14: 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout

The Mike Trout Topps Update card is ten years younger than the next newest card on the entire list. There is a reason for this. Trout is the best player of his generation and if he continues on his current trajectory, he will be considered one of the greatest players in MLB history. It’s not big secret that players like this tend to have their rookie cards become very valuable. This card, which could have been purchased less than a decade ago for a dollar, is now worth many hundred times more than that.
This card is the catalyst for the Topps boom that has been seen recently with people prospecting the normally less popular update sets to get rookies of players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr, Pete Alonso, and Eloy Jimenez. Topps owes much of it’s current success to this card and the collecting habit it cultivated among a new generation of collectors that had become more focused on autographs and jersey cards in their collections.

Random Mike Trout Fact: Trout has been so good, that his Baseball Reference similarity score to this point in his career echoes some of the greatest players of all time, with the four most similar people in terms of production to this point are: Micky Mantle, Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr, and Hank Aaron.