Jayden Daniels and Micah Parsons pacing NFL football card activity
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A one-on-one battle between Green Bay Packers All-Pro defensive end Micah Parsons and Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden Daniels is a marquee matchup tailor-made for the first “Thursday Night Football” game of the 2025 NFL season.
No football player has generated more money in eBay sales in 2025 than Jayden Daniels. On Thursday, Daniels squared off with Green Bay Packers defensive end Micah Parsons, who has done his part to make defensive players relevant in the football card market. The two 2024 Pro Bowl selections have been two of the hottest names in football cards early on in the 2025 NFL season.
An uncomfortable place for Daniels, the reigning NFL Rookie of the Year, is in the crosshairs of Parsons, settling into life as a Packer after the blockbuster trade that sent him to Green Bay from the Dallas Cowboys. Parsons is also trying to run Daniels down off the field when it comes to their football card values.
RELATED: Micah Parsons football card market explodes after historic NFL trade
Quarterbacks dominate the football card market, but Parsons has helped carry the banner for defensive players seeking hobby relevance.
According to Card Ladder, Parsons’ cards are up 68.2 percent over the last three months. Parsons' values spiked at a one-year high on Aug. 30, two days after the Cowboys dealt him to the Packers for Pro Bowl defensive lineman Kenny Clark and two future first-round draft picks.
Even though Parsons’ key rookie cards feature him in a Dallas uniform, cards like PSA 10 copies of his 2021 Panini Prizm Football (#382) Silver parallel, which has a population of 224, skyrocketed after the trade, increasing in value 92.2 percent from three months ago. The most recent confirmed sale before Thursday’s game was a winning bid of $144.17 in an eBay auction on Tuesday.
According to GemRate, only Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Cooper DeJean’s cards have accounted for more eBay sales (more than $1.24 million) among active defensive players in 2025 than Parsons ($552,189 in sales through August). Parsons’ year-to-date sales put him fourth in the football card market among defensive players, coming behind DeJean, Deion Sanders ($886,088) and Lawrence Taylor ($610,054), with Detroit Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson ($529,920) rounding out the top five.
August was Parsons’ best-selling month, according to GemRate, with his cards generating $125,785 in eBay sales.
RELATED: Topps Chrome Jayden Daniels Superfractor Card Sells at Auction
While Parsons’ cards have picked up steam of late, he and every other noteworthy player in the football card world are in Daniels' rearview mirror. Cards of the No. 2 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft have tallied more than $23.28 million in eBay sales in 2025, including more than $3 million in August, according to GemRate.
Father & son pull a 1/1 Jayden Daniels autograph card together ❤️
— Topps (@Topps) May 29, 2025
(🎥 rookiesandkeysofficial) pic.twitter.com/JymVqKVjkN
Daniels is miles ahead of his peers, with Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes ($15.07 million in eBay sales through August) a distant second. Across all sports, based on the data collected and published by GemRate, only Michael Jordan ($41.6 million) and Shohei Ohtani ($28.3 million) have generated more eBay sales in 2025 than Daniels.
RELATED: Commanders' Owner Buys Half Million Dollar Jayden Daniels Card At Fanatics Fest
Daniels’ card values are nowhere near where they were in January, when he led the Commanders to the NFC Championship Game (down 60.8 percent since Jan. 19, the day after the Commanders won their NFC Divisional game on the road over the Detroit Lions), the 2023 Heisman Trophy winner remains a hot commodity for sports card collectors, dealers and investors.
On Sept. 7, the first Sunday of the NFL season, Daniels’ cards generated more than $6,900 in sales. That marked Daniels’ all-time high for single-day sales volume, according to Card Ladder.
PSA 10 copies of Daniels’ base rookie card from 2024 Panini Prizm Football (#347) can be had for less than $100. The most recent verified sale of the card, with a population of 4,791, ahead of kickoff on Thursday, was for $86.15, in an eBay auction on Wednesday.
The most recent sale of a Daniels PSA 10 Prizm Silver was also on eBay, which was an auction that ended on Wednesday with a winning bid of $1,324.
-1f9b5aba42acf122a9de17edfe18f6ad.jpeg "Jeff Howe")
Jeff Howe is a sports writer with over two decades of professional experience contributing to ESPN.com, Rivals.com and the Sporting News, among other publications. He currently reports on the Texas Longhorns for “On Texas Football” after covering the Longhorns for 247Sports and CBS Sports. His hobby journey started when he was 6 years old, hanging out at his dad’s card shop and collecting cards alongside his two brothers.