Football season is here, and every year around this time we get the same question at the counter: who should I be buying?
Here's the honest answer first. September is not the cheapest month to buy football. The hobby runs on a predictable cycle — prices bottom out in June and July when nobody's thinking about football, then climb through camp, spike during playoff runs in January, and spike again around the April draft. If you're reading this in September, you've missed the best entry point of the year.
But there's a difference between the cheapest price and a good price. Some of these names are still sitting below where their production says they should be, and a few of them have specific catalysts coming this season. Here's where we'd put money right now, and just as importantly, where we wouldn't.
1. Drake Maye — New England Patriots
We're a New England shop, so let's start local. Maye is the most tradeable card in our three stores by a wide margin, and that's not just hometown bias — a franchise quarterback in a passionate market is exactly the profile that holds value through a down year.
The local premium is real. Patriots cards move faster here than anywhere else in the country, which means if you buy Maye in Connecticut or Massachusetts, you're also selling him into the strongest market for him. That's a liquidity advantage most collectors ignore.
What to look at: 2024 Prizm base RC in a PSA 10 is the liquid hold. Silver Prizm if you have the budget and conviction.
2. Jayden Daniels — Washington Commanders
The safest name on this list. Daniels won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2024 and took Washington to the NFC Championship Game in his first season. His appreciation has been built on actual production, not hype, which is a meaningfully different thing.
His base Prizm rookie in a PSA 10 is now just a $60 buy. In Jan of 2025 this card was doing an average of $600. That's a big move, and some people look at that and assume they missed it. The counter-argument is that quarterbacks who win OROY and then keep producing — Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts — kept climbing well past year three.
The risk: you're buying after a 10x. If he regresses, there's real room to fall.
3. Caleb Williams — Chicago Bears
The highest-variance name in football. His base Prizm PSA 10 opened north of $1,200 in year one and then corrected hard as the Bears struggled.
That correction is the entire case. You're buying a #1 overall pick and Heisman winner with elite arm talent at a price that fully accounts for a rebuild going badly and none of the scenario where it goes well. Chicago is an enormous market that hasn't had a franchise quarterback in forty years. If that breaks the right way, current prices look absurd in hindsight.
The risk: it might not break the right way. This is the one on the list most likely to end up worth a fraction of what you paid.
4. Brock Bowers — Las Vegas Raiders
Bowers is doing something the hobby hasn't priced correctly yet. Tight ends have historically been card-market afterthoughts, and his rookie card is cheap relative to what he's actually done on the field.
The bet here isn't that Bowers becomes a quarterback in value terms. It's that a genuinely position-redefining tight end deserves better than tight-end pricing, and the market eventually figures that out.
Why we like it: the entry cost is low enough that being wrong doesn't hurt much.
5. Travis Hunter — Jacksonville Jaguars
Year two, and the price has come well off the draft-day peak. His 2025 Prizm Draft Picks base can be found in raw form for a couple of dollars, which tells you how far sentiment has cooled from the hype cycle.
Hunter is a genuinely unique player, and unique players tend to get their moment eventually. This is a patience play — you're buying the boring middle of the story.
Note: Draft Picks cards and flagship Prizm rookies are different animals with very different price floors. Know which one you're buying.
6. Cam Ward — Tennessee Titans
Ward has a structural thing working in his favor that has nothing to do with football: 2025 Prizm is the last licensed Panini Prizm football product. Panini's NFL license has ended, Topps has taken over, and that makes 2025 Prizm the closing chapter of a thirteen-year run.
Final-year products tend to develop a collector premium over time that has nothing to do with the players in them. Ward as the #1 overall pick in the last Prizm class is a specific, defensible thing to own.
Range check: his base rookie has traded around $9 raw with the parallel ladder running from a few hundred for numbered variants up past $5,000 for Gold /10.
7. Fernando Mendoza — Las Vegas Raiders
The #1 overall pick of the 2026 draft, and one of only two quarterbacks taken in the entire first round. That scarcity matters more than people realize — in a deep quarterback class, hype gets diluted across five or six names. In a two-quarterback class, it concentrates.
His flagship rookie cards are still rolling out. Topps Flagship Football is the first Topps flagship since 2015 and carries his first rookie cards alongside Jeremiyah Love and Ty Simpson.
The catch: you're buying a player who hasn't taken a professional snap. Everything here is projection.
8. Jeremiyah Love — Arizona Cardinals
Taken #3 overall, which is the single best predictor of NFL opportunity. Top-three picks get a real runway — the team has too much invested to bury them.
Running back and skill-position cards carry more injury risk than quarterbacks, which is reflected in the price. That's the trade.
9. Carnell Tate — Tennessee Titans
Taken #4 overall and landing in Tennessee alongside Cam Ward, which is the part that interests us. Quarterback-receiver pairings that develop together create compounding card value — both players' markets lift each other.
If the Ward-Tate connection works, you get two rising markets from one bet on one offense.
10. Ty Simpson — Los Angeles Rams
The other Round 1 quarterback from 2026, taken #13. He's the cheapest quarterback entry point from a two-QB class, and he lands somewhere with an established organization rather than a full teardown.
This is the lottery ticket slot. Cheap enough to be worth owning, uncertain enough that you shouldn't own much.
What we'd be careful with
- Anything you're buying because of one good preseason. Camp hype is the most expensive information in the hobby.
- Ungraded high-end cards from unfamiliar sellers. If you're spending real money, buy it slabbed or buy it from someone you can look in the eye. Our free cert lookup tool takes ten seconds — use it before you pay for anything graded.
- Chasing the top of a spike. If a card has doubled in three weeks, you are not early.
One honest disclaimer
Cards are collectibles, not securities. Prices move on injuries, trades, coaching changes, and things nobody can forecast. We sell cards for a living, so take our enthusiasm with the appropriate grain of salt, and never put money into cardboard that you need back.
Buy players you actually want to own. That's the only strategy that works when the market doesn't cooperate.
Come see us
We carry singles, sealed wax and graded slabs across all three locations in Connecticut and Massachusetts. If you want to talk through any of these names before you buy, come in — that conversation is free and we'd rather you buy the right card than the expensive one.