You do not have to be a sports memorabilia expert to know that the industry traditionally has been built around baseball in general and the Yankees in particular.

But just as in real life, basketball has made inroads with younger generations of collectors, with stars from the past 40 years becoming modern versions of what Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle were before them.

Exhibit A currently is for sale by Heritage Auctions, a 2007 card signed by Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant that Heritage expects to command more than $6 million.

That would be a record for a basketball card, beating the $5.9 million for a 2009 Stephen Curry signed rookie card.

Until recently, numbers like that for basketball were unheard of.

“When I started at Heritage almost 20 years ago, modern basketball cards did no

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