In 2001, Upper Deck introduced the industry’s first Rookie Patch Autographs on the SP Authentic football checklist. The cards experienced so much success that pressure mounted from company executives to immediately bring the RPA to basketball but set designer Karvin Cheung had reason to hold off on making them. When he saw high school junior LeBron James on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the tagline “The Chosen One,” Cheung knew he wanted to wait to build the first basketball RPAs around the Ohio phenom.
“I said, ‘That’s the year we’re going to hit hard with a product that is high-end with RPAs,’” Cheung said.
And—thankfully for collectors—the company trusted his instinct. LeBron’s arrival coincided with the inaugural high-end Exquisite Collection release, giving the star-studded 2003 draft class the NBA’s first true base RPAs and other autographed patch cards—such as LeBron’s 2003-04 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Limited Logos RPA.
At $500 per five-card box, the barrier-breaking high-end product featured troves of hard-signed autographs and intricate patches—making it an instant classic that helped usher in a new era of trading cards. One of the most popular inserts from Exquisite is the Limited Logos set. The 30-card checklist includes a mixture of rookies, veterans, and retired legends. This example of LeBron’s /75 Limited Logos card features an oversized patch and on-card signature.
The Gem Mint BGS 9.5 lands True Gem status for its subgrades of 10 for Centering and 9.5 for Corners, Surface and Edges. The autograph has also been assessed as a 10.
The certification number on this card has been checked against the third-party grader's online database and is active as of 01/08/2026.
