There has always been a marketplace for the personal cards of important people, but the humble ceremonial personal card (aka business card, visiting card, calling card, Carte de Visite) has never received much attention at auction, and has often been used as part of a significant lot to highlight provenance and authenticity.
Personal cards are the ultimate in authenticity - they are the cards crafted by and handed out by history's giants to represent them.
By simplifying all other factors down to a rectangle of cardboard, they are not just storied objects, they are the very essence of a storied object in that they're all story and not much object.
Despite having far more authenticity than the current collectible card currencies being minted which largely pay homage to a celebrity with a photograph, they are currently worth MUCH LESS. Historical perspective suggests this will not be the case in the distant future
Few business cards tell a tale quite like this one (centre) did when it sold with Buffalo Bill's pistol as a two-part lot for $239,000. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody obviously engendered trust and friendship in those he met because he enrolled some remarkable people (Sitting Bull, Texas Jack, Wild Bill, Annie Oakley and many more ) in creating Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883, a smash hit travelling show that toured America then Europe for three decades.
One of the most famous figures of the American Old West, Cody left home at 11 years-of-age, and by the time he was 12 he was a member of Jim Lane's Free State Army (also known as the Jayhawkers), an antislavery vigilante group active in the new territory during the Bleeding Kansas era. Wild Bill Hickok joined the group too, and recounts meeting a 12-year-old William Cody for the first time. The two became lifelong friends.
Cody gained wide notoriety as a crack shot in his youth, becoming a U.S. Army scout at 14 years-of-age and proving his worth as a frontiersman many times in his early teens before getting a job on the "pony express" at 15-years-of-age. He subsequently made a fortune supplying beef to the railroads by shooting bison (where he got his nickname for his prodigious number of kills). He lived to a ripe old age and became one of the world's most successful showmen.
We couldn't list this card in the top 100 because no doubt the vast majority of this lot's value was in the gun and not the card. We can find no other William Cody business card (and there are lots of them) to have sold for more than $2000.
Business cards are slowly moving onto the auction block radar
Most times, we suspect, the calling cards of significant societal figures were not deemed worthy of troubling the cashier, and there may well be a hidden population of such cards in attics, barns, autograph books, and storage facilities.
The calling card had forebears that date back thousands of years in China (bamboo sticks) and Egypt (clay tablets), but with the advent of the printing press in Europe, the printed calling card became commonplace during the nineteenth century and played a significant role in the development of society, being on one level, an analog precursor to social media.
The calling card hence offers a 200 year window on history, those who made it and those who made a difference to the modern world: the musicians, the artists, the statespeople, the entertainers, the sportspeople, the captains of industry and the pioneers of science and technology and exploration and flight.
Our recent story on the business cards of science and technology pioneers suggested that the authenticity of a Business/Calling Card and its value at auction is mainly based on the strength of that individual’s personal brand, as all calling cards are just a piece of cardboard and a name.
So we decided to look at the prices of all business / visiting card / calling cards and signed Carte de Visites (the signature made it a personal hand-out) to see how the personal brand names of world history stacked up against each other measured by the price their cards fetched at auction.
Once we’d built the list (we have a Top 100) it became obvious that there must be a lot more to the price of a card than just a brand name.
A little-discussed but critical factor in collecting is that of the continued relevance of any subject to the buying public.
Remarkable Rarities’ Bobby Livingstone gave us some fascinating insights into this facet of the auction marketplace. Bobby is RRAuction’s rainmaker, forever travelling the world in search of the most important memorabilia and collections.
“Even the hottest stars have a “shelf life” at auction”, Livingstone told me.
“Once upon a time, Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo were the sex symbols of their respective times. They brought big prices at auction for their time, but it only takes a generation or two for their memory to be lost to the greater public, a natural thing that happens as time passes. You can tell the really timeless stars because they remain in demand even when they have ceased making movies, releasing music or hitting home runs."
“The superstars of yesterday rarely generate the same emotions in the next generation, and I see it all the time where a collector has spent a lifetime creating a memorabilia collection only to find that their children don’t share the passion, the wife definitely doesn’t and the passion disappears when the collector passes."
“Some personalities appear timeless”, says Bobby! “Babe Ruth is in that category, so too is Michael Jordan. I’m confident Paul McCartney will go into the same league, along with the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Bob Dylan."
"Mohammed Ali should be in the same invincible category as Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan but he signed such a ton of stuff that the massive supply depressed his prices and that makes a huge difference to prices in the long run."
"How much memorabilia has been signed is a critical factor in the long term prices for any individual", says Livingstone.
"Neil Armstrong is definitely one who is so important in terms of world history that there will always be demand for his memorabilia. Armstrong’s prices should be much higher, but he was always, like Ali, willing to chat and sign and he was always extremely respectful to his public."
"Even Marilyn Monroe is now softening, and anything she’d touched was once pure gold. It’s unlikely that she’ll maintain the midas touch she definitely once had, because despite being a massive star in her time, she is no longer in the spotlight and that makes a difference."
“James Dean was once huge, but Dean is now largely forgotten, and for some reason, Sinatra was never worth all that much at auction to begin with."
As we assembled the list of the highest priced cards, it became ever more intriguing, and the deeper we got, the more intriguing it became. If you think there are a few surprises in the top 10, the next tier of prices (#11-20) contains names like Vladimir Putin, George Custer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frédéric Chopin, George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant and after that it becomes quite unpredictable - many with names you won't immediately recognise until you understand the context. Sometimes the context is self explanatory.
You already know the top 10 from the opening visual, so here are the details behind them.
1 | $181,250 Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Sold: HA.com | December 2023
Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America and playing a major role in the abolition of slavery.
2 | $181,183 Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011)
Sold: RRAuction.com | March 2024
Steven Paul Jobs (24 February 1955 – 5 October 2011) is to business cards as Babe Ruth is to baseball bats, in that he dominates this rapidly emerging marketplace like no other. Jobs was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The business cards of Steve Jobs have sold for $181,183, $103,750, $45,426, $15,344, $13,289, $12,905, $12,080, $11,898 and $10,050.
X | $179,250 Atlantic Baseball Club of Brooklyn
Sold: HA.com | July 2015
This card is not from an individual, but we thought it worth listing here because of its historical significance. The Atlantic Base Ball Club of Brooklyn was baseball's first champion and its first dynasty. The team was also the first baseball club to visit the White House in 1865 at the invitation of President Andrew Johnson. The different perceptions of value from different parts of the collector community is obvious here - the card sells for a pittance compared to other baseball cards yet it would sit at the top of the rankings if it were a genuine calling card.
3 | $106,250 | Jacqueline Kennedy (1929 – 1994)
Sold: HA.com | December 2022
Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis (28 July 1929 – 19 May 1994) was an American writer, book editor, and socialite who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A popular first lady, she was regarded as an international icon for her unique fashion choices, and her work as a cultural ambassador of the United States made her very popular globally.
Jackie was the first person to refer to the JFK administration as "Camelot." In late November 1963, just days after her husband's assassination, she gave a rare interview to Kennedy family friend, Theodore H. White, parts of which were published in the December 6, 1963 issue of LIFE magazine as, "For President Kennedy: An Epilogue."
In that brief but incredibly illuminating exchange, she expressed that iconic, indelible phrase that came to define the brief Kennedy presidency. She recalled that, "At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record. The lines he loved to hear were: 'Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot." She then went on to emphasize that, "There'll be great Presidents again - and the Johnsons are wonderful, they've been wonderful to me - but there'll never be another Camelot again...and it will never be that way again."
The record that Mrs. Kennedy referred to in the interview was the Camelot Original Broadway Cast Recording issued in 1960, with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. It is based on the legend of King Arthur as adapted from T.H. White's 1958 novel, The Once and Future King. President Kennedy had been a classmate of Lerner at Harvard University.
After Jackie's published interview, an important association developed in public consciousness between Camelot and the Kennedy White House, and the importance of this association continues to this day.
4 | $81,250 | Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 – 1988)
Sold: HA.com | May 2023
The extraordinary Jean-Michel Basquiat (22 December 1960 – 12 August 1988) first achieved fame as part of a graffiti duo during his late teens. In the following eight years, under the patronage and mentorship of Andy Warhol, he rose to international prominence, then died of a heroin overdose. In those eight years, the whirlwind of creativity was prodigious, and Basquiat is now established as one of the world’s most valuable artists. His record at auction is $110.5 million (“Untitled” | Sotheby’s | 18 May 2017), followed by this painting at $93.1 million (“In This Case” | Christie’s | May 2021), with other high prices including $57.3 million (“Untitled (Devil)” | Christie’s | 10 May 2016), $50.8 million (“Versus Medici” | Sotheby’s | 12 May 2021), $48.8 million (“Dustheads” | Christie’s | 15 May 2013), $45.3 million (“Flexible” | Phillips | 17 May 2018) and $41.9 million (“Warrior” | Christie’s | 23 March 2021). Basquiat still has a web site.
5 | $52,500 | Christopher "Kit" Carson (1809 – 1868)
Sold: HA.com | October 2019
Christopher Houston "Kit" Carson (24 December 1809 – 23 May 1868) was an American frontiersman, fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent and U.S. Army officer. He became an American frontier legend in his own lifetime through biographies and news articles; exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. His understated nature belied confirmed reports of his fearlessness, combat skills, tenacity, as well as profound effect on the westward expansion of the United States. Although he was famous for much of his life, historians in later years have written that Kit Carson did not like, want, or even fully understand the fame that he experienced during his life.
6 | $47,500 Charles Remond Douglass (1844 – 1920)
Sold: Swann Galleries | March 2022
Charles Remond Douglass (21 October 1844 – 23 November 1920) was the third and youngest son of firebrand abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He was the first African-American man to enlist in the military in New York during the Civil War, and served as one of the first African-American clerks in the Freedmen's Bureau in Washington, D.C.
7 | $39,238 | Elon Musk (born 1971)
Sold: RRAuction.com | March 2024
Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a technology entrepreneur known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and DOGE. Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in the world since 2021; as of May 2025, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$424.7 billion.
Born to a wealthy family in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk emigrated in 1989 to Canada. He received bachelor's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 before moving to California, United States, to pursue business ventures. In 1995, Musk co-founded the software company Zip2. Following its sale in 1999, he co-founded X.com, an online payment company that later merged to form PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002. That year, Musk also became a American citizen.
In 2002, Musk founded the space technology company SpaceX, becoming its CEO and chief engineer; the company has since led innovations in reusable rockets and commercial spaceflight. Musk joined the automaker Tesla as an early investor in 2004 and became its CEO and product architect in 2008; it has since become a leader in electric vehicles. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI to advance artificial intelligence research but later left; growing discontent with the organization's direction and their leadership in the AI boom in the 2020s led him to establish xAI.
In 2022, he acquired the social network Twitter, implementing significant changes and rebranding it as X in 2023. In January 2025, he was appointed head of Trump's newly created DOGE. His other businesses include the neurotechnology company Neuralink, which he co-founded in 2016, and the tunneling company the Boring Company, which he founded in 2017. He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2021.
8 | $36,000 Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)
Sold: Christies.com | June 2007
Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept.
In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University of Cambridge's Christ's College from 1828 to 1831 encouraged his passion for natural science. However, it was his five-year voyage on HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 that truly established Darwin as an eminent geologist. The observations and theories he developed during his voyage supported Charles Lyell's concept of gradual geological change. Publication of his journal of the voyage made Darwin famous as a popular author.
9 | $32,500 Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895)
Sold: Swann Galleries | March 2021
Frederick Douglass (14 February 1818 – 20 February 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.
After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York and gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.
10 | $32,426 Bruce Lee (1940 – 1973)
Sold: Nate D. Sanders | February 2021
Bruce Lee (27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) was a Hong Kong-American martial artist, actor, filmmaker, and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy which was formed from Lee's experiences in unarmed fighting and self-defense—as well as eclectic, Zen Buddhist and Taoist philosophies—as a new school of martial arts thought. With a film career spanning Hong Kong and the United States, Lee is regarded as the first global Chinese film star and one of the most influential martial artists in the history of cinema. Known for his roles in five feature-length martial arts films, Lee is credited with helping to popularize martial arts films in the 1970s and promoting Hong Kong action cinema.
The next part of this series of the most expensive business cards ever sold, covering #11-20, will drop in the next few days, and the names get even more fascinating and diverse: Vladimir Putin, General George Custer, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frédéric Chopin, George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant.