Cooper Flagg is eating all of the pre-draft oxygen. With the 2025 NBA Draft set for June 25-26 at Barclays Center and Flagg locked as the consensus number one to Dallas, the louder hobby story sits one tier down. The actual money three weeks out is moving on the non-Flagg pack - Dylan Harper, VJ Edgecombe, Ace Bailey, Kon Knueppel, and Khaman Maluach - and the 2024-25 Bowman Chrome U comps are telling a different story than the mock drafts.
The thesis is simple: the market has quietly stopped treating Harper as part of the "everyone after Flagg" group. The comps put him in his own tier, and the gap between him and the next three names is wider than any current mock implies.
Setting the table: Bowman U is the pre-draft product
2024-25 Bowman Chrome U (Topps) is the inventory that matters before June 26. It is the product carrying Harper, Bailey, Edgecombe, Knueppel, and Maluach as 1st Bowman prospects, and the parallel ladder - base, Green /99, Green Shimmer, plus on-card autograph numbered parallels and SSP refractors - is where pre-draft eBay action is being recorded. Topps' own checklist work on the 2025-26 Bowman Basketball release and Ludex's 2025-26 collector's guide confirm which prospects carry Bowman Chrome / Bowman U coverage and the parallel structure now being priced.
The macro backdrop reset on May 12, 2025, when the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Draft Lottery at 1.8% odds - the fourth-largest underdog to win since the lottery was instituted in 1985. That single ping-pong-ball result reframed team-fit pricing across every prospect tier and, as ESPN documented in its post-lottery feature, locked Flagg into a destination that did not appear on any pre-lottery model.
From there, the consensus pre-draft order calcified. Per the NBA.com consensus mock and ESPN's aggregated boards: Flagg #1 to Dallas, Harper #2 to San Antonio, Edgecombe #3 to Philadelphia, Knueppel #4 to Charlotte, Tre Johnson #5 to Utah, and Bailey #6 to Washington. ESPN's post-lottery mock anchors the same picture.
Tier 1 - Dylan Harper: priced as a separate class
The cleanest comp on the board belongs to Harper. On April 25, 2025, a 2024-25 Bowman U Now On-Card Autograph Purple Parallel /25 PSA 10 of Harper sold for $999 on eBay, a sale documented by Sports Illustrated in its pre-draft hobby report. That print run, that grade, that price - three weeks before the draft - is not how the market prices a co-#2. It is how the market prices a lock.
The parallel ladder fills in around it. A Harper Green /99 1st Prospect sits as the entry-numbered comp, while top-end auto parallels - the kind of Green Shimmer Refractor Auto /10 SGC 10 currently active on eBay - anchor the upper bound of the Bowman U ladder for this class. The pre-draft floor on Harper base autos has been holding above $300, which is the number the rest of the tier has to be measured against.
Tier 2 - VJ Edgecombe: athleticism is the narrative
Edgecombe is locked into #3 to Philadelphia across the consensus mocks, and the hobby is treating that lock as a real one. Bleacher Report's coverage of ESPN's post-combine mock documented Edgecombe consolidating at #3 even as Bailey slid. The athletic-upside narrative is doing the work, and Bowman Chrome U Green Shimmer parallels have become the standard chase for buyers who missed Harper's window in April.
The honest read: Edgecombe is the tier-two trade for buyers who do not want to pay Harper prices and do not want to absorb Bailey's destination risk. Whether that thesis holds depends on Philadelphia actually staying at #3, which the current consensus supports but the draft itself has not yet confirmed.
Tier 3 - Ace Bailey: the slide the market priced first
Bailey is the most interesting case in the class, because the cards moved before the mocks did. He has slid from a previous #3-4 battle with Edgecombe into the #6 range to Washington in the latest consensus boards, with the catalyst widely reported as his camp refusing individual team workouts to steer destination. Buyers do not like that kind of noise three weeks out.
The pricing reflects it. Sports Illustrated's Collectibles desk quantified the gap: Bailey base RC autos trade in the $180-$200 range against Harper autos at $300-plus. That is roughly a 40% discount to a player who was, until very recently, his Rutgers teammate and ranked in the same conversation. Mantel's dealer view frames the same softness as a buy-the-dip thesis.
The leading indicator was on the SSP side. Sports Card Investor tracks Bailey's 2025 Topps Chrome #AD-5 Advisory SSP at a documented -57.5% / -$115 drop over a 30-day window, from roughly $200 down to $85. That move started before the workout-refusal story dominated the mock cycle, which is the cleanest evidence in this class that the secondary market is pricing in information ahead of the boards rather than reacting to them.
Whether that makes Bailey a value or a falling knife is the open question. The base auto discount is real, the destination risk is also real, and the AD-5 chart shows what happens when sentiment moves on a single prospect.
Tier 4 - Knueppel and Maluach: shooting vs. upside
Knueppel at #4 to Charlotte is the shooting-skill trade. The pricing reflects a player whose floor the market trusts but whose ceiling has not generated the same parallel chase as Edgecombe or Harper.
Maluach is the inverse - the upside trade. The Bowman U Green Shimmer and Blue Shimmer Auto /35 are the chase parallels, with a Blue Shimmer Auto /35 BGS comp currently active as the reference point. Sports Card Investor's aggregated tracker covers roughly 1,349 Maluach cards across parallels for buyers building a comp set on movers. The trade here is straightforward: if Maluach goes inside the top five, the numbered autos re-rate; if he slides, they do not.
The historical comp: Wembanyama as the lock template
The modern precedent for a #1-pick pre-draft Bowman U card was set in 2022-23, when Topps added Victor Wembanyama as the 101st card - a late, short-printed addition - to Bowman University Chrome. That SP became the template for how the hobby prices a lock pre-draft: scarcity plus consensus plus a defined product window.
Harper is not getting a 101st-card SP treatment. What he is getting is the closest pricing behavior to a Wemby-style lock that this class will produce - a $999 PSA 10 numbered auto trading in April for a player who is not even the #1 pick. The gap between Harper's comps and the next three names is the modern Bowman U signal that the market has tiered him out.
The actionable read
The mocks have Flagg #1 and then a four-deep grouping of #2 through #5. The Bowman Chrome U comps have Flagg, then Harper, then everyone else. That is the gap worth tracking into draft week.
For buyers, the practical questions are narrower than the mock-draft chatter suggests: Is Harper's tier-one pricing already in, or does it re-rate again on the night of June 25? Is Bailey's 40% auto discount a value or a still-falling knife? And does Edgecombe's athletic narrative survive contact with whatever Philadelphia actually does at #3? Three weeks of price discovery remain, and the AD-5 chart is a reminder that this market tends to price information before the boards catch up.
Note: This article contains AI-assisted content and has been reviewed in our editorial workflow.
Related reading
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Paige Bueckers Rookie Card Math: What WNBA Mid-Season Sales Actually Say About the 2025 Prizm Base
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Cooper Flagg Card Math, Revisited: Which Duke Bowman Chrome U Premiums Actually Survived Draft Night
Sources
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How Cooper Flagg and the Mavericks responded to the lottery - ESPN
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2025 NBA mock draft: projecting all 59 picks post-lottery - ESPN
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Dylan Harper's Cards Are Taking the Hobby By Storm - Sports Illustrated
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Are Ace Bailey cards an overlooked bargain? - SI Collectibles
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Ace Bailey Cards: Lottery Upside at Pre-Draft Prices - Mantel
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Ace Bailey 2025 Topps Chrome #AD-5 Advisory SSP - Sports Card Investor
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2024-25 Bowman Chrome U Dylan Harper Green /99 1st Prospect - eBay
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Dylan Harper 2024-25 Bowman U Chrome Green Shimmer Auto /10 SGC 10 - eBay
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Khaman Maluach Auto Bowman Chrome Prospects Blue Shimmer /35 BGS - eBay
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Khaman Maluach Basketball Cards Price Guide - Sports Card Investor
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2022-23 Bowman University Chrome Basketball Checklist - Cardboard Connection
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2025-26 Bowman Basketball Complete Collector's Guide - Ludex
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2025-26 Bowman Basketball Checklist Spotlight - Topps Ripped
DISCLAIMER: PureGrail articles are for informational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing on this site constitutes financial, investment, or legal advice. Collectibles are speculative assets and values can decrease significantly. Always conduct your own research before buying or selling. Past price performance does not indicate future results.
