Over the last 11 or so seasons, New York Yankees star Aaron Judge has become a generational player and one who is extremely popular with collectors. Play in a big market? They don't get bigger than the Yankees. One of the best players of his generation and a mortal lock to get into the Hall of Fame? Check. Possesses clear, loud accomplishments that appeal to even the most casual fans? Yep, that too. Outside of Shohei Ohtani, who is a unicorn of a player, Judge may be the most collectible name in baseball right now.
As it turns out, winning Rookie of the Year and three MVPs gets a guy noticed. Within the card-collecting world, we have seen some Judge cards exceed $1 million comfortably. However, it is still wild that a Judge card that wasn't even autographed came very close to hitting seven digits at auction recently.
Aaron Judge 1/1 card fetched over $800K at auction, but that's nothing compared to other sales of his cards
This requires a little explanation for the uninitiated. In 2013, Bowman released Judge's first licensed card in a Yankees uniform, both in autographed and non-autographed forms. To reach a bit into the grand lexicon of baseball card collecting terms for a moment, those cards each had special, shorter printed versions called parallels, including the ultra-rare, one-of-one superfractors, which have a gold border with a perlage finish. For years, superfractors of key cards have been the holy grails for collectors.
In this case, it was the non-autographed superfractor of Judge's 2023 Bowman card that surfaced and was auctioned by Heritage Auctions, eventually selling for a staggering $838,750. Had the card been graded a perfect 10, as opposed to the 9 it received, there is reason to believe it could have hit the $1 million mark.
As of now, this card is considered the most valuable non-autographed Judge card of all time, but it pales in comparison to some of his biggest autographed cards ever. Earlier this year, the 1/1 dual Gold Logoman from 2025 Topps Chrome with autos from both Judge and Ohtani in celebration of their MVP wins sold for $2.16 million. This past March, the autographed superfractor version of Judge's same 2013 Bowman card set the record for the most expensive modern card ever sold at $5.2 million.
If you want to collect high-end Judge cards, you are several years too late unless you have Saudi oil baron-levels of money stashed away. It is crazy how much money is thrown around in the hobby these days, although much of it is over very specific, rare cards featuring an extremely small group of players. It is abundantly clear that Judge is firmly in that pantheon and will be for a long time.
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