Josh Allen is making a very real push in the football card market, and that alone changes the conversation. Patrick Mahomes still owns the biggest football card sale ever, but Allen’s rise has put him in territory that, until recently, only Mahomes and Tom Brady had occupied.
Mahomes has been the hobby’s standard-bearer since he took over for Alex Smith in Week 17 of the 2017 season. Even now, his top line remains untouched: his 2017 National Treasures Shield RPA 1/1 BGS 8.5/Auto 10 sold for $4.3 million, the highest football card sale ever. But the market has shifted enough that Allen is no longer just chasing from behind - he’s forcing collectors to compare the two.
The big marker came in 2026, when Allen produced two million-dollar card sales. That snapped a football card market drought that had lasted more than two years without a million-dollar sale, and it pushed Allen into rare company. He has now tied Mahomes for the second-most million-dollar card sales, with Brady still ahead of both.
That doesn’t mean Allen has fully overtaken Mahomes. Not yet.
But it does mean the gap feels different now than it did when Mahomes was piling up the hobby’s biggest headlines early in his career. Allen’s momentum has been built on a huge 2024 MVP season, and his market has stayed hot since then.
His Card Ladder index shows a slight dip in the cards tracked, but the bigger picture is hard to ignore: repeated major sales, including those two seven-figure deals, have kept his name at the center of the hobby.
Mahomes, for his part, is hardly fading away. Card Ladder has his market up more than 69 percent over the last two years, which is still a strong run by any standard.
The difference is that Allen’s market has surged even harder, climbing 111.47% over the same span. That kind of jump is what has collectors talking about a changing of the guard.
So has Allen passed Mahomes? The answer is somewhere between yes and no.
On the hottest end of the market, Allen is winning more of the spotlight right now. But when it comes to the overall value of the more liquid cards, Mahomes still sits ahead.
With Mahomes healthy this year, the race is far from settled.
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