Highlights
- $129.8M in Q2 tracked sales — the strongest quarter since Q1 2022.
- Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 sale ($6M, April Heritage) was the quarter-defining event.
- 1986 Fleer Jordan PSA 10 cleared $717K, reset the modern basketball card tier.
- Kobe Bryant 2009 Finals Game 4 photo-matched jersey sold for $1.08M in June.
- Movie/TV memorabilia category posted +24% YoY, the strongest quarterly gain of any category.
What Q2 2024 actually looked like
Q2 2024 was the quarter the memorabilia market signaled it had bottomed. Two April sales — Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 at Heritage ($6M) and 1986 Fleer Jordan PSA 10 at Heritage ($717K) — were the pivot. The Action Comics sale established a new Golden Age ceiling. The Jordan sale reset the modern-basketball card tier after two years of softening.
But the broader story was in the breadth of the quarter, not the peaks. Tracked sales hit $129.8M — the strongest single-quarter total since Q1 2022. The recovery was visible across categories: movie/TV memorabilia (+24% YoY), political/historical (+12%), comics (+8%), sports memorabilia (+6%). Modern cards remained slightly negative (-2% YoY) but the rate of decline had bottomed.
Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 ($6M). The Vincent Zurzolo / ComicConnect 'finest known' Action #1 had previously sold for $3.21M in 2014. The 2024 sale was 1.87x the inflation-adjusted equivalent — meaning the market had paid significant real-dollar premium beyond inflation for the same item, same grade, same provenance. That premium reflected expanded buyer demand at the Golden Age tier.
1986 Fleer Jordan PSA 10 ($717K). Heritage's April sale was the data point that ended the modern-basketball card slide. The card sat above the $625K October 2023 sale by 15% in six months. The population at PSA 10 had grown by approximately 12 cards over that period — modest, but enough to suggest the supply expansion was being absorbed.
Kobe Bryant Game 4 jersey ($1.08M). The June Heritage Platinum Night sale of the photo-matched 2009 NBA Finals Game 4 jersey reset the documented-provenance jersey price tier. The price was at the lower end of the $800K–$1.2M estimate but the photo-matching documentation drove the floor.
Numbers we tracked
| Category | Q2 2024 tracked | YoY change | Median sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trading cards | $48.6M | -2% | $25,200 |
| Sports memorabilia | $21.4M | +6% | $39,800 |
| Movie/TV memorabilia | $19.8M | +24% | $47,000 |
| Comics | $22.1M | +8% | $24,200 |
| Music memorabilia | $10.4M | +4% | $28,100 |
| Political/historical | $5.8M | +12% | $29,400 |
| Autographs | $2.9M | -3% | $10,200 |
| Toys | $1.4M | +5% | $7,100 |
What we learned in Q2 about category leaders
Comics emerged as the structural winner. The Action Comics #1 sale was the headline, but the broader story was that comic-book CGC 9.0+ population data had stabilized after two years of resubmission-driven inflation. The supply has not expanded; the demand has rebuilt. We expect comics to continue posting steady gains through 2025.
Movie/TV memorabilia accelerated. +24% YoY was the steepest gain in any tracked category. The driver was Propstore's institutional maturity as an auction venue plus growing documentation availability for original screen-used props (production records, Lucasfilm and Marvel internal archives becoming accessible).
Modern cards were not yet recovering, but the rate of decline had stopped. -2% YoY was the smallest contraction since Q2 2022. We assessed this as the bottoming signal, which subsequent quarters confirmed.
Methodology note
Tracked sales above the Field Index threshold are sourced from public auction-house catalogs, trade-press reporting, and grading-service population data.