the most expensive card ever at $3.936m.

This record would not last, however.

Mickey Mantel 1952 Topps Card (£3.73m)

In November 2020, just three months after the record was beaten, it was completely smashed by another mint condition card with an even more bizarre history.

One of only six in existence after the remaining supply was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean in 1953, the card sold for an astronomical $5.12m.