While World Series rings don’t seem to impact a player’s value in the trading card/collectibles market as much as championships in other sports can, MLB postseason success can still drive interest and affect value in ways both short and long term. And since the 2024 World Series involved two teams with massive fan bases and an outsized number of collectors in the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, there was more scrutiny around this one than most in recent years.
So which players from those two teams benefited the most in the collectibles market from their post-season success? Here are our rankings.
1. Freddy Freeman
This should be super obvious so we’re not going to bother teasing it out.
Freeman has long been one of those very, very good players who, for whatever reason, just never really broke through in the collectibles world. That’s nothing unusual. But then Freeman provided an instantly iconic moment in Dodgers (and MLB) history with his Game 1 walk-off grand slam and went on to set a new record for consecutive World Series games with a home run. He was the clear-cut World Series MVP. All of that together could be enough to put him in a higher tier of players among collectors long term. In the short term, his performance has had a huge impact on his card prices. His 2011 Topps base rookie card in a PSA 10 grade is up about 173 percent over the last month, selling for around $63 in early October to around $180 just after the World Series concluded. His 2011 Topps Chrome base rookie card in a PSA 10 was up about 108 percent in the same span, going from around $150 to around $330. His 2011 Topps Heritage rookie card in a PSA 10 was up about 135 percent.
While those jumps are likely to drift back down to Earth a bit over the offseason, Freeman has very likely expanded his collector base with this performance.
2. Juan Soto
Yes, Soto’s team lost the World Series, but individually he had a tremendous postseason that has only further fueled the hype around his impending free agency this winter. Soto will be the talk of the offseason and wherever he lands his arrival will excite that fan base, likely fueling a wave of buying. His cards saw a more modest bump than Freeman’s in October, with his 2018 Topps Update base rookie card in a PSA 10 up about 28 percent for the month, his 2018 Topps Chrome Update rookie card in a PSA 10 up about 15 percent, his 2020 Stadium Club Chrome card (which shows him doing the Soto Shuffle) in a PSA 10 up about 88% and his 2016 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autograph card in a PSA 10 up about 47 percent. It’s worth noting that the populations on Soto’s graded rookie cards are very high given the hype around him from a young age, so that tends to keep the prices of those cards in check (demand may be high, but so is supply!). That said, Soto is still just 26 years old, he’s already on pace to have an incredible career and he’s just about to start a new chapter of it.
3. Shohei Ohtani
It wasn’t a standout World Series performance for Ohtani, as he was almost certainly held back by the shoulder injury he suffered in Game 2, but his first championship capped off his historic first season with the Dodgers and added another achievement to his long list of them. After becoming the first MLB player to achieve a 50/50 season, his card prices largely came down a bit during October — although a new all-time high for any Ohtani card was reached on Oct. 15 when a 2018 Topps Definitive gold-framed Ohtani rookie autographed card numbered to 30 and graded a BGS 9.5 sold for $350,000 ($14,000 more than the previous record for an Ohtani card reached less than a month earlier). But now he’s a World Series winner, he’s a few weeks away from likely becoming just the second player to ever win an MVP award in each league, and next season he will resume pitching in addition to hitting.
At this point he is undeniably an all-time great and with a giant, international fan base like his, he is locked on as a hobby legend.
4. Mookie Betts
Betts had a strong postseason, but between Freeman’s remarkable feats and all the attention on Ohtani, it seemed like he was overlooked for the most part (aside from the Yankees fans who wanted to forcibly take foul balls from him). With all the big names the Dodgers now have, will this be the new norm for him? If so, will it keep his card prices in check compared to if he was the first name on the call sheet? He’s closing in on a Hall-of-Fame career but if he keeps producing at the level he is and can stay healthy all season next year, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of attention he gets from collectors.
5. Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Pitching well in the World Series is a great way to cap off one’s first MLB season and the start of a giant, long-term contract. Yamamoto missed considerable time due to injury this season, which cooled off some of the hobby hype around him, but he delivered when he did he play. Still, Yamamoto is a pitcher and, in the long run, collectors just generally don’t value pitchers the way they do hitters, so that will always put a cap on prices.
6. Giancarlo Stanton
Breaking the Yankees franchise record for more home runs in a single postseason is definitely a notable accomplishment given the team’s history, and some collectors gave Stanton a fresh look in October, as result. At 34 years old and with a long injury history, it’s hard to say how much longer he’ll be able to hold that spotlight. But he’s starting to close in on 500 career home runs (currently at 429), so if he can stay healthy and make a run at it, he could keep the interest going.
Biggest disappointment: Aaron Judge
Just when Judge was starting to look like himself again at the plate, the World Series ended. He will likely win his second AL MVP award in a few weeks and should put up big numbers again next season, so his disappointing postseason performance likely won’t impact his card prices for too long. It would be interesting to see just how high they could go if he’s ever able to combine a stellar regular season with a strong postseason performance, though.
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(Top photo: Elsa/Getty Images)
