Tennis Cards Are Hot: The 14 Highest Recent Sales

The PSA graded population on this card is... 1. That's right. This is the only PSA 10 on the market. When you have the only one of its kind, prices can get a little crazy. It will be interesting to see what this card sells for the next time it comes to market. There are actually two Venus Williams cards in this set, the base, and the "event edition." The base is almost equally as rare, with only three PSA 10's in the population.

That said, if you can find a raw version of this card that is worthy of being graded, it would seem to be an immediate buy.

Some of the younger people who are reading this article won't understand what a cultural icon that Andre Agassi was in the 1990s when his Nike sneakers were almost as popular as the Air Jordans, and his list of endorsements seemed never-ending.

The eight-time Grand Slam champion and 1996 USA Olympic team gold medalist had a legendary rivalry with Pete Sampras that was must-watch television, even for those who weren't exactly huge tennis fans.

I would not be surprised if Agassi cards go on a big run in the coming years. Whoever bought this card for $1500 got a steal, in my opinion.

Roger Federer. Rafael Nadal. Novak Djokovic. Pretty much every list of the "best male tennis players of all time" has these three at the top.

The PSA population of these cards is wildly low, with only 3 graded versions out there, and this being the only PSA 10. With that kind of rarity, this is another card that I believe could have a big run in the coming years.

Arthur Ashe is the only black man to win the singles titles at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open and was the first to be selected to the US Davis Cup team. He retired in 1980 after a legendary career that saw him peak at number 2 in the world in May of 1976.

Sadly, he is also well known for contracting the HIV virus from a blood transfusion in 1983 and died in 1993 due to AIDS-related pneumonia.

There are only 3 of these cards in the entire world that are graded by PSA, and this PSA 5 is the highest graded of them all (the other two are PSA 2's).

This NetPro card features 2 swatches of "match worn apparel" and Serena's signature but was sold "raw" (ungraded).

It is fair to wonder how much this card would have sold for if it was graded a PSA 10, as there are only 100 of them that were produced, and there are only 2 graded versions on record, with the highest being a PSA 8.

If the person who bought this card gets it graded and it comes back at least an eight, things could get very interesting the next time this card is sold.

This card was serial-numbered to 2000, but amazingly, there are only 34 of them that have been graded by PSA with 21 PSA 10's in the population (13 PSA 9's).

I have a feeling that as word of this $9000 sale gets out there, PSA will be receiving quite a few of the remaining 1,966 that were produced.

This card came in the 2008 Topps Allen & Ginter baseball set, with the Serena Williams being part of the "framed autos" inserts that came in 1/277 packs. There were 37 athletes in "group A" of this insert, giving you about a 1/10,294 chance of getting one of these Serena cards in a pack.

This card is graded a PSA 10, and the auto also received a 10. The $9,000 price tag may seem like a lot of money at first glance, but in comparison to much less rare NetPro base cards, it may have been an absolute steal.

This card is a 1/1, meaning they only made one of them. Making it even more special is the fact that it was graded a PSA 10, and the auto also received a 10. Leaf cards are not traditionally the cards to collect in the major sports, but this card is absolutely beautiful, and as the Serena market continues to rise, I wouldn't be shocked if this card started to inch a little closer to the seller's original $100,000 asking price on this auction.

These Sports Illustrated for Kids cards are traditionally VERY sneaky plays in the hobby. If you checked out the link in the intro paragraph to my story about single-person cards, you will see multiple examples of SI For Kids cards selling for eye-popping numbers.

This one is no different! $10,000 for a perforated card that came for free inside of a 1999 issue with eight other cards might seem crazy, but with only 8 PSA 10's in the population, the market wants what it wants!

The 2003 NetPro base cards are matte-coated. However, there are glossy versions that were short printed (only 100 total were made) and at the end of the day, these will be the most sought after and collected. The fact that (as you will see below) a base PSA 10 sold for over $14,000 makes the $11,495 price tag of one of these glossy versions seem wildly underpriced in comparison. The sky is the limit for this card.

There are only 10 graded examples of this card and only two PSA 10's in the population. It is surprising that this is the only appearance for Djokovic on this list. Still, with such a small population, this card, featuring his autograph, seems to be wildly underpriced in comparison to the next card on this list.

A PSA 9 SI For Kids card of Naomi Osaka selling for $13,400 is probably the most stunning sale on this entire list. Honestly, it makes no sense to me. While the future is bright for Osaka, she is not Serena... at least not yet... and she has quite a long way to go. Serena's PSA 10 SI for Kids sold for thousands less than Osaka's PSA 9 in an apples-to-apples comparison. Somebody has to explain this purchase to me and why it makes sense in comparison to the rest of the cards I mentioned.

Here is another stunning sale that would seem, at least on the surface, to be extremely confusing and almost too good to be true. This is a base Serena NetPro PSA 10, not a glossy. The print run on this card was relatively large. There are a ton of raw examples out there selling for around $25.

On the Card Talk Podcast (@cardtalkpod), a few days after this sale, the hosts speculated that it's possible the buyer misunderstood what they were buying and thought they were getting the glossy version. However, all we can go on is the information presented, and it appears that this sale went through.

If the 2003 NetPro base Serena Williams PSA 10 truly is a $14,000+ card going forward, it is going to be very interesting to see what happens to the values of the rest of the cards on this list in the coming weeks and months! Buckle up!

This Nadal 2003 NetPro selling for $18,000 is far less confusing than the previous card, since it is the rare glossy version that was short printed, with only 100 total copies ever made.

Nadal might be the greatest male tennis player of all time, so to have 1 of the 100 examples of this card graded as a PSA 10, that basically makes it a "Holy Grail" type of card in the hobby.