There is a new gold rush in California. However, unlike in 1849, the gold is not made of gold but rather of plastic and/or cardboard. Furthermore, this gold rush revolves around one man. He is an angel descended on Anaheim from Millville, New Jersey. By this point any serious baseball fan has rightly deduced that this diatribe refers to one Mike Trout, a man whose generational talent has taken both the game of baseball and its memorabilia industry to heavenly heights.
Obscene amounts of money are nothing new in the world of the greatest baseball talent of our generation. He owns the richest contract in baseball. You may recall he inked a 12 year extension in 2019 worth in excess of $426 million. That will keep him in an Angels uniform through 2031 and pays him around $37.6 million per season. It also came with a $20 million signing bonus. Off-field endorsement money works out to about $3 million more. (it would be much more if baseball did a better job of marketing its stars in my opinion) More specific to the card industry, Trout cards, especially rookies, are among the more coveted and expensive, routinely fetching hundreds or even thousands of dollars on eBay or at the many card shows across America.
There is however, one card that stands tall above all the rest. The card in the story I am about to tell you is the chief protagonist of one of the biggest baseball stories of the year. Yet you may be totally unaware of it given the scant attention this story has received from sports TV and radio at least here in Canada. Perhaps, it was relayed as a slew of letters flashing across the bottom of your TV news screen but little more than that. Nevertheless, I trouble myself with writing this article and trouble you with the task of reading because I genuinely believe this to be an event of great importance in the history of sports and its memorabilia industry which is in a boom in spite of the pandemic going on around us. (The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this article but perhaps I should write on this as well)
The card that shook the world is from the Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superrefractors Series from 2009. (the year Trout was drafted 25th overall) It comes with a certified autograph and received a 9 (mint) grade from Beckett. The main reason for its sky high valuation however lies in its uniqueness. It is literally one of a kind. (There is a subtle stamp saying “1/1” on the card) The card was put on the auction block with a starting bid of $1 millon. It had been sold to its previous owner for an unholy $480,000. Industry insiders had surmised before the auction itself that the card could beat the previous record of $3.12 million upon being sold. That record was held by what for decades had been the Holy Grail of card collecting; the Honus Wagner T206 around which so much legend has emerged. By the end of the night, the Trout card had not only beat the record but smashed it to the tune of a $3.93 million selling price.
If there is any clear expression that the sports card industry is alive and well in the time of corona, it has to be this! We may even be entering a golden age in the history of collecting where more and more big players are willing to throw down big money for not just hallowed relics of the past, but for unique cards of today’s stars as well. All around us, we watch cards of today’s sports stars fetch incredible amounts of money. From Messi and Ronaldo to Doncic and Giannis, cards are being sought by a motivated and ambitious new generation of collectors as well as hardened investors well aware of the money available to be made. We live in historic times as collectors and this story underscores it about as clearly as any. Buckle up and check your stuff. You may be sitting on angelic gains if you’ve got some Trouts.
Note: All amounts quoted are in US Dollars
Sources Cited:
[1] Baseball’s Highest Paid Players: (Forbes Magazine) https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/04/01/baseballs-highest-paid-players-2019-mike-trout-leads-with-39-million/#5294b0636cc7
[2] Mike Trout’s Rookie Card Sells For $3.9 million: (Forbes Magazine)
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