Three of the most significant basketball cards of the current era, including the one-of-a-kind Cooper Flagg Rookie Debut Patch Autograph card, will be auctioned through Fanatics Collect next month, the company announced Friday.

With the Flagg item, Debut Patch cards for San Antonio Spurs guard Dylan Harper and Charlotte Hornets sharpshooter Kon Knueppel will also sell as part of the platform’s September Premier auction, which runs Sept. 10-24.

Each autographed card, which also includes a patch created by Fanatics and worn during the athlete’s first NBA regular-season appearance, is widely considered the best card for each featured athlete.

Flagg’s Debut Patch, which has been the target of dozens of bounties, including offers from the Dallas Mavericks and multi-million-dollar cash offers from individual collectors, is widely expected to challenge the highest known sale for an ultra-modern (2017-present) basketball card. The current high is the $5.1 million paid in a private deal for the one-of-one 2023-24 Prizm Black parallel Victor Wembanyama rookie card in May.

Until now, the secondary market for Debut Patch cards has largely been dominated by baseball players, as the program was first launched with MLB, though it now also includes the NFL, World Cup, Bundesliga, Formula 1, MLS, UFC and WWE.

The first Debut Patches for basketball, which arrived for the 2025 NBA Draft class, are expected to drive some of the program’s highest sales because of the sport’s popularity in the high-end market.

Of the top 20 all-time modern card sales logged by card price tracker Card Ladder, 12 are basketball cards. The highest public sale for a debut patch from any sport to date is the $1.1 million paid for the Paul Skenes card by Dick’s Sporting Goods in March 2025, which could be topped by each of the cards of Flagg, Harper and Knueppel in a single night.

“I think basketball is more part of pop culture,” Fanatics Collect vice president Kevin Lenane told The Athletic. “You see more kids with basketball jerseys. There’s more interest in LeBron (James) and (Michael) Jordan. The intertwining (of pop culture) with basketball in particular seems to be the strongest.”

The consignment of the Flagg Debut Patch to Fanatics Collect ends the hunt not just to pull the card, but to win the rights to sell it.

The Mavericks were among the first to offer a bounty before the card was even pulled. The team included a pair of premium, lower-level season tickets for 32 years (Flagg’s jersey number), an autographed, game-worn rookie Flagg jersey and several other team-related experiences. Several individual collectors and trading card-related businesses offered multi-million cash bounties.

The Mavericks bounty is the second from a major sports team to be turned down by a Debut Patch owner. The Pittsburgh Pirates made an offer for the Skenes debut patch last year that included season tickets and team experiences, but the card’s 11-year-old owner turned it down. The child and his family, California natives, chose to consign the card with Fanatics Collect instead of taking the Pirates’ package.

The Flagg Debut Patch card was pulled on Aug. 10, just four days after the release of the set it’s a part of, 2025-26 Topps Chrome Updates Basketball, during a box break run by a small Rhode Island hobby shop. The card’s new owner, Jason Williams of South Carolina, chose to consign it with Fanatics over the other offers.

Williams was not available to speak to The Athletic about his decision to consign the card with Fanatics Collect, but in an Instagram post he said, “This is more than just a dollar sign. This means a lot more to me & my family than anyone could imagine. Truly thankful and blessed!”

Jason Williams (center, in the Indiana Fever shirt) with his family and the Cooper Flagg Debut Patch redemption card. (Photo courtesy of Parker J. Asel)

“Someone would need to be from Dallas or from Pittsburgh to understand the value of (the team) offers, or to at least appreciate them,” Lenane said. “… If a Mavs fan hits the Flagg, I think then you have a real conversation. But outside of that, I think it’s tough for a guy from South Carolina to be into the Mavericks or a kid from L.A. to be into the Pirates.”

Beyond bounties from the Mavericks or other collectors, Fanatics Collect beat out offers from other auction houses, including Goldin Auctions. Goldin founder and CEO Ken Goldin offered a $1.5 million cash advance if the card was consigned to his auction house.

Trading card marketplace Alt attempted to lure the Flagg card to its platform by opening a “Debut Bounty Auction,” where it accepted binding bids for the card before it was consigned anywhere.

According to Alt, bids would carry over if the card was consigned to the platform or voided in any other scenario. Bidding had reached $3.8 million for the Flagg Debut Patch before Alt closed the auction on Wednesday.

As of Thursday evening, the bounty auction for the Harper Debut Patch card was at $800,000 before buyer’s premium (the fee an auction house charges based on the item’s sale price).

“It did exactly what we built it to do,” Alt CEO Leore Avidar said about the bounty auction concept in a statement to The Athletic. “We had nine verified bidders in the first two hours, and the bounty bids reached $3.84 million, every dollar of it binding. This card had never traded, and now the whole hobby knows what it’s worth. Wherever it sells next, it sells at a number our bounty auction discovered first.

“The card not coming to (Alt) was always a possible outcome, and we designed for that. The bids expire, nobody owes anything and the demand doesn’t go anywhere. We couldn’t be more excited about where this goes … the next time a grail gets pulled, the market bidding is going to open on Alt.”

Lenane believes Fanatics Collect earned the right to sell the card by showing up in person when it was first discovered.

“We physically went to the shop, that’s how we won the card,” Lenane said. “I took a boat from Long Island to Connecticut and took an Uber across from Connecticut to Rhode Island at 6 a.m. to get to the shop nine hours after the card was hit. I talked to the collector through the shop’s landline because he wouldn’t give out his phone number.

“Everyone else was running through Instagram messages and posting bounties and stuff, and we had two people in that shop. Another guy took a red-eye (flight) from L.A. and got there two hours after me. That’s why we got it.”

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