Today we’re back with another edition of King Kong Cards, where I track one rookie card with MONSTER profit potential… which most definitely shouldn’t be construed as financial advice.

What if I told you the very first licensed Topps card of a 2X NBA FINALS MVP and one of the greatest basketball players of all time could currently be had for less than $200 in PSA, BGS, SGC, and CSG gem mint condition? 

Would that be something you’d be interested in?

That’s impossible, Freddy!

It should be impossible. But the sports card hobby oftentimes makes no rational sense with its absurd valuation of certain cards. 

The Slim Reaper. Kevin Wayne Durant. A consensus top 10 player of all time. 2x World Champ. 2x Finals MVP. Owner of career averages of 27 pts, 7.1 rebounds, and 4.2 assists and one of only 9 members of the 50-40-90 club which includes….

Get to it, Freddy! We all know how good Kevin Durant is. We don’t need you to tell us that.

Okay, okay. Without further ado, you impatient lot, let me present the 2006 Topps McDonald’s All American Kevin Durant in all it’s XRC glory.

Released in boxed set form and including all the 2006 McDonald’s All Americans, it is the Slim Reaper’s first Topps card and predates his NBA Topps rookie releases by an entire calendar year. 

To show the potential arbitrage opportunity presented by this card let’s dive into the pop reports and current sales of the 07-08 Topps base rookie with the black borders and the 07-08 Topps rookie set Durant with the white borders and compare it to the 06 Topps McDonald’s card.

As you know I’m grading company agnostic and buy and sell cards from PSA, BGS, SGC, and CSG. But I’m only using PSA and BGS for this comparison because SGC hasn’t graded enough of these Durant cards to be included in the analysis and CSG still hasn’t released a pop report… but please do.

First up is the black bordered 2007 Topps Flagship KD… 

If we take a peek at that PSA pop report you can see there are only 140 PSA 10s out of over 6,000 graded for a minuscule 2% gem rate. BGS has only graded 118 gem mint cards out of 845 total graded for a 14% gem rate. 

Obviously the black borders make this a near impossible card to gem with only 258 combined gem cards with over 7,000 total graded. 

Unfortunately none of these have sold in the last 3 months on eBay. 

The cheapest PSA 10 ebay listing currently sits at ~5k with the only BGS 9.5, a quad 9.5, currently listed just south of ~4k.

To be conservative, let’s guesstimate the gem mint value of the Topps Flagship black bordered rookie to be 3.5k.

Now, let’s move on to the 2007 Topps Rookie Set Kevin Durant.

If we take a peek at the pop reports we see that there are 2,988 PSA 10s out of 19,441 graded for a 15% gem rate.

BGS has graded 515 gem mint cards out of 1790 total graded for a 29% gem rate. 

Which means there are over 3,500 gem mint white bordered Kevin Durant Topps Rookie Set cards out of over 20,000 graded.

The last few PSA 10’s have sold between $470 – $700 while the last BGS 9.5 sold a few months ago for $350.

Shall we take a peek at the 2006 Topps McDonald’s All American XRC pop reports?

Why are you even asking us? You’re going to do it anyway.

Touche. There are 1,828 PSA 10s out of 4,7773 graded for a 38% gem rate.

As for BGS, there are 50 gem mint cards out of 114 total graded for a 44% graded with no BGS 10s or Black Labels.

I just recently had a best offer accepted on a PSA 10 last week for $160.

And another one just ended Sunday night at auction for $122.50! 

That’s crazy!?

Right!?

So where can we expect a PSA 10 2006 Topps McDonald’s Kevin Durant to go from here? 

Not much lower. We have to be nearing the bottom of the KD market.

If a low-ish pop first Topps card of a Top 10 all time NBA legend in gem mint condition goes under $100… the entire hobby is in trouble and our precious pieces of cardboard may have turned into decorative coasters.

Can it reach the 2007 Topps black bordered flagship gem mint prices ~3.5 K? 

Short answer. 

No. 

This card doesn’t have the same meteoric upside as my 2016-17 Upper Deck Euroleague Patterned Rainbow Luka Doncic pick a few years back for a couple reasons, but the biggest one is:

The KD Topps XRC has a much higher gem and raw pop. It’s still low, but not tiny like the Luka.

Going back to the black bordered flagship comparison, even though there’s a few thousand more flagship cards graded, as aforementioned, the black borders make this an almost impossible gem grade which results in about 1/8th the gem pop when compared to the XRC.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of upside left in this card at current prices.

There’s a lot of room between $122.50 and $3.5k.

No shit, Freddy.

You’re still awake! Had to check.

A better and more conservative comp would be the white bordered 2007 Topps Rookie Set Kevin Durant that is also only pulled from sets.

It’s currently selling for 3x to 4x the ’06 Topps XRC with almost double the gem mint pop, and more than 4x the total cards graded.

So you can currently get his 1st ever Topps card in gem mint condition that is twice as rare for 1/3rd or 1/4th the cost.

Winner. Winner. Chicken Dinner.

Nobody says that anymore, Freddy.

Yes they do.

No. They don’t.

I just did.

Nobody cool.

I never said I was cool.

If the Nets can get KD, James Harden Ben Simmons, and Kyrie healthy for the playoffs… I know that’s a solar system sized IF… and KD manages to win another ship, I could see this card reaching $500 easy. No matter what, it should definitely be at least $500 by the time the Slim Reaper hangs them up.

And if it’s not… the hobby has probably regressed to it’s mid to late 90’s malaise and Fanatics lost investors a lot of money.

As always, I’m Freddy and you’re welcome.