1996 Topps Kobe Bryant Rookie Card: Iconic Cards Checklist!

Whether you love or hate the Los Angeles Lakers, the 1996 Topps Kobe Bryant rookie card is one treasured by sports card collectors everywhere. This card ranks among the greatest rookie cards in basketball history.

Kobe Bryant, nicknamed “Black Mamba” later in his career, was the son of former NBA player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, whose basketball career finished in Italy, where Kobe was partially raised.

Jerry West, the NBA’s logo, orchestrated an amazing trade just before the draft with the Hornets, getting Kobe to L.A. along with free-agent signee Shaquille O’Neal. Bryant would back up Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones in his first season before eventually becoming the youngest starter in NBA history.

Basketball card collectors were even more excited about his potential, especially after he won the 1997 NBA Slam Dunk Contest as the youngest champion ever.

Bryant would go on to win five NBA titles with the Lakers, the only NBA team he ever played for, and he’d win two NBA Finals MVP awards among those championships. He would finish his illustrious career with 18 All-Star appearances, four All-Star Game MVP awards, a league MVP award in 2008, and he was on the All-Defensive First Team nine times. In 2021, he was named one of the NBA’s Top 75 players ever.

1996 Topps Kobe Bryant Rookie Card #138 PSA 9 $130

• View Kobe’s Available Cards on eBay!

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, as I am not a financial planner. These are my observations as a sports card collector. Please make your own decisions. Also, if you can afford the PSA 10 version, those are almost always better investments than PSA 9s, and autographed and/or numbered parallels are generally considered more valuable than base cards.

Behind the Set: 1996 Topps Basketball

From a card-collecting standpoint, the 1996 Topps Basketball set is one of the all-time greatest because of the strong rookie class, as we mentioned. The design is relatively understated, with the player’s name across the bottom, with a swooshing basketball moving to the right. There’s no team name, no extra anything – just Kobe’s name and a Spalding basketball, which is appropriate on several levels.

There was also a parallel of Kobe’s rookie card, as Topps created a 1996 Topps NBA at 50 set, with the same checklist. These were silver foil cards, with the same photos as the flagship set, and the NBA at 50 logo stamped on the front of the card above the team name. These NBA at 50 cards came 1:3 packs of the flagship set. There have been 2,000 of these Kobe Bryant NBA at 50 rookie cards submitted to PSA, with a very low gem rate because of the silver foil. The PSA 9 versions of these cards are about 3-to-4 times more expensive than the PSA 9 version of the standard flagship rookie card.

Other Options For Kobe Bryant Rookie Cards

Of course, the Topps flagship card isn’t your only option to own one of Kobe’s first cards.

1996 Topps Chrome Kobe Bryant RC #138 PSA 9 $1,200

• Interestingly, 1996 was the first year for Topps Chrome! As you can imagine, a 1996 Topps Chrome Kobe Bryant rookie card is relatively more valuable, but because those early Chrome cards turned green, they’re not quite as pretty as 1996 Topps flagship.

1996 Upper Deck Kobe Bryant RC #58 PSA 9 $60

• The 1996 Upper Deck Kobe Bryant rookie card is awesome in its own right because it’s such a great close-up of Kobe’s face. The dimpled ball design down the side is great, too, but the card has a paragraph on the front of the card detailing Kobe’s draft date. Most people prefer the understated Topps card’s look.

Kobe’s tragic death in January of 2020 shook the sports world, making his basketball cards mementos of a lost NBA superstar. The card-collecting boom was just a couple months away, as the pandemic was just beginning to spread. The 1996 Topps Kobe Bryant rookie card is one of the most iconic cards ever, but it’s certainly one of the most famous sports cards of the ‘90s, alongside the 1992 Topps Shaquille O’Neal card, the 1990 Topps Frank Thomas card and the 1998 Topps Peyton Manning card.