Highlights
- $584.7M in 2025 tracked sales — second-highest annual figure on record, behind 2022's $621.4M.
- Modern-era tracked dollars (51%) edged vintage-era (49%) for the first calendar year.
- Five sales above $5M in Q4 alone, including the Ruby Slippers ($32.5M at Heritage in December).
- Mahomes RPA /99 sale ($4.3M, October) crystallized the modern football story for the year.
- Photo-matched game-worn jersey volume cleared $48M for the year, a record for the recorded series.
What Q4 2025 actually looked like
The two stories of Q4 2025 are the Ruby Slippers and the Mahomes RPA. Both were headline events, but their meaning for the broader market is opposite, and both are instructive.
The Ruby Slippers were a unique-event sale. $32.5M for the FBI-recovered pair of screen-worn ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz (1939), at Heritage Entertainment in December. The provenance — original screen use, theft from the Judy Garland Museum, FBI recovery — turned the lot into a media event. The sale set the all-time record for movie-prop memorabilia. But it is not a comparable for any other transaction. There is no second pair of these. The price tells you about how the market values one-of-one provenance with a documented criminal-investigation chain; it does not tell you about $5M-tier movie props in general.
The Mahomes RPA was a comparable sale. $4.3M for the 2017 Panini Immaculate Collection Mahomes RPA /99, BGS 9.5 / Auto 10, at Goldin in October. That sale slots cleanly alongside the LeBron Exquisite ($5.2M, 2021), the Brady Contenders ($2.3M, 2022), and the implied future Mahomes prints. It tells you the working market for apex modern football cards. It is a number that informs every dealer, consignor, and collector decision in the modern-cards category for the next twelve months.
The distinction matters. The Field Index publishes both — record-setting sales and benchmark sales — but treats them differently. Records describe the ceiling of possibility; benchmarks describe the floor of expectation.
The year in totals
| Category | 2025 tracked | YoY change | 2025 share of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trading cards | $208.4M | +13% | 36% |
| Movie/TV memorabilia | $96.8M | +22% | 17% |
| Sports memorabilia | $92.1M | +8% | 16% |
| Comics | $76.4M | +9% | 13% |
| Music memorabilia | $42.3M | +5% | 7% |
| Political/historical | $34.6M | +18% | 6% |
| Autographs (standalone) | $28.7M | -2% | 5% |
| Toys | $5.4M | +11% | 1% |
A few observations:
Trading cards reclaimed share. After a 2023 in which trading cards' share dropped to 32% as movie props and music memorabilia stole headlines, 2025 saw cards back to 36% — driven by modern. Vintage cards were flat to slightly down by tracked volume; modern (Mahomes, Mahomes adjacency, Doncic, Wemby) carried the segment.
Movie/TV memorabilia is the breakout. +22% YoY is the steepest annual gain of any tracked category. The driver is partly the Ruby Slippers single event but more substantially the maturation of Propstore as a serious institutional auction house. Their March, June, September, and November sales now reliably clear $15–$25M each. Five years ago, that volume was concentrated in three or four mega-events per year.
Autographs as a standalone category contracted. -2% YoY by tracked volume. The story is the migration of value: autographs that are attached to game-worn equipment, instruments, or screen-used props are categorized in those parent categories, not standalone. The autograph-only category is increasingly the long-tail (signed photos, signed albums where the album is not a major release, certified-but-not-museum-grade items). That tail compressed in 2025.
The modern-vintage crossover
For the first time in the recorded series, modern-era tracked dollars crossed 50% of total. The category-specific definitions:
- Cards: Modern = 1981+ (Topps/Bowman/Donruss/Score era through current Panini/Topps Chrome)
- Sports memorabilia: Modern = post-1990 (game-worn after the modern jersey-tagging era)
- Comics: Modern = 1986+ (post-Watchmen/Dark Knight Returns)
- Music: Modern = post-1990 (post-album-era)
- Movie/TV: Modern = post-1980 (post-Star Wars era)
The 51%-49% split is significant because of what it implies about the cohort of buyers. Vintage buyers skew older and tend to be category-loyal (cards collectors, comic collectors, autograph collectors). Modern buyers skew younger and tend to be cross-category — buying cards and game-worn jerseys and screen-used props within the same year, often within the same purchase decision. As that cohort grows, the secondary market becomes more correlated across categories, with implications for downside scenarios in any single sub-category.
Q4 2025 stand-out sales
- The Wizard of Oz Ruby Slippers — $32.5M, Heritage, December
- Patrick Mahomes 2017 Immaculate RPA /99 — $4.3M, Goldin, October
- Action Comics #1 CGC 9.0 — $4.7M, Heritage, October
- Kobe Bryant 2009 Finals Game 4 photo-matched jersey — $1.1M, Heritage, June (re-sale in November)
- Babe Ruth single-signed sweet-spot baseball (premium JSA letter) — $440K, Heritage, October
The cumulative weight of these five plus the long tail of 200+ smaller sales is what produces the $164M tracked quarter.
What 2026 sets up
The setup for 2026 has three structural features worth noting:
Boomer-driven supply continues. The 2024–2025 surge in tracked political/historical document volume is a leading indicator: as collections from estates enter the market, the long-cycle (15–25 year) accumulation of high-quality items rotates into auction. We expect that to continue through at least 2030.
Authenticator capacity is the gate. PSA, JSA, Beckett, SGC, and CGC are all running multi-month backlogs on standard-tier service. The grading-service capacity constraint is now the rate-limiting factor on tracked sales — items that cannot be graded cannot be sold at premium tier, which means there are real items waiting in the queue.
Cross-category modern is the growth story. A buyer who purchased $50K of modern cards in 2024 is in 2026 also looking at modern game-worn jerseys, screen-used props from films released in their own lifetime, and signed albums from artists currently touring. That cross-category modern buyer is a different person from the 1990s/2000s cards-only collector, and the market is restructuring around them.