What Basketball Card Sellers Should Know Before The NBA’s Opening Night

LeBron is a Sixer. Giannis is in Miami. Here's what the NBA offseason means for your basketball card inventory

LeBron James turns 42 on December 30th. He'll spend that birthday as a member of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Playing on veteran’s minimum contract (two years, $8 million, with a player option), James will be trading Los Angeles Lakers purple and gold for Philly’s red, white, and blue, flying to work by helicopter from his new digs in New York City, a commute that puts the rest of us to shame.

If you had that on your 2026 bingo card, congratulations. The rest of us have some basketball cards to sort.

The 2026-27 NBA season tips off on October 20th with a tripleheader: first, the Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics take on Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons in a matinee game that’s perfect for the Association’s quest to gain further global appeal; then in prime time, it’s James and the new look 76ers against the defending champion New York Knicks; the night cap features the heavyweights of the Western Conference, with the Oklahoma City Thunder traveling to San Antonio for a Western Conference Finals rematch against the Spurs.

While opening day/night is getting lots of attention, it’s the weeks before that are among the strongest windows for basketball card sales.

The NBA is a league of stars, and a number of big offseason moves (like LeBron to Philadelphia and Giannis Antetokounmpo swapping Milwaukee for Miami), as well a highly touted rookie class led by AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer, and Caleb Wilson, have put collector attention on specific players. Sellers who scan, price, and list now will be ready when fans turn their attention from the NFL, the MLB postseason, and the start of the new NHL season to hoops.

Time to get those shots up!

The NBA Offseason, As Told Through Cards:

Three storylines are shaping the basketball card market this fall:

• The moves: LeBron was the talk of the basketball world all summer, but don’t sleep on the Bucks trading Giannis to the Heat. Topps' 2026-27 Flagship Basketball set has these future Hall of Famers in their new jerseys. When talking about players as good as these two former MVPs, a new jersey can mean plenty of new demand, especially in markets as big as Philadelphia and Miami.
• The rookies: The Washington Wizards took AJ Dybantsa first overall, followed by Darryn Peterson (Utah Jazz), Cameron Boozer (Memphis Grizzlies), Caleb Wilson (Chicago Bulls), and Keaton Wagler (Los Angeles Clippers). For the first time, the top picks signed their Topps NOW cards on stage at the draft, and with a rookie class this strong, we can expect to see some big time sales associated with these potential future stars before too long.
• The sophomore: A one-of-one Cooper Flagg 2026 Topps Chrome Updates NBA Debut Patch Auto sold for $8.04 million through Fanatics Collect a month before the Dallas Mavericks star entered his second season. That's the most ever paid for a single-player NBA card, falling short of a card with autographs and Logoman patches from two of the best to ever do it, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, which sold for nearly $13 million in August of 2025. The reigning Rookie of the Year starts his second season with high expectations, even if the supporting cast around him isn’t exactly playoff ready.

What to Do With the Cards You Already Have:

Find the big names first: Your boxes probably have more LeBron and Giannis cards than you remember. A basketball card scanner identifies the player, year, and set of the card directly from a photo, speeding up the process, and since Mascot's AI scanner offers unlimited scans on every plan, a full box doesn't use up a monthly credit allowance—or take you weeks to upload.

Research the market: Check sold listings, not asking prices, for the exact cards you have. If they’re graded, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, not PSA 10s to PSA 8s. Flagg's $8 million sale doesn't make your Flagg base card worth more, but it does mean more buyers are searching his name, and you can take advantage of that demand with accurately priced listings.

Decide your plan for the rookies: Prices for rookies tend to swing pretty wildly once real games start. A good debut can mean a boom, and earning a trip to the bench can mean a (momentary) bust. Before cards from the 2026-27 season land at your doorstep, decide whether or not you want to sell or hold your Dybantsa, Peterson, or Boozer pulls. Given the amount of cards printed for each player these days, does holding mean waiting for a new career high, the end of the season awards, or retirement?

List everywhere with a single click: Basketball buyers are hunting for singles eBay, watching live shows on Whatnot, and trying their luck with live breaks on TikTok Shop. Mascot's multi-channel listing tool allows you to publish each card you want to list to all of your connected channels at once, putting it in front of more eyeballs—and giving it more opportunities to sell. Then, once it’s sold, Mascot automatically delists it everywhere so you don’t have to worry about selling the same card twice—or the ensuing headache—especially during high demand periods like the season’s tipoff.

Add a second channel without a second account: With the Mascot Network, you can unlock up to to 50% more overall sales while only paying a 3% fee on sales that come through the network, putting more money from every sale back into your business. Plus, Mascot handles buyer messages, so all you have to do is package up your sales, slap a prepaid label on the box or mailer, and take them to the shipper.

Get Ready For Tip Off:

The Spurs open the season as the favorites, followed by the Thunder, Knicks, 76ers, and Celtics. All five play on opening night.

The NBA runs on two things: starpower and hope. Sure, eBay searches for LeBron James’ new 76ers cards will be sky high, as hoop heads across the globe chase cardboard of The King in yet another new jersey, but in a league where more than half the teams get to enjoy some sort of playoff experience each season (yes, the play-in counts), fans from Minnesota to Sacramento…well, maybe not Sacramento—sorry, Kings fans…are heading into the season with something to root for. Give them what they want: cards to commemorate the breakaway dunks, buzzer-beating threes, and big time blocks they’ve waited for all offseason.