Cards
With rare rookies of elite athletes, SI For Kids cards a fun, challenging set for niche collectors
When the premiere issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine was released in January 1989, it became an instant hit.
Young fans could get sporting news in a fun way and read about their favorite athletes.
But it was a special insert that really caught the attention of kid subscribers. Included in every magazine was a sheet of nine cards—three cards wide by three cards high—highlighting world-class athletes. Over the years, the magazine has featured tennis players, cyclists, golfers, basketball players, surfers, beach volleyball players; the list goes on and on.
When a new issue of SI for Kids arrived in the mailbox each month, it wasn’t uncommon for kids to rip out the card sheet and either try and tear each card out with reckless abandon or take scissors to them. These highly sensitive cards could be all but destroyed pretty easily.
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Little did anyone know back in the late 1980s and ’90s that 30-plus-years later these cards made of ultra-thin cardboard and perforated edges would become collectors’ items.
With SI for Kids still being published after nearly four decades, there have been close to 4,000 cards inserted into the magazines.
For some athletes, SI for Kids offers the only card they have ever appeared on. That’s a huge draw for collectors.
Cards for such legendary athletes as tennis player Serena Williams, golfer Tiger Woods and soccer player Mia Hamm have fetched some hefty prices in the last few years.
Tyler Nethercott, senior vice president of product for Sports Card Investor, has always thought that those who collect SI for Kids cards as part of a very niche group.
“There’s kind of an audience of people who think very highly of those cards,” said Nethercott, who is prominently known as T-Pott in the hobby. “In almost all cases, they are the first card accessible for any given athlete where they don’t have a lot of other cards. I’ve always likened the importance of them specifically to tennis, golf and Olympics. Those are the ones that tend to carry the most weight and the most prestige in the hobby because most of those athletes don’t tend to have other super notable rookie cards.”
A big soccer fan and collector, Zach Gilula started looking around 2020 for rookie cards of his favorite soccer players. He quickly realized there weren’t many mainstream cards available.
“I just kept coming back to the rookie card for a lot of these players are SI for Kids cards,” Gilula said. “Women’s cards, soccer cards, any non-four major sports cards.”
Gilula considers himself a contrarian collector, so going after rare, oddball items is right up his alley. As a kid, Gilula had a subscription to SI for Kids. He would rip out the cards, not worrying about their condition. Fast forward about 30 years, Gilula got into the magazine again.
“I started looking at the history of it and didn’t realize they were still going, so I bought myself a couple subscriptions,” Gilula said. “But then, personally, the first set started in 1989 and I was born in 1988. So, for something that is continuous, I don’t think there’s a more important set out there in the world than what SI for Kids brings to the table. I was born in October 1988, so, literally, this set has been running since January 1989. My entire life is cataloged through this set. That’s for all millennials. If you’ve been alive since the late ’80s or earlier, this set is a chronicle of the biggest sports stars and what the times were.”
Gilula loves the nostalgia tied to the cards. Once he got started collecting SI for Kids cards, he went all in. He is now attempting to collect every SI card that has ever been made. And he’s trying to do it in the highest grades possible. Gilula owns the No. 1 current set on PSA’s Set Registry.
Toward the end of 2025, Gilula had between 400-500 graded SI cards. But he has thousands of cards that are either still sitting in magazines at his house or already torn out of the sheets. Gilula figures he buys 98% of his SI cards raw—picking up lots on various marketplaces.
HOW TO COLLECT
There’s no right or wrong way to collect SI for Kids cards. It’s all in the eyes of the collector.
When Andy Bowman started chasing SI cards, he added a personal touch. As a collector in the “Junk Wax Era,” Bowman would pull out the SI for Kids cards from magazines with his sister. After years away from the hobby, Bowman latched onto SI cards. The inaugural year of the magazine, 1989, holds a special meaning for Bowman because he was 8 and 9 years old during that year.
Right before COVID hit, Bowman decided to go after the complete 108-card 1989 set.
“I wanted to collect the cards in grades 8 or 9, because I was 8 or 9 during that time,” Bowman said.
Bowman is about halfway done with his project. He’s having a great time. However, he’s found it extremely challenging, because for some of the athletes with cards, there haven’t been many graded, if any at all.
Out of the entire 1989 set, PSA has graded just over 1,700 cards. Of the 108 cards, five athletes haven’t had a single card slabbed by PSA.
“The funny part about this set is the less-known names are going to be the hardest ones to find,” Bowman said. “It’s like a runner from the Olympics or like a cyclist from Indiana. As you did back then, you learn about these other sports, water skiers, volleyball players, whatever, that are outside of the big four sports. That’s part of the fun, too, I think.”
Bowman has a Michael Jordan copy in a PSA 9, which has a population of seven and is the highest graded copy. Bowman’s Mario Lemieux in a PSA 9 is a pop seven with five higher and his Wayne Gretzky in a PSA 9 has a population of 10 with four higher.
“They’re kind of hard to find,” Bowman said. “If you send any in for grading, which I haven’t but I know some guys that have, they come back altered or too small. So, it might be a lifelong journey.”
For Kevin Almasy, after collecting cards as a kid, he got back into the hobby during COVID. He goes after SI for Kids cards because he feels like it’s an easy set to collect. Almasy doesn’t have to worry about parallels and inserts like modern and ultra-modern sets. He added his own wrinkle on how he collects the magazine cards.
“The one thing that’s interesting is there’s not an agreed [upon] most valuable [card] and what would you put at the top of your list,” Almasy said. “So, I kind of have my own list of 75 that I’ve been trying to collect and then grade myself.”
Almasy is attempting to collect his top 10 cards in PSA 7. That list is Woods (produced in 1996), Williams (1997), Hamm (1992), skater Tony Hawk (1990), Michael Jordan (1989), surfer Kelly Slater (1993), golfer Scottie Scheffler (2017), Kobe Bryant (1997), swimmer Michael Phelps (2004), and basketball star Caitlin Clark (2021).
GRADING ROLLER COASTER
One major reason it is so hard to find SI for Kids cards in high grades is due to the fact that removing cards from a sheet and keeping the perforated edges pristine is extremely difficult.
The condition-sensitive cards need to have the perforated edges in order to get graded. Removing cards from a sheet by using scissors won’t keep the perforated edges. And how they were produced, each card’s centering and size can be erratic and not meet grading standards.
“For every 10 cards I send into PSA, six come back not in the minimum size requirements,” Gilula said. “There’s a history with PSA where they stopped grading SI for Kids cards for a long time because they’re difficult to grade.”
Gilula recently submitted a batch of cards to PSA. Out of 43 cards, only 12 were graded because they didn’t meet the size requirements.
Gilula spends a great deal of time reviewing his raw SI cards before sending them in for grading. It can be a crapshoot trying to figure out if a card is going to get a 5 or 6 or if it could score an 8 or 9.
“I’ve spent way too long analyzing images and looking at my own cards and sending them off and thinking, this looks exactly the same, going through surface, perforation, all of it,” Gilula said. “The cut is always difficult with SI for Kids.”
From the 1989 SI set, there have been just over 125 cards that have received PSA 10s.
“The grade sensitivity is what makes it really tricky,” Nethercott said. “You can have grades all the way from 1 up to 10—the perforation on the edges, the centering. These aren’t exactly cards that were meant to be by design stuck into a page in a magazine, to be like, ‘Oh, wow, let’s make sure these get printed off the printing press in absolutely pristine conditions.’”
According to Gilula, the toughest card on a sheet to receive a high grade is on the bottom right corner. That card can get dinged easily and if the cut is wrong, it’s going to impact the entire column of cards. Gilula noted the best players’ cards are generally placed in the bottom right, including Jordan, F1 racer Lewis Hamilton and soccer player Carli Lloyd.
“I have to think that the designers are thinking, if you’re just flipping through a magazine, what’s the first card you’re going to see? It’s that bottom right card,” Gilula said. “So, a lot of the best cards of a sheet are there.”
Gilula has thousands of SI for Kids magazines that he’s purchased on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. He bought one 50-magazine lot for $50 a few years ago and submitted a Serena Williams rookie that earned a PSA 10. At the time, it was only the ninth Williams 10. Gilula sold it for $11,000.
Gilula removes the cards himself from sheets in the magazine. He has his technique down to a science. Well, he hopes anyway.
“The cuts are really difficult,” Gilula said. “Removing the cards, I have my own technique to do it and the best way possible. But you can still screw up a corner or rip off something you need. It’s tough. It’s kind of like an art.”
Gilula calls it a “total treasure hunt” when sending in SI for Kids cards to get graded.
“I don’t know how the graders are going to look at it, so I just keep rolling the dice,” Gilula said. “The pop counts are just so low that it’s cool. I’ve got the top card for many, many of the cards in the world.”
A few of Gilula’s favorite SI cards include rookie cards of Woods and soccer player Alex Morgan from 2011.
“I love, love, love the April Fool’s and like the Halloween caricatures like the Kobe Bryant from 1999 where he’s dressed up as a vampire,” Gilula said. “There’s the April Fool’s one where Michael Jordan is overlaid and his face is on Tiger Woods. I literally have a list of the top cards that I know what magazine it’s in and I know what the pop counts are.
“Then the modern cards, you have the Caitlin Clark, you have the Wemby [Victor Wembanyama]. If you just look at those cards and you’re not familiar with SI for Kids and you see a Caitlin Clark in a PSA 7, you’re like, I don’t want a PSA 7. But that’s actually the third highest graded card you can get. Same with Wemby. Those cards are just horribly miscut.”
VALUABLE CARDS
Nethercott tracks prices of SI cards on the Market Movers app. What he has noticed are prices have certainly fluctuated in the last few years.
At peak COVID prices back in 2022, a Williams PSA 10 rookie sold for $117,000. In July 2025, a different Williams PSA 10 went for $9,900.
“That just kind of shows the peak insanity of COVID when that was going on,” Nethercott said. “That sale really was kind of an outlier back then. The rest of them have definitely chilled out.”
The six-figure Williams is the highest ever paid for a SI for Kids card.
Woods’ cards are the most frequently transacted for the brand. On Oct. 27, 2025, a Woods in an SGC 10 sold for $14,000.
Nethercott believes the cards for Williams and Woods are good investments and long-term holds because neither have many cards on the market.
“They both completely cemented themselves as, in many peoples’ minds, the GOATs of their respective sports,” Nethercott said. “Serena’s cards sell for significantly more in most cases than even any of the men in tennis, who are obviously incredible talents, too. She and Tiger, for a myriad of reasons, just kind of command that premium.”
In 2022, Bryant’s SI for Kids Rookie card in a PSA 10—one of only two that exist—went for $90,000. When a Hamm 1992 rookie in a PSA 10 sold for astounding $34,400 in June 2021, it became the most expensive female sports card of all time.
According to Nethercott, the cards of a pair of golfers have become popular recently with SI for Kids collectors.
“Scottie Scheffler and especially Rory McElroy have been ticking up quite a bit in sales volume this year,” Nethercott said. “Rory, obviously, having finally gotten the Masters done last year, I think that led to a renewed surge in interest for him.”
ONGOING PROJECT
While he tries to complete the 1989 SI for Kids set in high grades, Bowman has come to the realization that he may never finish his project.
“I think what’s part of the fun is I can’t just go out and buy a complete set,” Bowman said. “Would I? Maybe. But part of the fun is that it’s going to take me quite a while, and the fact that it might be out of reach is also part of the fun.”
For Gilula, he’s working on a lifelong project. Since an SI for Kids issue comes out every month, it adds more cards to Gilula’s list.
“The ultimate goal is to have a graded example of every card ever made,” Gilula said. “That’s a lifetime goal. I hope it continues. But it’s just a continuous chase.”
