Same LeBron Rookie, 9 Copies, $765 to $1,900

9 copies of the 2003-04 Topps #221 LeBron rookie closed Sunday, and the 3 that went to open auction settled at $765.00, $765.00 and $1,083.00.

9 copies of the 2003-04 Topps #221 LeBron James rookie changed hands on eBay Sunday — more copies of one card than any other card we tracked. The graded copy at the top took $1,900.00. The dearest ungraded copy took $1,100.00.

Why it matters

A grading ladder is normally stitched together from sales weeks apart, in different markets, at different moments of demand. This one built itself in a single day. It is also the second time this month the same card has led this column — it did so a week ago, on a different pair of copies.

By the numbers

• $1,900.00 — the PSA 9, listed at a fixed price and sold without a single bid.
• $1,100.00 — the dearest ungraded copy, also fixed price, also no bids.
• $800.00 — the gap between them, a 1.73x spread and the only same-card pair across both players that cleared our floors.

Reality check

Neither side of that $800.00 gap drew a bid. Both are asking prices somebody agreed to, not figures a room of buyers arrived at — so this is not what the market paid, it is what two sellers asked. And most of the gap is the slab itself, which is what a grade is for. Nobody found a bargain here.

Zoom in

The 3 copies that did go to open auction are the honest read. Two ungraded copies closed at $765.00 each, in separate auctions, on 10 and 11 bids. A PSA 8 drew 27 bids and settled at $1,083.00 — below the $1,100.00 an ungraded copy was listed at. Where buyers competed, this card kept landing in the same place; where sellers named the number, it ran from $799.00 to $1,900.00. If you are holding one, the auction column is the one to read. More in sports collectibles.

How we track this

RazMania compares completed eBay sales of the same card that closed on the same day. Two sales are treated as the same card only when the player, year, set, card number, parallel or photo variation, print-run serial, autograph status and altered status all match — so a Refractor is never compared against a base card. Best Offer sales are excluded entirely, because eBay publishes the seller’s asking price on those and never the settled figure; every price here is a confirmed paid price. Multi-card lots, reprints and customs are filtered out. We quote no comparable-sales median and no 90-day pool — both prices in every comparison closed on the same day. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.