He sold a $3.5 Million Dollar Tom Brady Rookie Card for $9,000!

So like many of you, I was scrolling through Instagram a couple of days ago and this story popped up in my feed. I've seen a couple of stories from this guy before he's got some really good ones. So make sure we give him a fall over there on Instagram, just some incredible card stories on stuff that he's sold, how much he sold it for, and what he's done with that money.

He did one with a Patrick Mahomes card where he sold it and paid off his mother-in-law's mortgage. So just some really cool stuff on there, but nothing really tops this one. The story comes to us from @cardboard_preacher on Instagram and how he sold a $3.5 million card for $9,000. Now, how did he do that? Well, it's in a roundabout way, but here's how the story goes according to him.

On October 18th, 2013, he was browsing good old eBay, like a lot of us do, and he came across a 2000 Tom Brady contenders championship ticket, autographed rookie card. This is the one that's limited to a hundred copies. It was graded a BGS 9 which is the highest graded copy. According to him, he had previously owned other copies of this card ranging from a 7.5 to an 8.5. And the eBay seller said he needed the money to build a deck, which is why he was selling the card.

I've talked about this before on the show, please don't ever build a deck at your house. They're just so darn expensive. There's always something going wrong with it. It just seems like everything's falling apart. The wood gets rotted. You got to get that fake Trex stuff. That's the good stuff, man. Anyway, decks are way too expensive. Never build them, never do them. Buy a house one that's already completed.

But anyway, so he sees this card on eBay and he made an offer of $6,000, which was a ton of money for a football card at the time, and the seller accepted the offer. Okay, great. He's ecstatic, got the card a couple of days later. Essentially, he had spent two months salary on this card, which apparently you're only supposed to do that for diamonds for the ladies. But apparently we do it for cards also, which you know what, honestly, I'd rather do it for cards than diamonds. At least the cards are going to maybe probably go up in value. So he got the card and he didn't like that it had some white showing on the contenders stamp there. So he relisted it back on eBay for $12,000. October 25th, 2013, seven days later from when he bought it, he gets an offer for $9,000.

This is way before this whole kind of card craze that we're in now, and 9,000 bucks is a lot of money. So he can basically make 3,000 bucks. Yes, he's going to have some selling fees off of that, but 3,000 bucks for him at that time was one month salary. So think about what your one month salary is right now. If you can make that on one card in one week, would you sell it? Most of the time, probably yes. That's a good chunk of change there, but he's on a marriage retreat with his wife and had to find a computer in order to accept the offer because he didn't have a smartphone at the time. So he logs in and accepts the offer. He just made one month's salary in one week. So cool.

A few years later, a friend of his sells a BGS 9. It's not this exact card, but it's another one that's graded BGS 9 and he sells it for $80,000. So he's just like, what the hell? I just sold this thing for $9,000, I left so much money on the table. Brady then plays in that Super Bowl with the Falcons. That incredible Super Bowl where he comes back from 28 to 3, and he sees on the front page of espn.com that a Brady rookie card sells for $250,000 the night before. He's reading the story and the guy that is quoted as selling it was the same guy that he sold it to. He remembers the eBay seller name. This is the same guy that he sold to for $9,000.

So just incredible amount of profit right there. That's insane. Less than a year later, that same card sold again for $450K and last year in 2021 it sold for $3.5 million. Where are you going to find any returns like that? From $6K to $3.5 million. Imagine what the guy that was building the deck and what he's thinking now, he's probably looking at his wife and being like, "You're an idiot for making me build this stupid deck that we probably don't even use. And it probably got damaged in some hailstorm. We could have had this $3.5 million card. Listen to me next time!", you know?

So anyway, at one time this guy owned the most expensive football card in in existence. How would you feel personally if you were this gentleman that you had a card for $6,000 that you could have eventually sold for $3.5 million.

Now listen, everything's always hindsight, 20/20, right? There's no way he would ever be able to forecast any of this. He did the best he could at the moment that he was in and that's what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to make the best decision in the moment that we're in. But I mean, just an incredible story and I don't have any stories that are that crazy, but it got me thinking about maybe some autographs that I probably sold a little too cheap. If you're buying autographed stuff or cards or anything that's of value that people really want, it's going to be impossible to time the market 100% perfect.

You're always going to leave money on the table and that's okay. There's no shame in that at all. You can always use that money to buy something else, buy that deck if you want to. So there's always money you're going to be leaving on there. No shame in that. But here are three items that looking back on it, I probably sold these a little too quick and a little too cheap.

The first one is a LeBron James signed ticket and program from when he was in high school. Now this is a ticket and program from the February 21st, 2002 game versus the Lakers. This is before LeBron was even drafted by the Calves. He came to see Kobe Bryant play. So very rare high school signature on both the ticket and the program from that game. Think about that. The ticket and the program. The ticket craze is going big right now. Imagine what this thing's worth nowadays, but it was kind of a one of a kind collectable.

You're just not going to find anything like this. I was just browsing a Facebook group one day and I saw them available as a package deal. I believe it was about 400 bucks for the pair and they were not authenticated, pretty fair price, I would say back then. This was many years ago. I want to say five to seven years ago. I ran it by a good contact of mine that knows LeBron's signature like the back of his hand, he said they were 100% good. Then I had JSA, authentic them. They authenticated both the ticket and the program. Then I had them framed up together with a cool little SI print there. I think it was the first SI cover that he was on. Maybe it was one of the first ones. And then I sold it, for get this, $900.

It was super nice. Like I framed it up really, really well. It was a cool piece. Looking back on this thing now, I was like, man, what is that worth nowadays? 10,000 bucks, but I really don't know. Cause you're not going to find anything like this. You find obviously the right buyer at the right time, blah, blah, blah, but if you're a LeBron collector, you want an old school, high school signature of his on something that he went to go watch Kobe play. I mean, everything that's happened with Kobe in his life.

The story behind it is really kind of sells. There's no going back on that one, whoever bought that, congratulations, you won on that one, but hopefully they still have it. I'd be curious to see if they do, but, oh man, that was a bummer on that one.

Number two. Tom Brady signed high school, helmets and jerseys. If you watch the previous video on Tom Brady retiring, I mentioned that Tom and I went to the same high school. So naturally when doing, send-in signings with Tristar who he was with before Fanatics, I would send in a lot of high school related stuff.

My buddies from high school would buy it. Of course I would sell it to, you know, pretty much anybody else also. It was a decently popular item, cause I was kind of the only one that really had them. But back then you could send in custom helmets and get them done. You could also send in custom high school and college jerseys for a little while. Eventually, they got rid of that. You can never do the custom pro jerseys, but I would send in the high school ones all the time. I probably sold 40 or so of these things, which is kind of funny, cause Tristar ended up selling them and then they would sell them as a limited edition of like 10 or whatever it was.

And I was like, how's it limited, just have 10. I sold 40 of those things. So just keep that in mind when people do limited edition stuff like that. If there's nothing really limited about it, like, "Hey, it's got a bunch of prescriptions on there that you can't get any more." Like, they're probably not limited. It cracks me up. Like I seen Steiner sports did these a while ago, they had Mike Trout helmets, they did a limited edition of like 25 or something like that with just an autograph on there. Like what's limited about it? But anyway, so I ended up selling the Jersey for about $1500, and the helmet for about $1800.

So knowing what I know now that Fanatics has got them and they don't allow these types items anymore. Probably not for the foreseeable future. I mean, these are going to be pretty cool stuff for a Brady collector to have. The jersey could be, you know, $2,500 jersey now and the helmet, maybe $3,000. They were just cool. I mean I had so much fun making these things too. The helmets had to get the logos and all this kind of stuff and find the right color helmet. Of course Shutte is the one that you use for those custom helmets. But it was a lot of work putting into those custom helmets. They take a little bit of time to put together. It was super fun selling those. I wish I still had one, at least from my collection, just because obviously we went to high school together. At least the Jersey would be cool.

Moving along to number three and the final one. Michael Jordan's signed gold and white USA Olympic jerseys. Bear with me on this one here. This was kind of a dumb one, but I got them from a buddy of mine whom I went to high school with who was back in the day, he was a big autograph chaser. Got them in a trade with him for some Derek Jeter stuff. They were signed at the Tahoe golf tournament. I don't know how long ago, and PSA later certed them and they were nice. They were official jerseys, none of that fake Chinese knock-off stuff and really nice things and good quality.

I think I had them in the trade value about 600 bucks. I sold them about six or seven years ago. I think I even wholesaled them. I don't even know what I did, but it was about 900 bucks each that I sold them for. So made a measly $500 or $600 profit on Jordan autographs, which you know, back then was probably okay. But as we all know now, what do Jordan Jersey sell for at minimum, $5k? Now, granted, these aren't Upper Deck ones. So the value is not going to be as high, but that's easily a $4K to $5K jersey right now. My advice for you guys, is if you have Jordan autographs, don't sell them so cheaply, like hold onto those things.

Jordan is the number one athlete to have, as far as an autograph goes. International appeal, everybody knows Jordan, everybody wants a Jordan autograph. So there's no reason to ever sell a Jordan autograph right here right now, unless you've got some dire straits going on.

So those are my three things that I've sold, probably a little too cheap. There's probably a bunch more, but I don't want this topic to run a whole hour long here and bore the heck out of you guys. Let me know if you guys have sold anything that you regret that was way too cheap and that you wish you could have back.

Out of those three items, I think that LeBron item I would definitely like to have that one back. So if you bought that from me and you're somehow listening to this show, please, please contact me. I would love to buy that back from you.