Gale Sayers
Signed until 2020, so the supply is fixed — nothing new is being added to this market.
Recorded sales
| Date | What sold | Certified | Price | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-11 | Signed 1966 Philadelphia rookie #38 | PSA Card VG-EX 4 / Auto 10 | $1,952 | auction result |
| 2024-12-28 | Signed 1966 Philadelphia #38 | PSA Card VG-EX 4 / Auto 10 | $900 | auction result |
| 2026-05-03 | Signed 1966 Philadelphia #38 with a marked qualifier | PSA Card Good 2 MK / Auto 9 | $762 | auction result |
| 2023-02-26 | 2010s signed Chicago Bears stats jersey | PSA/DNA Auto 10 | $750 | auction result |
| 2024-12-28 | Signed 1966 Philadelphia rookie #38 | PSA Card VG 3 / Auto 10 | $432 | auction result |
| 2024-06-22 | Signed 1968 Topps #75 | PSA Card Authentic / Auto Authentic | $312 | auction result |
| 2024-03-03 | 1966 Philadelphia #38 | PSA Card Poor 1 / Auto 7 | $216 | auction result |
| 2024-12-07 | Signed 1966 Philadelphia rookie #38 | PSA Card Authentic / Auto Authentic | $204 | auction result |
By certification level
These are 8 results this index has recorded from Heritage Auctions between 2023 and 2026, not every sale that happened. They under-represent inexpensive items, which sell constantly and are reported rarely, and they exclude private sales this index has no record of. Read them as documented evidence rather than as a complete market.
About this signature
- Status
- Signed until 2020supply is fixed
- Note
- Signed for fifty years after retiring; his rookie is unusually affordable
- On this index
- 0 listedno sales recorded yet
What does a signed Gale Sayers card cost?
The results recorded here run from two hundred and four dollars to just under two thousand, and six of the eight are the same card: his 1966 Philadelphia rookie, number 38. That is a remarkably accessible market for a Hall of Famer, and it is accessible because he signed steadily for about fifty years after he stopped playing.
He died in 2020. Why is his signed rookie still a couple of hundred dollars?
Because closure only creates scarcity relative to demand, and he left a great deal behind him. This index keeps finding the same thing: what a signature costs is mostly a fact about how available the person was, not about when they stopped. Pete Maravich died in 1988 and his cheapest recorded result is over two thousand dollars, because he was gone at forty and before the modern signing industry existed. Sayers lived another thirty-two years and signed throughout them.
Two of these have exactly the same grades. Why did one sell for twice the other?
This is the third signer on this index to show it and we still cannot explain it. Two examples of the 1966 Philadelphia rookie, both graded PSA VG-EX 4 on the card and PSA/DNA Auto 10 on the signature - identical on both counts - sold for $1,952 and $900. Ty Cobb had two identical baseballs sell one lot apart in the same auction for $21,600 and $13,200. Roberto Clemente had three identical-label rookies span from $33,600 to $75,000. What separates them is not printed on the holder: how the signature sits on the card, how it photographs, what else was in the sale, who was in the room. A grading label is a summary of two things. A price is a summary of everything else.
Signatures are reproduced more often than most buyers realise, by outright forgery and also by machines and assistants signing on somebody’s behalf. Every item on this page has been examined by PSA/DNA, JSA, Beckett, SGC or CGC, and this index carries nothing else. That is a deliberate restriction, and the investigation that created the modern authentication industry is worth reading, along with what a certificate actually claims.