Shaedon Sharpe’s first basketball trading card is available. Here’s how to get it.
Kentucky fans won’t see star recruit Shaedon Sharpe on the basketball court this season, but they will have a chance to welcome him into their homes. In trading card form.
Sharpe’s first official basketball trading card was posted for sale on the Topps website Thursday afternoon. The card, which is part of the company’s “Bowman NEXT” series, has a set price of $9.99 and will be available for purchase for one week. As part of the “NEXT” series at Topps, the Sharpe card will be taken off the market at 1 p.m. on March 10, and the print run will be based on sales up until that point. Once it’s off the market, no more versions of the card will be produced.
As the first official trading card for Sharpe — projected as a top-10 NBA pick if he enters this year’s draft — there’s bound to be some interest from collectors, who will be hoping that Sharpe blossoms into a star player in the league and this card will increase in value as his career progresses. More casual collectors and Kentucky fans are also likely to get in on the action.
Sharpe’s card shows him wearing a generic blue jersey, which appears to be his UPlay Canada jersey from the Nike circuit, and holding a basketball in an action stance. The 6-foot-6 shooting guard is not portrayed wearing his official college uniform, since Topps does not have the license to produce cards of players in University of Kentucky gear.
The back of the card includes biographical facts about Sharpe and notes that he will “make debut in 2022-23” season.
Sharpe is card No. 35 in the Bowman NEXT basketball series, which was launched at the beginning of the season and is the first of its kind for Topps. The company has been able to produce this set due to last year’s reforms to the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rules.
Topps made a special announcement in late January welcoming Sharpe to its team, and he’s clearly one of the players that the company is building its current series around. The financial details of Sharpe’s deal with Topps were not released.
“Topps is dedicated to capturing the best players and moments of the game, and Shaedon is one of the game’s rising stars,” Topps communications manager Emily Kless told the Herald-Leader. “Being able to bring collectors cards of young talent is something Topps prides itself in, and we’re excited for collectors and basketball fans alike to see Shaedon’s first official Topps cards.”
Kless added that Sharpe will also be one of dozens of players featured in the company’s upcoming Bowman University Basketball set, which is set for release this spring. Cards featuring autographs of Sharpe, potential No. 1 NBA Draft pick Chet Holmgren and a select number of other stars will be included in that set.
Fans and collectors can also buy autographed versions of Sharpe’s current Bowman NEXT card, but those can get pricey. There is a wide range of price points for the autographed cards, with different background color schemes to indicate the rarity of each item.
The blue Sharpe autographed card, for instance, costs $249.99 and will be limited to 49 copies. Once they’re all sold, that’s it. The lowest-priced autographed card costs $199.99 and will be limited to 99 copies. The highest-priced card — with a gold design — is set at $999.99, and only one such card will be produced. That gold card sold within minutes of being posted on the Topps website Thursday.
Not first Kentucky card
The card currently up for sale on the Topps website is the first ever to feature Sharpe, but it’s not the first release for a Kentucky basketball player this season.
UK freshman TyTy Washington got that honor last month, and his card — No. 24 in the series — sold 877 copies, making it the highest-selling college card in the entire set until this week, when Holmgren’s card ended its run with 6,096 sales. High school phenom Mikey Williams — a five-star recruit in the 2023 class with 3.6 million Instagram followers — was card No. 1 in the series. That one sold 6,275 copies.
Nearly all of the cards that followed Williams have featured college players.
Kentucky guard Kellan Grady was card No. 33 in the set and one of three players featured in last week’s release, which also included Holmgren and Wisconsin star Johnny Davis. The final print run on Grady’s card was 294.
It will be interesting to see how Sharpe’s card is received by Kentucky fans, compared to those of Washington and Grady, who are starters on a UK team with realistic national title hopes.
Sharpe, on the other hand, joined the program in January after graduating early from high school, and UK Coach John Calipari has already announced that Sharpe will not be playing for the Wildcats this season.
If the Ontario native was guaranteed to suit up for the Cats next season, his card would probably hold more value to Kentucky fans. But that’s still up in the air. While Sharpe’s camp and Calipari have said they expect him back for the 2022-23 season, many basketball analysts think he’ll jump to the NBA Draft this year, without ever appearing in a college game.
Whatever he decides to do this offseason, Sharpe is clearly one of the brightest young stars in the sport, and collectors will likely take a gamble on him — in trading card form — starting this week.
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 12:16 PM.
