Macklin Celebrini Card Sells for a record-shattering $1.28M!

There's a new modern hockey card king, and his name is Macklin Celebrini. 

The highly publicized auction for the one-of-a-kind Macklin Celebrini Young Guns Gold Outburst sold at auction Saturday night, fetching a record-shattering $1.28M USD-- roughly 1.77M CAD. 

It is the highest sale for any modern hockey card to date, and trails only the sales of PSA 10 Wayne Gretzky rookie cards. 

Before this sale, the most money spent on a modern-day hockey card, meaning a card printed in this millennium, was $562,000 CAD in December of last year for a PSA 10 copy of Connor McDavid's rookie patch auto out of 'The Cup', which is the highest valued product in the hobby.

This Celebrini sale even laps the highest recorded Sidney Crosby sale to date, which was $228,000 CAD on a 1/1 Gold PMG in March of 2022. 

The 1/1 Gold Outburst Young Guns is a new addition to the card collecting world as it was only first added into the flagship sets in 2023-24. So neither Crosby or McDavid have a 1/1 Young Guns variation, making Celebrini's unique and a true hockey grail. 

Young Guns are considered the staple "Rookie Card" within the hobby, so having one-of-a-kind collectibles like these gold variations makes them highly sought after and valuable. 

The winner of the auction was a well-known Celebrini collector who goes by the handle @Benjamin.be.13 on Instagram. 

He took to social media after the auction to confirm his victory in the auction and explained why he decided to spend seven figures on a piece of shiny cardboard. 

"Last year, I thought this was a $300k USD card. Before the auction, I thought 500k to max 800k," he said. "I was mentally prepared to pay seven figures for the card going into extended bidding."

He further explained why despite his valuation of $800,000, he decided to bid over $1,000,000. 

"I own them all: from his High Gloss to PMGs, to FWAP Black to Ultimate Shield, to the Exquisite Shield. This card is the keystone to my Celebrini collection. I cannot NOT own this card."

That's the funny thing about the free market.

Values are never set in stone. It's worth whatever someone is willing to pay. 

In this case, a bidding war ensued, and one Celebrini collector was willing to push the envelope for this 1/1 grail card by paying a record-high $1.28M. 

The next question: Will this sale ever be topped, or is Macklin Mania just perfectly coinciding with a massive sports card bubble? What do you think?