What we're covering today:

🏀 Jordan's 1998 Game 2 jersey sold for $14 million without an auction
⚾ A signed Ruth card brought $976,000 and an empty box brought $86,213
🎵 Collectibles.com on how to start collecting physical music
⚡ Pokémon's week: a $2.96 million bid, a resale ban, and 42 master sets in an attic
🧢 Trout, Magic, and the Raiders' new quarterback all got into the card business
🔥 Heatseekers: Top upcoming releases

Michael Jordan's Game 2 jersey from the 1998 Finals sold for $14 million, a record for basketball memorabilia, and the deal was done privately in September before anyone outside Hunt Auctions knew it existed. The buyer is the same collector who paid $12.6 million for the 1952 Topps Mantle.

Meanwhile, Goldin sold the only signed 1932 U.S. Caramel Babe Ruth for $976,000 and an empty 1952 Topps display box for $86,213, the Trophy Pikachu climbed past $2.9 million, Japan's biggest resale platforms banned carton listings of Pokémon cards, and Collectibles.com sat down with the man who grades sealed cassettes for a living.

The empty box outsold most of the cards that came in it.

Let’s get into it.

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Hunt Auctions announced Monday that Michael Jordan's red road jersey from Game 2 of the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $14 million in a private deal finalized in September.

The buyer is Ron Firman, the real estate investor who paid $12.6 million for the SGC 9.5 1952 Topps Mantle in 2022 and $3 million for the original Mantle photograph last month. The jersey is photomatched by MeiGray and SIA, signed, and comes with a 2003 letter from the Bulls, who sold it directly to the first collector. Hunt says it has changed hands once since.

Jordan scored 37 points in Game 2, a 93-88 win at Utah that evened a series Chicago won for its sixth title. All three of his 1998 Finals jerseys to reach the market have sold in the last four years, and each beat the last.

The only game-worn jersey in any sport to sell for more is Babe Ruth's 1932 "Called Shot" jersey at $24.12 million.

David Hunt said his firm now views Jordan memorabilia as an asset class on par with major works of art, which is what an auction house says once it no longer needs an auction to sell one.

Goldin's Fall Vintage Elite auction closed early Sunday after extended bidding, and the top lot was a card almost nobody has seen signed. The 1932 U.S. Caramel Babe Ruth, inscribed "Sincerely, Babe Ruth" in fountain pen with a PSA/DNA Mint 9 autograph, is the only known signed example from the 32-card set, and it brought $976,000.

A 1910 Type I photo of Ty Cobb sliding into third, the finer of two PSA-certified prints, finished at $945,500.

The top five:

A sealed five-cent 1952 Topps pack graded PSA 6 brought $109,800, and the strangest number sat further down: an empty 1952 Topps one-cent display box, the cardboard the packs shipped in, sold for $86,213, which Sports Collectors Daily called almost certainly a record for a card box. Two days earlier, a 2026 Prizm Choice Nebula 1/1 of Lionel Messi, graded BGS 9, sold privately for $1.25 million, three days after his final game for Argentina.

Rob Martinez once sent Steve Aoki two paragraphs and some notebook sketches over Instagram DM, and thirty minutes later Aoki wrote back asking if he was real.

That message became Audio Media Grading, which grades vinyl, cassettes, CDs, 8-tracks, and reels on a 1 to 10 scale, and in Collectibles.com's new guide Martinez explains where a beginner should start.

His own holy grail is a sealed 1995 cassette of GZA's Liquid Swords, hype sticker intact, and he will never open it. Anyone tempted to listen should buy a cheap second copy and leave the relic alone.

Read the full guide at Collectibles.com.

The Trophy Pikachu that broke the record in pre-bidding has kept climbing. As of Thursday, the 1997 Gold First Place card, graded PSA 8 and listed by Goldin as one of eight in PSA's census, sat at $2,425,000 on 31 bids, or $2,958,500 with the premium, with the hammer set for October 25.

The Japan rules are not a blanket ban on resale, and nothing like them exists anywhere else yet. The Woking collector paid about £300 for his first set and never let his son touch the binders, which is why the Skyridge Charizard set alone is now estimated at £20,000 to £40,000.

Mike Trout is launching a company. Generation One Collect, run by co-founder and CEO Eric Mandelkern, starts with live card breaks and plans to add content and athlete experiences, beginning with an event at Trout's youth baseball camp where kids open Topps packs in person.

Two days later Goldin and Magic Johnson hosted an invitation-only event in Los Angeles to announce weekly Lakers auctions on eBay Live every Wednesday from October 28, with jerseys and balls from that week's games among the lots. The display case at the launch held Kobe's signed sneakers from a 42-point playoff game in 2004, which gives a sense of what the archive sales could look like.

The newest entrant did not choose it. Fernando Mendoza replaced Kirk Cousins with 6:06 left in the Raiders' 45-17 loss at New England on Sunday, completed 6 of 8 passes, and Topps confirmed the debut patch from his jersey will go into a 1-of-1 autograph card in a 2027 product. Paul Skenes' MLB version sold for $1.11 million.

The world of collectibles is wide and deep, and there's a constant stream of new releases. Here are some of the big ones that are coming up:

Every big number this week belonged to something that survived intact. Jordan's jersey went from the Bulls to one collector in 2003 and changed hands once in 23 years. The Ruth card is the only signed one anybody knows of, a decorator in Woking kept 42 master sets sealed in binders his son was never allowed to touch, and the $86,213 box is worth that much because somebody in 1952 did not throw it away.

Rob Martinez put it best in the Collectibles.com guide: you are the temporary keeper of the thing, and your job is to hand it on the way you found it. The hobby pays for cardboard, cloth, and cellophane, but what it is really paying for is the decades somebody resisted opening it.

See you next week!