Collecting Victor Wembanyama: Physical or Digital?

Everyone wants a piece of the 2023 NBA Draft 1st overall pick and International superstar, Victor Wembanyama! Any officially licensed memorabilia of his is flying off of the shelves. He is on the short list of anointed players joining the NBA with promises of surpassing the G.O.A.T., Michael Jordan. Grant Hill, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Zion Williamson all gave their best shot at it but fell short. And now, it is Wemby’s turn.

Why Collectibles?

Collecting, hoarding and esoteric attachment is a part of human nature. Since entertainment collectibles have become part of Americana, hobbyists were after the rarest and most taboo things. That is why the sports card “Holy Grail” is the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner. Trading cards were starting to become a trend and American Tobacco, a cigarette company, wanted to cash in on the new craze. What they didn’t expect was pushback for promoting smoking by using Honus Wagner’s name, image and likeness.

Sound familiar? Because of his public objection of being used to market smoking, the company was forced to remove his card from the supply. Due to this restriction, there are less available Honus Wagner cards and even fewer in good condition. This is a story as old as time: supply and demand.

The Modern Collector

For the past 30 years, since Upper Deck introduced materials on paper cards, hobbyists have found many niche ways to build a collection to get closer to their fandom. There are event-used relics, scarce number prints, on-card autographs, different art variations, and many more nuanced aspects driving curiosity and collectability.

The MLB now stitches a patch on a rookie’s jersey for their first professional game, then retrieves the jersey post-game to preserve the emblem for Topps’ exclusive card series. For example, Pittsburgh Pirates rookie ace, Paul Skenes’ 1/1 MLB Debut patch card is auctioning for $550,000 on 56 bids (as of Mar. 13, 2025) on FanaticsCollect.com

In A Class Of His Own

Skenes’ current bid is dwarfed by the 7’4” Frenchman’s record card sale of $860,100 USD at Goldin Auctions! Goldin Auctions is famous for their Netflix Series ‘King of Collectibles, the Goldin Touch’.

Wembanyama’s 2023-24 Panini Prizm ‘Nebula’ 1 of 1 was authenticated by premier grading company PSA and given a 9 out of 10 grade.

This wasn’t Victor’s only near-million dollar sale. His NBA Debut jersey, which was kept 100% intact, sold for $762,000, by Sotheby’s. They also auctioned his Christmas debut jersey for $192,000.

The most famous jersey that Victor Wembanya has worn to date is the one he swapped with a young fan sitting courtside. Shortly after, the once feel-good story turned sour when the parent(s) of the young fan coordinated a sale with Goldin Auctions for $73,000.

This isn’t the only one of one Victor Wembanyama artifact. Panini has many Prizm set variations and one of the sought after collaborations is with Monopoly. His Monopoly ‘White Shimmer’ 1/1 graded an 8 by Beckett (BGS) sold for $20,875 and the “Black” 1/1 graded a 9 by PSA for $59,000.

What does the next 30 years entail?

With the rise of crypto currency and the United States House passing the FIT21 crypto bill, the space known as Web3 is here to stay. FIT21 and legislation since has been incredibly crypto friendly by delineating coins from securities. As long as sports or trading cards don’t have to be registered as a stock, neither do your digital versions. Even Pokemon collectors rejoiced.

This was another sign of confidence for the non-fungible token market. NFTs are a broad term for a digital collectible, coined by Deiter Shirley who founded the ERC-721 token built into the Ethereum network. He was making a game where you can breed and sell digital cats on his website called Crypto Kitties.

In Layman’s terms, he created serial numbered images that can be sold and/or used as game pieces with proof of ownership through your profile. Typically, in video games you buy skins with real money, but you can’t even sell them back to the company or to other players in the game. Now you can through his innovations with $ETH. Deiter created a new blockchain that is cheaper to transact called $FLOW. More transactions means more community activity.

Panini had a ‘monopoly’ on NBA card licensing and wanted to expand their products to the blockchain. Their static images give you a familiar design that is supposed to help carryover lifelong card collectors to the digital realm. It hasn’t caught on fast with the community because a piece of the hobby is the in-person business. Card shows, card shops, trade shows, flea markets, and grading companies have built this industry. Cash deals and trades do not translate online, so there are hurdles there too. The digital space cuts them out in various ways and threatens the status quo.

Moving Forward

Panini has not wavered and is doubling down with their blockchain product. Last season, Panini minted their first animated series where the card itself has moving graphics highlighting the parts of the card that would typically glisten in-person. The 2023-24 National Treasures Logoman set was groundbreaking for them and their current record sale was because of this new twist on their digital trading cards. X user, @spinotronPC, spent $146,431 on Victor Wembanyama’s animated N.T. Logoman!

Deiter Shirley didn’t just stop at breeding digital cats. He and his team at Dapper Labs found a new use-case for their technology. If sports cards, fantasy sports, crypto, and gaming had a baby, its name would be NBA Top Shot. They are digital trading cards (known as “moments”) that are not confined to static images, however they contain highlight(s) of the NBA’s best plays. Some plays are historic, flashy, gritty or flat-out lucky. But in every way, Top Shot’s Moments bring you closer to the game without anything fungible (physical). These cards are serial numbered and can only be owned by 1 user at a time. This new spin on the hobby has convinced NBA Top Shot collector BilloBanked to be the owner of Victor Wembanyama’s Ultimate #1/1 Moment that encapsulates his dominant rookie campaign.

The final auction price was $145,000 on April 17th, 2024. Check out the licensed highlight reel moment below:

View This Collectible (with sound) on NBA Top Shot

Why Digital?

The physical card space has seen a slew of problems in recent years that makes buyers, sellers and collectors in general want more protections. CllctMedia operated by sports journalist and enthusiast, Darren Rovell, has covered a litany of scam operations in the card space. Stories range from CAT scanning unopened packs/boxes, over $2 million stolen at the Dallas Card Show by a team of people, fake $808,500 MJ rookie cards sold by an 84-year old man, and live-break transparency/fairness issues.

Live pack breakers are making repacks of old cards to sell, rigging results, as well as ending streams early with no recording/proof of pulls, or even editing streams to steal/swap cards. WhatNot, Instagram Live, and EBay Live have these gray areas where newcomers are used, abused and lost to never return. If nothing changes, then the industry could eat itself alive.

Transparency

Open source wallet data is available on every person’s collection and every single card has a serial number. On NBA Top Shot, Victor Wembanyama currently only has 4,348 cards or ‘Moments’ in existence. Compare that to Panini, which already has produced 25,134 PSA gem mint 10 Base Set cards according to PSA, and that leaves out the other grading companies' numbers. How many grades are lower and how many cards are ungraded or even unopened still in packs? The number seems astronomical, and there are over 100 different versions of Wemby rookie cards.

I think it is safe to say Panini has made over 1 million physical Victor Wembanyama cards of any variety. NBA Top Shot, however, has 7 different parallels and only 4,348 total editions. Supply and demand is the name of the game, and though Top Shot has seen its fair share of criticisms, it is breaking every mold it continues to form. All 4,348 editions are graded a 10. You can’t get them wet, lost or bent.

As of Dec 5th, 2024, EBay built onsite integration with the PSA grading service. It provides buyers confidence, but leaves out other graders such Beckett, SGC, CGC, Arena and other companies. So this isn’t a perfect solution to problems around transparency and user friction.

Co-existing Collectibles

Only time will tell if the online versions of trading card companies can entice the collectors of the past to transition over and bring on a next wave of sports hobbyists. The younger generations are more trusting of online banking and trends suggest cryptocurrency is still in its infancy.

If you enjoy collecting physical sports cards, it might not hurt to diversify your collecting strategy. You can choose to go with a titan of industry like Panini, or test the imaginative take on sports card collecting with NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, or UFC Strike. Dapper Labs has exclusivity on licensed video highlights in the listed leagues above. Everyone's collecting style is different. Find what suits yours.

Cameron Quinlan is from Springfield, MA. Along with being from the birthplace, a lifelong player and fan of basketball. He didn’t get recruited out of high school, but found a job as a practice player on a D1 women’s basketball team in Iowa. Next season, he was promoted to Assistant Coach. The IWCC Reivers finished with a 25-5 record and lost in the ‘Elite Eight’ round. Since then, he has worked for newspapers, semi-pro teams and sports marketing companies centered around the game of basketball. He is most proud of his work on a podcast that spanned over 2 years with Basketball HOFer Rick Barry for ABA Western Massachusetts Zombies.