Every collector who’s handled one remembers the first time light poured through those tiny holes and Jordan’s face appeared like a magic trick. Platinum Portrait wasn’t just another 90s insert. It was SkyBox flexing its futuristic muscle in the 1997-98 Metal Universe line, using a field of laser-cut pinholes to stencil MJ’s portrait on a bright silver card. The effect is sci-fi and elegant at the same time, and it’s why so many of these live in one-touches that never leave a shelf. Cardboard Connection flat out calls the insert “very popular” and explains the construction, while Fanatics’ auction copy captures what makes them so fragile in grading terms: a “delicate laser cut” build that’s easily nicked or warped. Odds didn’t help either. Jordan’s card sat at the very top of a 15-player checklist and reportedly landed at a needle-in-a-haystack rate of about one in 4,320 packs. That cocktail of scarcity, engineering, and Jordan being Jordan is why this specific card gets labeled a grail by both hobby lifers and newer collectors.
Grading outcomes tell the story. Card Ladder shows just 17 PSA 10s for the Jordan Platinum Portrait. The last publicly tracked PSA 10 sale on their index hit $60,120 on November 27, 2023, a number that reset a lot of people’s expectations for where the ceiling sits. PSA’s own auction-price archive still lists an earlier PSA 10 comp at $18,100 from July 23, 2020, which shows how much the market matured since the pandemic era boom and the subsequent reshuffling.
Nines have been lively too. You noted a PSA 9 sale at $16,100 on July 24, 2025, and Card Ladder’s PSA 9 page now shows the next data point just a month later at $20,000 on August 24, 2025. Two sales isn’t a market, but it’s a pulse, and it fits the long-standing delta between true gem examples and the best-in-class nines on condition-sensitive 90s tech like this. Card Ladder currently pegs the PSA 9 population at 30.
Sixes are where more collectors can still take a shot without mortgaging a game-worn warmup. You flagged a PSA 6 at $7,499.99 on August 11, 2025; I couldn’t find a public archive for that exact sale yet, but earlier in the year a Fanatics Collect weekly auction logged a PSA 6 at $5,640 on March 2, 2025. PSA’s historical ledger also shows a lower PSA 6 comp in 2024, which lines up with the steady climb as supply keeps drying in any grade.
What makes this card feel special in hand isn’t only price history. It’s the decision to turn a photo of Jordan into pure light and shadow. Spin it under a lamp and you see a portrait appear, vanish, and reappear, like a lenticular without the gimmick. The die-cut pattern hates rough edges, so even tiny dings or slight warps can separate an eight from a nine and a nine from the tiny club of tens. Collectors love that tension. And it’s part of the broader Metal Universe story from that season, where wild space-age design met real innovation across inserts like Planet Metal and Titanium, and of course the now-mythic PMGs. Platinum Portrait sits right in that constellation, but in a lane of its own.
As MJ inserts go, there are louder cards, scarcer cards, and certainly more expensive ones, yet few are as instantly recognizable. The hobby teaches you that true grails aren’t only about serial numbers or autographs. Sometimes it’s the card that turns a face into a field of stars and makes you lean closer. This is that card.
