Dodgers' World Series win has Shohei Ohtani cards reaching new heights

Card collecting is a time-honored tradition for all of the Big Four sports in North America, but it all started with baseball, and the hobby's still alive and well in the sport. Thanks to Shohei Ohtani, it's arguably never thrived more.

New rookie cards are loaded into every Topps release, but the craze for them typically subsides (for example, 2025 prices on Jackson Holliday rookie cards are not what they were in 2024). Former players are still very actively collected — Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter, and Barry Bonds are some of the most commonly chased retired players of the modern era — but demand has plateaued.

Ohtani's value keeps going up, and up, and up, with no signs of stopping. Per PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), "Ohtani's card value has risen by more than double since the 2024 Dodgers-Yankees World Series; and tripled since he joined the Dodgers in 2023," and has increased by 63% in the last three months, coinciding with his return to the mound, the Dodgers' second consecutive World Series win, and Ohtani's third consecutive MVP award.

As of early November, he was PSA's fourth-most collected athlete of all time and is on track to supplant Lebron James as the third-most within the year.

Dodgers' World Series victory, Shohei Ohtani's third MVP award are sending his baseball card value through the roof

The most expensive trading card ever sold is a 1952 Mickey Mantle with a near-perfect 9.5 grade from SGC, which went for $12.6 million in 2022. Ohtani's cards haven't reached those heights, but one of his cards — a 1/1 that contained both an autograph and the MLB logo patch from the pants he wore the night he reached 50/50 — is the 10th-most expensive baseball card ever sold at $1.07 million.

Even when considering non-numbered cards, like Ohtani's first card from a flagship product — his base rookie card in 2018 Topps Series 2 — can go for up to $80 ungraded, with graded versions and variations increasing in price exponentially.

Per PSA, "Ohtani was the most graded MLB player during the 2025 regular season with 88k+ cards graded, cementing his place as the No. 2 most-collected baseball player of all time behind Ken Griffey Jr.," but he's "less than 100k cards away from being PSA's most-collected baseball player of all time."

If you think you might have an Ohtani rookie buried in a drawer somewhere, now's the time to go hunting for it.