When the commissioner calls a player’s name, a young player walks across the stage in a borrowed suit, and a collector across the country is already refreshing a website, it’s almost like a scene from a movie. That’s how draft night looks now. It’s not just a sports event. Something for fun.
At the 2026 NBA Draft at Barclays Center, AJ Dybantsa was picked first by the Washington Wizards. Topps was ready. His first card in NBA gear was up on the Topps website within hours. Not like any other card drop, though. There was a 1/1 autograph signed live on TV during the show that was the main attraction. It said “My 1st NBA Auto.” There is only one of it in the world. When you see that, it’s hard not to think that the hobby just did something really new.
For years, the Topps NOW program has been building up to this point. It all began in 2016 with baseball cards. The idea was simple: if something interesting happens on the field, Topps would make a card, and collectors would have 24 hours to order it. Almost right away, the program found its cultural footing. Many people bought a Bartolo Colón home run card in one day. The pitcher was 42 years old and shouldn’t have been able to hit a home run. After a few months, Ichiro’s 3,000th hit beat that. The formula worked because it linked how something makes you feel to seeing it with your natural urge to hold on to it.
This feeling is also present in the NBA Draft release, but the way it is put together feels more complex. There are 48 hours, not 24. Since each card is printed when it is ordered, the base versions won’t be ‘rare,’ but the parallels will be. There were fifty gold foils, twenty-five orange foils, five red foils, and one FoilFractor. Those are added to orders at random, which adds a lottery-style tension that most print-to-order releases don’t have. The building is smart. It’s safe for collectors to order a base card because they know that a rarer card might come out of the package.
Along with Dybantsa, the drop has cards for Cameron Boozer, Caleb Wilson, Darius Acuff Jr., and Darryn Peterson, who was picked second overall by the Utah Jazz from Kansas. Each of these names is a player who first appears on cardboard in NBA gear, which is still an important hobby milestone even in 2026. A first card has a certain amount of weight. Collectors are aware of this. That’s why the talk about these drops can seem both completely irrational and completely reasonable.
It’s still not clear what will happen on the secondary market after the 48-hour window ends on June 25th. Because they are print-to-order, the base cards tend to be more simple. But the signed parallels could move quickly, especially anything with Dybantsa because of how much people expect him to do in his career. It will be years before we know if this class lives up to the hype. Being able to do that is part of what makes collecting feel like more than just getting a box.
Topps seems to know, and has known since that Bartolo Colón moment, that timing is just as important as the product. It would be fun to collect a draft night card that came out three months later. released just hours after the pick was announced, signed live on TV, and available for exactly 48 hours? That is a completely different kind of thing. It has the energy of the present moment. And collectors who paid attention to the draft and felt something when that name was called are paying for that energy.
