Signed Jordan buyback sells for $33,889 on 72 bids

A 2001 Upper Deck buyback of a signed 1998 Jordan card, hand-numbered 4 of 10, topped Saturday's board at $33,889.

A PSA 8 copy of the 2001 Upper Deck Buyback #23 — a signed 1998 Upper Deck Jordan card that Upper Deck repurchased and hand-numbered, now in a PSA holder — sold for $33,889.00 on Saturday after 72 bids. It was the largest Michael Jordan card sale we tracked that day, and the day’s largest confirmed paid price.

Why it matters

Buybacks are a thin corner of the hobby: this copy is hand-numbered 4 of 10, and the autograph is signed on the card itself rather than on an applied sticker. A card that scarce settling through open bidding is a price somebody actually paid — and on this board, asking prices made up 77 of the day’s 297 listings.

By the numbers

• $33,889.00 — the day’s top confirmed Jordan sale, out of 297 qualifying single-card sales on our sports collectibles board.
• 220 of 297 — sales carrying a confirmed paid price, worth $456,237.01 in total at a $560.00 median.
• 77 — accepted best offers, carrying $91,596.41 in asking prices. The largest was a $14,700.00 ask on a 1997 Metal Universe Titanium #1 in BGS 9.5, at 0 bids.

Zoom in

The day’s most contested card was not its most expensive. A 1995 Upper Deck #335 Electric Court Gold in PSA 9 drew 74 bids and sold for $1,575.00, against the buyback’s 72. Behind them the board split 132 auctions, 88 buy-it-now listings and 77 accepted best offers. Elsewhere in the top five, a 1984 Star Court Kings 5×7 Jordan in BGS 8 took $25,988.00 on 38 bids.

Reality check

One sale is not a market, and this one has no baseline behind it: we pulled no comparable-sales pool for this card, so no multiple is quoted here. The 77 accepted best offers are worth reading carefully too — eBay publishes the asking price on an accepted offer and never the figure that actually settled, which is why that $91,596.41 stays out of the confirmed total. It is the same reason you read the last trade rather than the offer side of a spread, the habit our stock-research sister project applies to equities. For contrast, see Friday’s Jordan board.

How we track this

RazMania monitors completed eBay sales daily, filtering out multi-card lots, reprints, cross-listed items and non-card merchandise to isolate genuine single-card sales. On October 3 that left 297 qualifying Michael Jordan single-card sales; 29 rows were rejected as multi-card lots. Prices are final sold prices. No comparable-sale median is quoted in this article, because no comparable pool was pulled for the lead card. Context figures are drawn from a trailing sample of 141 sales spanning 35 days, not 90. eBay reports sold date, not sold time.