Unexpected Trove of Tyrese Maxey Grails Available at Auction
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One of the more surprising wrinkles inside the current PSA Vault Super Bowl Spotlight Auction on eBay is a deep run of Tyrese Maxey gems. The NBA star's cards are showing up alongside the personal collections of football legends like Tom Brady and the Manning brothers, as well as a Pokémon grail and more than 80 additional cards. It’s unexpected, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Maxey is in the middle of the kind of career leap that quietly reshapes a young player into a true franchise engine whose best years are clearly ahead.
For collectors, that combination of rapid ascent, monster single-game performances, major awards, and a locked-in long-term role tends to be fertile ground for rookie cards, early autos, and breakout-era parallels to start carrying a different kind of weight.
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From 21st Pick to Franchise Cornerstone
Drafted 21st overall out of Kentucky in 2020, Maxey entered the league as an energy guard off the bench, averaging just 8.0 points in 15.3 minutes as a rookie. His development curve since then has been remarkably steady. Once he moved into a full-time starting role, his scoring jumped from 17.5 points per game in 2021–22 to 20.3 in 2022–23, and then exploded to 25.9 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 6.2 assists in 2023–24.
This season, Maxey has settled in as a 25-plus-per-night scorer and primary ball-handler, hovering around 26–30 points, 6-7 assists, and strong shooting splits (near 47% from the field and close to 39% from three), while maintaining elite free-throw efficiency around 88%. That steady climb is the backbone of his hobby story that is starting to reward early believers.
The Breakout Season That Changed the Conversation
The 2023–24 campaign was Maxey’s true arrival. He earned his first NBA All-Star selection, was named Kia NBA Most Improved Player, and also won the NBA Sportsmanship Award—becoming the first player in league history to claim all three in the same season.
He posted three 50-point games that year, including a career-high 52 in a double-overtime win over San Antonio, and followed it with a playoff career-high 46-point performance in a Game 5 win over the Knicks. Those kinds of nights are the moments collectors mentally anchor to rookie cards and early autos—the “this is when it became real” games.
That momentum has carried into 2025–26, where Maxey has already logged multiple 40-plus outings, a 51-point game, and a memorable January 30 performance featuring the game-winning and-one layup with 1.3 seconds left against Sacramento. He and Joel Embiid have now combined for 30-plus points in the same game 15 times, a mark topped only by the Tatum/Brown duo among active pairs.
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Contract, Role, and Long-Term Collecting Potential
In July 2024, Maxey signed a five-year, $204 million max extension with Philadelphia, locking him in as the organization’s co-centerpiece alongside Embiid. With James Harden gone and Embiid frequently in and out of the lineup, Maxey has become the Sixers’ primary perimeter engine.
For collectors, the narrative is clean: a rare late first-round guard who actually made the leap into All-NBA-adjacent territory, with award hardware, playoff moments, and a long runway ahead. That’s exactly the profile where early-career cards start to feel less like speculative plays and more like foundational pieces, making the presence of curious Maxey gems inside the PSA Vault Super Bowl Spotlight Auction on eBay incredibly intriguing.
Lucas Mast is a writer based in California’s Bay Area, where he’s a season ticket holder for St. Mary’s basketball and a die-hard Stanford athletics fan. A lifelong collector of sneakers, sports cards, and pop culture, he also advises companies shaping the future of the hobby and sports. He’s driven by a curiosity about why people collect—and what those items reveal about the moments and memories that matter most.
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