Shohei Ohtani’s card market keeps climbing, and the latest jolt came from one of his rarest rookie-era pieces. A 2018 Topps Chrome Shohei Ohtani Superfractor, graded BGS 9.5 and showing him pitching, just sold on Goldin for $2,562,229.
That sale puts the card second only to a 2025 Topps Chrome MVP Award Gold MLB Logoman Shohei Ohtani Patch Auto 1/1, which still holds the top spot at $3,000,000. For Ohtani, it’s another marker in a hobby run that has turned his rookie cards into some of the most chased modern baseball collectibles anywhere.
This Superfractor checks a lot of boxes at once. It’s a 1/1 from his rookie season with the Los Angeles Angels, and it’s now his most valuable rookie card, most valuable graded card, and most valuable non-patch or non-auto card ever. In the simplest terms, it’s one of the biggest Ohtani cards ever produced.
The sale also fits into the broader surge around his 2018 Topps rookie cards, which have exploded in value over the last few years as his individual and team success has piled up. The base version of this card is already viewed as one of the most iconic Ohtani rookie cards, and the Superfractor version takes that appeal into a different stratosphere.
Ohtani’s rare cards have been commanding serious money well beyond this one. A 2018 Bowman Chrome rookie card, the third and rarest variant known as the Carrying Bag SP, brought a private $700,000 deal brokered by South Korean shop Wyverns Sports Cards. At the time, that made it his most valuable Bowman Chrome piece and the third-most expensive publicly known Ohtani card sale.
Another standout came from an Ohtani auto card signed in Kanji, which sold on Goldin for $585,600 in September, two months before the Los Angeles Dodgers went back-to-back in World Series victories. The card hasn’t surfaced publicly since, and CardLadder estimates that if it reappeared today, it would land well within the $2,000,000 range.
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