NBA collectors had one eye on Rhode Island on Monday night, and for good reason: a local card shop pulled the one Cooper Flagg card everybody in the hobby was chasing.
The hit came out of a break run by RhodyBreakers, which operates inside Baseball Cards of Rhode Island in North Kingstown. In one of three hobby boxes of Topps Chrome Update Basketball, the breakers uncovered Flagg’s one-of-one rookie debut patch autograph - the set’s true centerpiece and, for now, the best Flagg card in existence.
That card carries the “NBA debut” patch from the jersey Flagg wore in his first game on Oct. 22, 2025, plus his autograph. Flagg signed it at Fanatics Fest last month and said he was “a little nervous” to do it.
Topps Chrome Update released Thursday, and the debut patch autographs are the chase cards in the product. Flagg sits at the top of that mountain as last year’s top pick and Rookie of the Year winner, already moving into superstardom.
The way the card surfaced was through a break, where customers buy into specific teams instead of buying full boxes themselves. In this case, the buyers selected teams and would receive whatever cards came out for those teams. The Mavericks spot cost $515, the highest in the break because it carried Flagg, and that slot ended up producing the biggest card in the entire product.
On the RhodyBreakers YouTube stream, the breakers said the buyer plans to fly to the shop on Tuesday to pick up the card in person. Before the pull, bounties had already been lined up for whoever found it.
The Mavericks also put together an offer for the card with multiple perks, and Ken Goldin offered a major cash advance for the owner to take the card to Goldin for auction. Goldin’s pitch was a $1.5 million cash advance, with the hope the card would ultimately bring in between $3 million and $5 million.
That kind of money is exactly why the hobby treats this card like a trophy. It is Flagg’s best card, it includes the debut patch from his first game, it has his autograph, and there is only one of it.
The market for these debut patch autographs has already been established by Paul Skenes. The Pirates prepared a similar offer for Skenes’s debut patch autograph, but the owner passed and later sold the card at auction for $1.11 million.
Because the 2025-26 Topps Chrome Update set includes the first-ever NBA rookie debut patch autographs, Flagg’s eventual price is still unknown. But Sports Card Investor founder Geoff Wilson told ESPN at Fanatics Fest that he thinks the card could go as high as $5 million.
"When Paul Skenes' sold for $1.11 million last year, that really opened collectors up to the potential of rookie debut patch autograph cards," Wilson said. "I said, when Flagg has one and it sells, it'll exceed that, maybe $1.5 million.
"Now? Five million. It's definitively his best card."
RhodyBreakers said on the stream that a vetted and legitimate offer of $3.5 million was presented after the pull. For a $515 buy-in, that’s a massive windfall - and for one collector, a truly once-in-a-lifetime card.
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