NFL Fans in the Smallest Markets Are Buying the Most Merchandise
On May 11, 2024, all eyes were on Paul Skenes as the generational talent made his first MLB start.
No one in attendance watched him more closely than a visitor tucked away in a corner of the Pirates’ dugout. A patch was affixed to Skenes’s left sleeve to signify the moment, and an MLB authenticator was there to make sure the small piece of embroidery never left his jersey.
Six months later, the patch was affixed to a trading card. Then, in March 2025, the card brought in $1.11 million in an auction at Fanatics Collect—the highest price ever fetched for a Rookie Debut Patch Auto (RDPA). The card was purchased by retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods and displayed at one of its Pittsburgh stores.
Topps began inserting relic, patch, and swatch cards into packs in 1996—pieces of uniforms, batting gloves, cleats, and bases. Even dirt. (Fanatics president of trading cards David Leiner notes that when Topps acquires an item, it uses and cuts up the entire piece for future products.) Today, RDPA cards, created by Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan and first released in 2023, have quickly become the most desirable—and expensive—autographed rookie card. The 2024 lot featured 251 cards, including big names such as Skenes, Junior Caminero, Elly De La Cruz, and Jackson Holliday.
“That 1-of-1 patch, that’s something that the player wore, had on their person. That’s what makes it so special and so unique is you’re really getting to that moment when they first stepped on the field. It’s that one special moment in time that you can never replace,” MLB’s director of authentication Michael Posner tells Front Office Sports. “If that player becomes the next Willie Mays, you have the most special 1-of-1 card.”
In 1996, Upper Deck became the first major card company to include swatches and game-worn items in its product. Its rivals Topps and Panini introduced relic cards a few years later. But Topps is the only company to make trading cards with the tiny patches, which were created in partnership with MLB and MLB Players, Inc. to become RDPA collectibles.
Leiner says part of the appeal of the Debut Patch comes from the visibility. “This is in the television coverage. You have your commentators talking about so-and-so is making their MLB debut. Sometimes they’ll talk about the Debut Patch on the live broadcast; the fans see the patch there.”
When a player gets called up, MLB alerts the authenticators who are scheduled to work that game. There’s always at least two on-site. These current and former law-enforcement agents get to the ballpark early to place a Debut Patch on the player’s jersey sleeve. From the time the patch is slapped onto the jersey until the end of the game, someone is always watching.
It’s especially important, considering two debut patches fell off jerseys last month, an issue MLB is working with Topps and Fanatics to correct. (One detached from Red Sox pitcher Payton Tolle’s jersey before his first pitch; it’s unclear whether the card’s value will be impacted, but a Fanatics Collectibles spokesperson told Cllct that Topps will include an “acknowledgement that this patch was worn during warmups immediately prior to the game and not during the game.”)
After the game, an authenticator peels the Debut Patch off the jersey and sticks on a tamper-proof hologram to guarantee its authenticity. The Debut Patch is then shipped to Topps’s facility in Texas.
Once Topps gains custody of the Debut Patch, it’s bagged and tagged. Topps validates all the information tied to that patch. “Those patches are secured in our facility under lock and key and under a lot of security,” Leiner says. Next, once the cards are produced, Topps’s player licensing team gets each signed by the athletes—the only time a card leaves the facility.
Some people pull RDPAs from packs like any other card. Others find a golden ticket—a redemption card to exchange for an RDPA of one of the biggest names from that season.
Patch cards didn’t really intrigue collector Eric Mandelkern until the unique RDPAs came out. Mandelkern has always been into collecting prospect cards from Bowman and Topps Chrome releases, but instantly became a fan of the Debut Patch, and knew he had to get his hands on the special 1-of-1 card of his favorite young players. Mandelkern values quality over quantity, estimating his 200-card collection is worth $2 million.
In March 2024, he purchased his first RDPA: Mets pitcher Kodai Senga for $17,080. Right before Christmas last year, Mandelkern went on an RDPA spending spree. He bought the 1-of-1 card of Rays superstar Caminero for $66,000. Two days later, he dropped $105,000 on Brewers phenom Jackson Chourio’s RDPA card.
“To own a patch card, it holds value to me knowing that it’s game-worn and game-used,” Mandelkern tells FOS. “Once the Debut Patch came out and you had that connection and the availability to kind of figure out where that was from based on authentication that’s when it really kind of like was intriguing to me that Topps might be going in that sort of direction of kind of tying it to a specific game or to a specific event to create a tighter connection between the player and the collector.”
Since buying the Caminero RDPA, the third baseman made his first All-Star team and participated in the Home Run Derby, and the card’s value has risen. In late August, Mandelkern said he was offered $200,000—triple what he paid. He didn’t sell it. Mandelkern estimates his Chourio RDPA card to be worth in the $150,000 to $200,000 range and the Senga RDPA card to be valued at $35,000 to $50,000. That’s nearly a half million dollars combined.
As a category, RDPA cards have spiked upward during this MLB season. The cheapest Debut Patch cards listed on eBay are between $3,000 and $4,000; in contrast, a Debut Patch card sold for as little as $1,000 in October 2024 through the auction house Fanatics Collect. Several of the cards have yet to be pulled.
Mandelkern is in the market to add more RDPA cards to his collection. But they’re getting harder to track down because of their rising desirability. “They’re becoming more popular not only within the baseball collectors community, but from the other sports, basketball guys and football guys coming in to collect these seeing them as their best cards,” he says. “I look out for more, but they’re getting harder and harder to acquire, because the floor is very high on them. I have my eye on a few guys coming out in [the next collection].”
This year’s list of players with RDPA cards isn’t released yet, but the product will come out in November. They will highlight players who made their MLB debut between June 2024 and May 2025.
“There’s always going to be an appetite for this stuff, because fans want a piece of the game. That’s why these swatch cards work really well,” MLB’s Posner says. “It’s a great way for fans to experience a moment or something that their favorite player has worn.”
