We are about one week into the 2021–22 NHL season and there is a lot of excitement about what Turner’s new TV deal to air games can do for the sport. We also witnessed a record sale for a hockey card with the 1979 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Gretzky PSA 10 rookie selling for $3.75 million, tied for 7th on the top-10 most expensive sports cards ever sold.
Ice Hockey isn’t as popular as sports like Soccer, Basketball, Baseball, and American Football, but from 2008–2020, the Stanley Cup finals averaged 2.15 million viewers per game. In 2020 and 2021, we’ve seen some big money spent on hockey cards and in this list, we are going to look at the top 25 most expensive hockey cards ever sold.
Note: There are some cards that have sold multiple times in the past year (some within a week or two of each other), but in order to diversify the list, the key sales were included, while removing the rest. For example, Wayne Gretzky’s 1979 Topps PSA 9 was sold 17 times in the past 12 months and all 17 of those sales would qualify for this list based on their sale prices. I’ve included record sales while avoiding follow-on sales that were close in value and would be redundant. Also, this list does not include auctions in progress (for example, Alex Ovechkin’s rookie patch auto card is currently at a bid of $48,000 with 5 days left at Goldin Auctions).