Naming a Mount Rushmore of anything sports related lends itself to debate. Not so for anyone with any interest in soccer collectibles There’s a distinct set of four names hobby enthusiasts focus on.Lionel Messi. Diego Maradona. Pelé. Cristiano Ronaldo.All four players rank within the top five of The Athletic’s Soccer 100 and all four players easily command the highest price tags for their most important trading cards or treasured game-used memorabilia. For now, it’s not even a debate. (Apologies, Johan Cruyff.)Where it gets murky is in trying to determine who stands atop that foursome.Pele, Messi and Ronaldo are the only three soccer players among the list of 31 athletes to have trading cards sell publicly for at least $1 million, according to online trading cards sales database Card Ladder, with top sales all within less than $200,000 of each other. But while Maradona’s top selling card stands nowhere near the $1 million mark, the Argentine legend holds the record for the highest priced piece of soccer memorabilia ever.Overall, there’s little debate that the soccer collectibles world is as hot as ever, given the boom across the industry as a whole and the excitement surrounding the World Cup in Mexico, Canada and the United States, where the collectibles market is strongest.For example, the shirt Pelé wore in the 1958 World Cup final between Brazil and Sweden will soon be sold at auction through Sotheby’s, carrying an estimated value of more than $6 million. In an auction ending July 16 — three days before the 2026 World Cup final — this jersey should become the highest priced piece of Pelé memorabilia ever sold. This same jersey last sold in 2004 for $105,000.A three-day auction of more than 2,000 Pelé items, which included his World Cup medals, trophies and crown for his 1,000th match, sold for a total of nearly $4.2 million in 2016 — almost $2 million less than the estimate for the single 1958 jersey in today’s market.Maradona’s “Hand of God” jersey on display in 2022. (ADRIAN DENNIS / AFP via Getty Images)The jersey Maradona wore when scoring the “Hand of God” goal during Argentina’s win over England in the 1986 World Cup currently stands as the most expensive soccer jersey sold. The shirt went for $9.28 million, also through a Sotheby’s auction, in 2022. As for the ball, it’s set to go up for auction through Heritage in late August. There’s currently no estimated value attached to it, but even slightly deflated and weathered this ball should carry a heavy price tag.On the trading card front, there’s no comparison between Pelé and Maradona.The most expensive Pelé trading card sale occurred in February 2022 when his 1958 Alifabolaget card with a PSA 9 (on a 1-10 scale of its physical condition) grade went for $1.33 million in a private sale. It was the first soccer card to sell for a seven-figure sum and held that place alone for more than three years. Maradona’s top card sale came in June 2022 when his 1977 Futbol Discs rookie card in a PSA 7 grade sold for $192,000 via Fanatics Premier.It shouldn’t be a stunner that Messi and Ronaldo overtook Pelé in the trading card sphere, though.Messi reached the $1 million club in September 2025 with two sales of his 2004 Panini Mega Crack #71 rookie card in a PSA 10 grade at $1.1 million and $1.5 million within a three-day span through private sales. A third sold for $960,000 through a Fanatics Premier auction two weeks later. Only 20 examples of that card exist in a PSA 10 grade.Ronaldo’s top-tier card market trampolined in late May. His top two highest sales occurred in consecutive days with the Portugal star on the verge of likely his final World Cup. His 2018 Panini Kaboom! Green one-of-a-kind insert card with a PSA 10 grade sold privately for $1.35 million on May 21. It’s the most expensive known sale of a Kaboom! insert card from any sport by a significant mark. (The next closest Kaboom! sale came when a 2021 Panini Absolute Kaboom! Green Tom Brady one-of-one version sold for $660,000 in November 2025 through Fanatics Premier). The Ronaldo 2015 Panini Flawless Finishes Black autographed one-of-one card with a PSA 7 grade sold for $420,000 through a Fanatics auction one day after the Kaboom! Green sale.