Jim Thorpe
Signed until 1953, so the supply is fixed — nothing new is being added to this market.
Recorded sales
| Date | What sold | Certified | Price | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-09-13 | 1933 Goudey Sport Kings #6 signed and inscribed | PSA Authentic | $88,800 | auction result |
| 2026-04-11 | 2010 Sportkings Vintage Papercuts cut signature card numbered 1 of 1 | BGS Card 9.5 / Auto 10 | $6,710 | auction result |
| 2022-10-09 | Signed and inscribed 8x10 photograph | JSA Authentic | $4,740 | auction result |
| 2024-12-07 | 1952 signed photograph | PSA/DNA Authentic Auto | $3,600 | auction result |
| 2021-04-06 | 1936 signed cut signature | JSA Authentic | $3,300 | auction result |
By certification level
These are 5 results this index has recorded from Heritage Auctions between 2021 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 1953supply is fixed
- Note
- Died 1953, the longest-closed supply here; his market is paper throughout
- On this index
- 0 listedno sales recorded yet
What does a Jim Thorpe autograph cost?
Four of the five results recorded here fall between about three thousand three hundred dollars and six thousand seven hundred, across photographs, a cut signature and a modern card built around one. The fifth is in a different category entirely and is explained below. He died in 1953, which makes his the longest-closed supply on this index.
Why did one card sell for eighty-eight thousand?
Because it is his own card, from his own lifetime, with his signature on it. The 1933 Goudey Sport Kings number 6 was issued while he was alive, and the example that made $88,800 is signed and inscribed. That is thirteen times his next highest recorded result. This index has seen the same thing once before: a signed T206 Ty Cobb made $192,000, nearly nine times anything else of his. In both cases somebody put a card of the man in front of the man and asked him to sign it, decades after it was printed, and almost nobody did that.
What did he actually sign?
Paper, without exception. The results here are two photographs, a cut signature taken from correspondence, a card from his own era and a modern card built around a cut signature harvested from something else. No baseballs, no jerseys, no equipment. That is what a market looks like when the man died in 1953: there was no signing circuit, no manufacturer programme, and the objects that survive are the ones people wrote to him on and the photographs they sent him. The same shape shows on Honus Wagner's page, whose market is letters, cheques and index cards with baseballs the expensive exception.
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.