NBA team owners and basketball card collectors mostly agree on what makes a player valuable: scoring. Where they part ways is loyalty. Owners pay for long tenure and games started, while collectors care more about a player’s individual numbers.
That is the result of a study by Tyler Horn, Levi Soborowicz and Peter F. Orazem of Iowa State University and Rashad Dixon of the University of Texas. It was published online on May 2, 2024 in the Atlantic Economic Journal.
Rookie cards versus career salaries
The authors took advantage of the card boom during the COVID pandemic, when card values rose more than fivefold in 18 months and trading was unusually active. That made prices a good read on what collectors really thought of each player.
They matched 185 NBA players who started their careers in 1993 or later and had retired by 2019 with the price of their Topps rookie card in near-perfect PSA 9 condition, using sales recorded as of March 2022. They then compared those prices with each player’s highest salary.
The design strips out several sources of noise. Retired players carry no speculation about future performance. A single card brand and grade fixes quality and scarcity. And only players who lasted long enough to sign a second contract were included, so pay reflects NBA performance rather than college promise.
The average card sold for $39.22, but the median was just $14.05. Kobe Bryant’s rookie card fetched $268.
Offense is king for both
Offensive statistics, meaning field goal percentage, points and assists, drove both values. A 1% increase across offensive stats raised card values by about 1.9% and salaries by about 2.4%. Those returns grow faster than performance itself, which helps explain why both salaries and card prices are dominated by a few stars.
Defense counted for much less. A 1% increase in defensive statistics raised card values by 0.66%, with rebounding doing most of the work, but did not significantly raise salaries. Fouls and turnovers had no significant effect on either.
Where owners and collectors split
The clear difference was career attributes. A 1% increase in both tenure and share of games started raised salaries by 0.61%, but if anything nudged card prices down, by an imprecisely estimated 0.4%.
The authors point to how teams make money. Revenue is tied to winning and the local fan base, so a player’s worth depends on how he fits with teammates. Revenue sharing, under which teams pool roughly half of annual revenue after expenses, and collective bargaining rules also compress pay. Successive bargaining agreements raised all salaries but had no effect on card values.
Collectors, by contrast, form an international market loyal to individual players rather than to a home team, so personal statistics matter more.
The study also checked for discrimination. Neither card prices nor salaries differed by race or by foreign birth among these 185 players, of whom 81% were Black and 17% were born outside the United States.
Study Details:
- Title: Are NBA Players Equally Valued by Team Owners and Trading Card Collectors?
- Authors: Tyler Horn, Levi Soborowicz, Rashad Dixon, Peter F. Orazem
- Journal: Atlantic Economic Journal
- Publication Date: May 2, 2024
- DOI: 10.1007/s11293-024-09798-9