Different cards have different values based upon their quality and their rarity.
A common problem amongst sports card makers these days is massive over-production, which drives value way down. If you run across an obvious big name draft choice in the base set of Upper Deck, Topps, or Fleer for example, you are likely looking at one out of 100,000+ copies.
When a card is not produced in as many sets, it becomes more valuable because it is more rare.
I like to give the example of Topps Finest, which was always released in bronze, silver, and gold subsets. If you came across a bronze, it was common, therefore the least valuable. I am making up numbers here, but we'll say they ran 100,000 bronze sets, meaning your bronze card is 1 out of 100,000 of the identically same card. A silver, you suddenly have a little more; maybe they only ran 10,000 sets, now you are looking at 1 in 10,000 of the same card. Gold, then it's the most valuable of that rookie in the set; maybe they only made 1,000 or 100 of them, so its hard to find many people will pay more for it.
I have long been an avid sports card collector, particularly of rookies, and I have cards that run the gambit on value because of rarity. In 1996-97, I collected all basketball cards of that rookie class that contained college stars Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Marcus Camby and Antoine Walker. I have dozens of cards of those guys, all ranging from nothing to a decent amount based on their rarity; but the stars of that class became Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, primarily because, as lesser known players, their cards weren't as mass produced as Iverson or Camby were. But I have Bryant cards from that year that range from $2.00 to $50.00 for base cards because of how common the basic Topps or Upper Deck cards were (I literally have like 20 copies of the Kobe Bryant Upper Deck card) to how rare some of the subsets were.
Are the other cards upper deck cards, or if so are the some special series of upper deck cards. The name of the athlete doesn't drive the value of the card as much as how rare the card is. A rookie card that is part of some limited set is going to be worth more than a rookie card in the regular issue of cards. I haven't been buying trading cards for quite a few years so I'm not that familiar with what is on the market now.