Jayden Daniels walks to the locker room after injuring his left arm. (Photo: Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

Mark Laird of Las Vegas based hobby shop Paradise Card Breaks may have surprised some collectors in July by expressing hesitation with Jayden Daniels’ football card market heading into the 2025 season. Daniels was the football card world’s new golden boy following his stellar rookie season. Even Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris got in on the excitement by paying $500,000 for a one-of-a-kind rookie card — a record price for a Daniels card — with the player himself standing at his side at Fanatics Fest in late June. Daniels has been the most searched NFL player on eBay so far this year.

“To me, it’s almost like fool’s gold,” Laird said. “I’m a little fearful there for the Commanders, but I would rather invest with those star quarterbacks (he noted Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow), the ones that are right on the cusp. Generally, there’s just too much risk with those like Year 2, Year 3 quarterbacks.”

Laird’s primary reasoning for a pause with Daniels, though, pointed back to what happened on the field and within the card market the previous year with the Houston Texans’ C.J. Stroud. And for Daniels card collectors today, unfortunately Laird’s fears have come to fruition.

Through knee, hamstring and now elbow injuries, concerns about Daniels’ durability on the field have Washington fans drifting back to Robert Griffith III. Those same concerns now have card collectors harkening back to the drastic losses in value of Stroud’s cards.

The parallels between Stroud and Daniels from Year 1 to Year 2 of their respective NFL careers may not be mirror images of each other, but in the sports card world, they might as well be the same guy given their reflective rise and fall within the same career timespans.

Stroud easily became the name in football cards during his rookie campaign in the 2023 NFL season. The Houston Texans quarterback stood tall with other young stars in other sports like Victor Wembanyama and Paul Skenes as arguably the three hottest athletes in the trading card business. Then the bottom started to fall out for Stroud on the field, which of course spurred a similar collapse for his card values.

This year, Daniels and the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark essentially ranked side by side as the most notable upstart names within the hobby earlier this year. Oddly, both have endured injury riddled 2025 seasons en route to sluggish current card prices.

Daniels’ 2024 Panini Prizm Silver rookie card with a Gem-Mint 10 grade from PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) sold for $1,880 in mid-January according to Market Movers (an online trading card price database) amid Daniels’ playoff run to the NFC Championship game. The high price tag occurred at the beginning of this year because that’s when PSA 10 graded examples of the card first hit the market following the product’s mid-December release.

That price leveled off in the offseason, ranging between $1,200 and $1,400 from mid-March through mid August. This showed a lack of significant bump surrounding the National Sports Collectors Convention in late July, which differed from the hype Stroud received during that show a year earlier.

Then prices dipped even further through Daniels’ injuries.

They went as low as $968 in mid-September, but bounced back and sold as high as $1,207 in early October. The latest sale only went for $810 on Thursday, which is the lowest price on the secondary market since the card has been printed and graded.

(Chart: Market Movers)

Stroud’s 2023 Prizm Silver PSA 10 rookie card sold as high as $2,075 in late January 2024 when the Texans quarterback pushed Houston to the AFC Divisional playoff round. That price quickly dropped once the PSA 10 population grew, with prices hovering between $900 to $1,000 through September. By 2024 season’s end, Stroud’s cards were selling for about $400.

One way to look at Daniels’ fall could point to a buy-low scenario for collectors.

That hasn’t worked for Stroud collectors hoping to buy low given the above examples. As for PSA 10 examples of Stroud’s Prizm Silver rookies, those currently can be found for around $270.

(Chart: Market Movers)

It certainly *has *worked, though, for those who bought low on Wembanyama following his shoulder injury in February. Let’s use Wembanyama’s 2023 Prizm Silver PSA 10 rookie card as the barometer. After his shoulder issue, Wembanyama’s cards only averaged $688 in May. They jumped to $847 in September, $1,283 in October and $1,739 in early November.

It’s uncertain as to when Daniels will return for the Commanders with his left elbow injury. Plus Washington (3-6) is facing an uphill battle to return to the postseason after last year’s trip to the NFC Championship game. All of this adds up to a shaky immediate future for Daniels’ card values.

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Nov 9, 2025

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Larry Holder is a Senior Writer for The Athletic, focusing on the memorabilia and collectibles industry. He joined The Athletic in 2018 as a New Orleans columnist and shifted to covering the NFL in 2021. Holder chronicled the New Orleans Saints and the NFL for 19 seasons before his current role. Before joining The Athletic, he worked for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, CBSSports.com and the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald. Follow Larry on Twitter @LarryHolder