Top 10 Most Collectible NBA Team Patches

Basketball jerseys spent most of the league’s history completely unadorned aside from a number and a team name. So when the NBA finally started letting patches onto uniforms, first for tributes, later for sponsors, collectors paid attention immediately. Here are the ten that matter most, ranked by a mix of rarity, sentiment, and what they actually go for.

1. The Kobe and Gianna Bryant Memorial Patches (2020)

   

   Two separate patches came out of the same tragedy, and both are among the most sought-after pieces in basketball memorabilia. At the 2020 All-Star Game in Chicago, every player wore a patch with nine stars representing the nine victims of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others. Months later, when the Lakers returned to play in the bubble, they wore “Black Mamba” jerseys with a separate patch: the number 2 inside a heart, for Gianna. Game-worn examples of either patch rarely come up for sale, and when they do, they draw real money.

2. NBA 75th Anniversary Diamond Patch (2021-22)

   

   For the league’s diamond anniversary, the NBA reshaped its Logoman mark into a diamond and put it on the back neck of every jersey for the full 2021-22 season, alongside a matching diamond Nike swoosh on the chest. It was the first time the whole league had marked an anniversary this way since 1997, and full-season, every-team patches like this don’t happen often. That scarcity is exactly what collectors chase.

3. NBA 50th Anniversary Gold Logo Patch (1996-97)

   

   Before the diamond treatment, there was gold. For the league’s 50th season, every team wore a gold version of the standard NBA logo, and the year was capped off by the announcement of the league’s 50 Greatest Players at the All-Star Game. It’s the patch that set the template for how the NBA would handle its milestone seasons going forward, which makes original game-worn examples from that year genuinely historic pieces rather than just old merchandise.

4. NBA 35th Anniversary Patch (1980-81)

   

   Long before jersey patches were routine, the league marked its 35th season with a small commemorative patch worn on the shorts instead of the jersey, an unusual placement that makes it stand out from everything that came after. Because it predates the modern patch era by more than a decade and because so few people were saving basketball memorabilia in 1980, surviving examples are genuinely rare.

5. Philadelphia 76ers StubHub Patch (2017-18)

   

   This is the patch that started an entire category. In 2016, the Sixers became the first team in any of the four major North American men’s pro sports leagues to sell space on a game jersey, striking a three-year, roughly $15 million deal with StubHub. The patch itself, a small 2.5-inch square on the upper left chest, isn’t much to look at. Its significance is that it exists at all: it’s the physical object that opened the door to jersey sponsorships across American sports.

6. Sacramento Kings Blue Diamond Growers Patch (2017-18)

   

   The Sacramento Kings Blue Diamond Growers patch, a three-year, roughly $5 million deal with the Sacramento-based almond company Blue Diamond Growers. What makes it worth tracking separately from the Sixers’ patch is the contrast: this was a hyper-local company on a small-market team, proof that the sponsor-patch model wasn’t just for big-city teams with national brand partners.

7. Boston Celtics GE Patch (2017-18)

   

   The most expensive deal among that first sponsor class belonged to Boston, where General Electric reportedly paid more than $7 million a year to put its logo on Celtics jerseys. As one of the league’s most storied franchises, Boston wearing any kind of corporate branding at all was a bigger cultural shift than the dollar figure alone suggests, and that first-season patch is the one collectors specifically look for over the Celtics’ later sponsor patches.

8. NBA Finals Championship Patches

   

   Following MLB’s lead, NBA champions have taken to wearing a commemorative “NBA Finals Champions” patch throughout the season after they win it. These patches are produced for both the trophy and hustle-award versions, with the trophy patch carrying more collector interest since it marks the title itself rather than an individual award. Because the design changes every year and only one team gets to wear it, each edition is its own small, self-contained collectible.

9. NBA Christmas Day Patches

   

   Every Christmas, teams selected for the league’s marquee holiday slate wear a limited-run patch, often built around a snowflake or seasonal motif, that never appears on the jersey again. It’s a minor patch in terms of historical weight, but the annual, one-day-only nature of it has made Christmas patches a steady, reliable category for collectors who like completing a set year over year.

10. Topps Rookie Debut Patch (2025-26 onward)

    

    The newest and, in some ways, the highest-stakes entry on this list isn’t worn for a full season at all. Starting with the 2025-26 season, Topps and the NBA began outfitting rookies and top award winners with a special patch worn only for their debut game, then removed, authenticated, and inserted directly into an autographed trading card. The idea is borrowed straight from baseball, where an autographed rookie card carrying a patch worn by Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes sold for $1.1 million. The NBA’s version, including a gold Logoman patch reserved for the reigning MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Defensive Player of the Year, is designed from day one to become exactly the kind of object this whole list is about.