Los Angeles Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers are inseparable from Kobe Bryant’s legacy. He was drafted 13th overall in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets and traded to Los Angeles before he played a single game, then spent all 20 seasons of his career in purple and gold: five championships, 18 All-Star selections, two Finals MVPs and the 2007-08 regular-season MVP.

Source: Wikipedia’s Kobe Bryant entry — he came out of Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania and was the 13th overall pick of the 1996 NBA draft by the Charlotte Hornets; “The day before the draft, the Charlotte Hornets agreed to trade their No.13 pick to the Lakers in exchange for Vlade Divac.” Five championships (the 2000, 2001 and 2002 Finals, then 2009 and 2010); “Bryant won the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award”; he “changed his jersey number from 8 to 24 at the start of the 2006–07 season”; and he died on 26 January 2020 in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.

Which means the practical thing for a collector: every Kobe NBA card is a Lakers card. There is no team-change chase, no “which uniform is this” question, no split market between franchises. What there is — and what almost nobody explains — is a jersey-number split that runs right down the middle of his career and quietly organizes his entire catalog.

The #8 and #24 era map

Kobe wore two numbers for exactly ten seasons each, and the Lakers retired both of them on December 18, 2017.

Collectors use this constantly as a dating tell. A photo of Kobe in #8 was shot no later than the 2005-06 season; a #24 photo was shot in 2006-07 or after.

The catch — and it trips people up on eBay every day: the number dates the photograph, not the card. Modern retro and tribute inserts deliberately use throwback #8 imagery, so a crisp #8 image on glossy modern chrome stock is a recent card with an old picture, not a 1990s card. Date the card itself by the set name and the copyright line on the back, exactly as you would when checking whether a card is a rookie reprint.

Where each era lives in the catalog

#8, part one — the 1996-97 rookie foundation

His first NBA season produced the cards that anchor every serious Kobe collection, spread across a dozen brands in a single year. Start with the 1996-97 rookie chase for the ranked overview, or go straight to the complete rookie checklist for every card and number. Three of those sets have their own set-by-set breakdowns here: 1996-97 Topps #138, 1996-97 Topps Chrome and 1996-97 Fleer #203.

#8, part two — inserts and the three-peat

As he became a superstar, the late-90s die-cut and refractor arms race gave his cardboard its most striking designs — the families worth chasing are laid out on the best Kobe 90s inserts page. Then came the 2000, 2001 and 2002 titles alongside Shaquille O’Neal, still in #8. That run and the later one are covered together on Kobe championship-era cards.

#24 — MVP, back-to-back, and the modern era

The number change in 2006-07 sits right on the hinge of the hobby’s modern era. The 2007-08 MVP season still falls in the multi-brand years, while the 2009 and 2010 championships with back-to-back Finals MVPs and everything after — through the farewell season — land under Panini’s exclusive NBA trading-card license, which began with 2009-10. That’s why the back half of the #24 decade is where the numbered parallels, patch cards and premium autographs live. The parallel ladder is mapped on modern Kobe Prizm parallels, and signed cards across both eras on Kobe autographs & top cards.

Outside purple and gold

The narrow exception to “every Kobe card is a Lakers card”: his Team USA issues from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic gold-medal teams, plus occasional draft-night and Lower Merion high-school themed inserts. They’re a small, distinct corner of the catalog rather than a separate market.

Buying Lakers-era Kobe cards without getting burned

Kobe is one of the most counterfeited names in the hobby, and the 1996-97 rookies are the single most reprinted corner of it. The rules that hold across both jersey-number eras:

1. Buy graded for anything meaningful. A slab from a major grader settles authenticity and condition in one step — see PSA vs BGS vs SGC for Kobe cards and browse graded Kobe slabs.
2. Verify the cert number on the grader’s own lookup before you pay. That single check defeats every common counterfeit-slab scam — the mechanics are in how to spot a fake Kobe graded slab.
3. Treat signatures as guilty until certified. Certified on-card and sticker autographs come with the manufacturer’s own authentication; loose signed cards do not. Details in how to spot fake Kobe autographs.
4. Check centering before you pay a grading fee. Mid-90s cardboard was cut imprecisely, and centering is the most common reason a clean-looking rookie comes back below gem — measure it first with the card centering tool.
5. Price against live comps, never a guide number. What a specific card is trading for today is the only honest answer; what is a Kobe card worth? walks through the tiers and points at real listings.

New to the purple and gold? The full Kobe collecting guide covers picking a lane, and the Kobe Bryant hub tells the whole career-in-cardboard story era by era. For what’s coming, the release calendar tracks the Panini sets most likely to carry new Kobe tributes.