Sports cards are way more complicated than they used to be.Gone are the days where hobbyists could point to a simple and straight-forward base card as the pinnacle for a top player. In 1986, collectors were chasing Jerry Rice’s Topps rookie and that was it. In 1989, the hunt was on for Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookies in Bowman, Donruss, Fleer and Topps Traded, though the Upper Deck Star Rookie was considered the new 401k.Today, the ultra-modern trading card market is nearly unrecognizable. There are still those standard base cards, but now there are also versions of them with a rainbow of different colors and patterns denoting different levels of scarcity. There are cards that are autographed, cards bearing a range of memorabilia (some tied to players and games and others off the rack) inside them, image variations, serial-numbered parallels, inserts, super short-printed case hits and, well, you get the idea. There are more types of cards than ever and some can be important or valuable for different reasons to different people, among a growing sea of cards that are neither to anyone.Rookie cards used to be the cards to own. Now, it’s not so clear.“For a lot of people, that (ungraded) Topps card that’s $90, or whatever it happens to be, is the option for them if they want to participate in the rookie card market,” said Rob Veres, owner of Burbank Sportscards, one of the country’s top hobby shops. “And a lot of them are under the impression, and they’ll always be under the impression, that the rookie card is the most important card … but there’s a difference between the best rookie card and the most expensive card.”A flurry of auctions in recent months has continued to signal that collector sentiment is changing, especially at the high end of the market. Earlier this month, a one-of-one 2025-26 Topps Chrome Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Gold Logoman Autograph sold for a little more than $1 million at Goldin Auctions to become the most expensive card for the two-time NBA MVP. The card was released during his eighth season but contains a patch worn by the Thunder guard to celebrate winning his first MVP award during the 2024-25 campaign.In March, Gilgeous-Alexander’s 2019-20 Panini Flawless Logoman Autograph sold for a then-record $577,306. Released during his second season, the card carried a premium because it featured him in his Thunder uniform rather than the Clippers uniform in which he began his career. Gilgeous-Alexander’s third-most expensive card, the one-of-a-kind Green parallel of his 2024 Panini Revolution Kaboom insert, sold for $432,000 in January because it was the rarest version of arguably the most popular modern insert in sports cards.It’s not until Gilgeous-Alexander’s fourth-most expensive public sale that you find a rookie card — his 2018 National Treasures Logoman Autograph 1/1 that sold for $228,000 in 2023.A number of factors are always at play for any auction, including timing, market health, player popularity and the item’s scarcity, but exceptionally rare and notable cards from later in his career are floating to the top of Gilgeous-Alexander’s market, eclipsing the previous highs for his best rookie cards. This is a trend that is becoming increasingly common in today’s card market.“There’s nothing that prevents something coming up four years from now for (Gilgeous-Alexander) that people think is actually better (than a rookie card),” Goldin Auctions founder Ken Goldin told The Athletic. “Maybe it hasn’t been invented yet, we don’t know what it is. There used to be set collectors, player collectors, rookie card collectors, and now they are just simply card collectors where they are looking for the best that they can afford.“They’re looking for the grail cards and that may not necessarily be rookie cards for a lot of players. As things get more interesting, more hyped, more promotion, more media, it pushes those cards up.”One of the most powerful trading card attributes that can outperform the best rookie cards is game-used memorabilia connected to a specific moment. To many collectors, the most significant cards combine those characteristics, such as the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph (RDPA) that was created by Topps and parent company Fanatics in 2023. Those cards feature an autograph and a one-of-a-kind patch created for and worn only during a player’s professional debut. First created for MLB, the RDPA program has since expanded to include the NBA, NFL, MLS, Formula 1, UFC and WWE in various formats.