Tom Brady might have retired from the league but his name can still fetch a million-dollar price. We are talking about football cards, an industry that saw insane growth in the past years, thanks to the popularity of stars like Brady.
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When Brady joined the NFL in 2001, football cards were relatively unknown among the fans, but with the league’s rise, they turned from a hobby to a serious business venture.
In 2021, Brady’s autographed ‘2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Rookie Ticket’ became one of the first to sell for more than a million dollars in an auction.
Recently, he listed a ‘2000 Upper Deck Brady Rookie Autograph Card‘ from his collection in an auction held by renowned auction house Sotheby’s, New York.
The highly sought-after card came with an added perk of Brady’s signature on the certificate of sale and the bidding war was enough to prove that brand Brady was still going strong.
The bid for the card started at $60,000, within seconds it rose to $100,000 and the card was finally sold for $160,000.
A gleeful Brady was present in the audience alongside Patriots owner Robert Kraft. In the auction, Kaft played respect to his former top quarterback by bidding on another Tom Brady rookie card for $100,000.
Brady was the 199 overall in the 2000 NFL draft and was hired as a 4th-string QB by the Patriots. The promoters focused solely on the top picks and never published many cards for the rookie.
However, his rise in the league turned his limited number of football cards into solid gold.
The ‘Holy Grail’ auction was a joint effort by Sotheby’s and sports merch company, Fanatics. It featured many rare sports collectables and the overall collection of the auction was more than $7,000,000.
It featured a bunch of Tom Brady memorabilia and fetched close to $1,000,000 collectively. Some notable names in the audience included Jaguars’ owner Shad Khan and Giants’ rookie wide receiver Malik Nabers.
