Macklin Celebrini is the NHL’s new brightest young talent. As a 19-year-old with the San Jose Sharks this past season, Celebrini finished fourth in league scoring with 115 points (45g, 70a) and fourth in Hart Trophy voting as the league’s most valuable player.
Now, collectors are taking notice.
Saturday, Celebrini’s 1-of-1 Outburst Gold Young Guns rookie card sold for a jaw-dropping $1.28 million at Goldin’s Monthly Sports Elite Auction. Goldin is one of the world’s leading auction houses for sports and entertainment memorabilia.
The sale set a new record for a non-Wayne Gretzky hockey card. Gretzky still holds the top spot overall with his 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee rookie card, graded a 10 by PSA, which sold for $3.75 million in a 2021 private sale.
The Celebrini card was pulled in late July, after the product it was in, Upper Deck’s 2024-25 Series 2, had been released months earlier, in early March. Young Guns rookie cards are one of the most sought-after rookies for stars around the NHL, with ungraded copies of Alex Ovechkin‘s Young Guns card from 2005-06 regularly selling for $1,000.
James, the collector who originally owned the card, pulled it from a single hobby box he bought at his local card shop in Chicago. He turned down a $426,000 bounty on the card in favor of trying his luck at auction. He says he plans to take his family to Disney with the auction earnings and maybe buy a less expensive Celebrini rookie to replace the 1-of-1.
Hockey card collector pulls record-breaking Macklin Celebrini rookie card
“I was watching him in the Olympics, just tearing it up, and then his season with the Sharks — that’s really why I was buying the box,” James told Goldin. “I was chasing a base Young Guns and ended up getting the grail of Young Guns. It was midnight; wife and daughter were sleeping. I was trying to keep it down, but it was also the biggest pull of my life. It’s a life-changing card for me and my family.”
Since the 2023-24 campaign, Upper Deck has inserted 1-of-1 Outburst Gold parallels of each player in random boxes, making them one of the primary chases for hockey card collectors. Another super-hyped young NHL player, Connor Bedard, has one in a box of Upper Deck’s 2023-24 Series 2 product that has still never been found. The card previously had a $1 million bounty placed on it.
Celebrini, the 2024 first-overall draft pick, signed a record-breaking five-year, $94 million extension with the Sharks in late July. His new deal runs through the 2031-32 campaign, after which he will become an unrestricted free agent at just 26 years old.
