Stocks vs. Cardboard and a Hunt for Tom Brady

Dec 19, 2023

Future Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady has been in the news recently, not for anything football related, but for a just-released Bowman baseball card he’s on that collectors are going gaga for.

The quick backstory: After his senior year of high school, Tom Brady was drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 18th round of the 1995 MLB player draft.  Instead of signing with the Expos out of high school, Brady chose to take his football talents to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the rest is history.

Now retired from football with by far the most Super Bowl hardware of any quarterback in NFL history, Brady was approached by Michael Rubin’s Fanatics, which now owns and produces Topps/Bowman baseball cards, to hand-sign a number of super rare “what if” Brady baseball cards that have been inserted in the company’s newest annual set.  Who knows, maybe the two came up with the promotion at Rubin’s Hamptons white party this summer…

The elusive Tom Brady baseball “rookie card” can be found in packs of the just-released 2023 Bowman Draft product, which shipped to customers on 12/12 (Brady’s NFL jersey number) and additionally features the first rookie cards of players drafted in the 2023 MLB draft.

Brady appears to have signed 81 cards that have been inserted into packs, and the odds of pulling one have been tagged at roughly 1 in 26,600 packs!

As shown below, what appears to be the first Brady auto (autographed card) listed on eBay just sold on December 18th for $21,200!

In addition to the 81 Brady autographed cards randomly inserted into 2023 Bowman Draft packs, there are also non-autographed Brady “Expos” cards like the ones shown below that are still rare but are much more common than the autographed versions.  Even these are selling for more than $1,000 on eBay as of December 19th.

Now that you have the backstory, you may be wondering why Bespoke is writing an article about baseball cards?

While not experts by any means, we here at Bespoke know a thing or two about the sports card collectibles industry (we were, after all, kids once and now have kids of our own), so we thought: “What if we tried our luck and got in on the chase for the Brady auto?  Let’s buy a few boxes of 2023 Bowman Draft, open the packs, see what we get, and then calculate how much money we either lost or made on the whole endeavor.  We can then compare and contrast the ways that investing in the stock market is similar to and different from “investing” in sports cards collectibles.  And if we pull a super rare Brady auto, it will be a very nice Christmas!”

And here we are.  Last week we purchased six boxes of 2023 Bowman Draft from BlowoutCards.com.  The boxes arrived in a couple of days and we immediately sat down and started opening packs (called “ripping” by collectors)!

Did we pull a rare Brady?  Or what about other rare rookie autograph cards inserted in the product?  We know…the suspense is killing you…but first, let’s discuss some of the ways we think collecting baseball cards can be comparable to investing in stocks.

While many fans collect sports trading cards as a hobby instead of viewing them as an investment, a large contingent of collectors out there are indeed looking to make money in the process.  In simple terms, they’re trying to “buy low and sell high,” just like investors are trying to do when they buy and sell stocks.

We’ll get it out of the way now: many out there smirk at the thought of small, rectangular pieces of cardboard having any sort of value, because after all, the paper these cards are printed on is effectively worth nothing.  But, just like precious works of art or even to some degree, the share price of a stock, the value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it, right?  And the value of sports cards mostly comes down to three things: the athlete or celebrity on the card, the scarcity of the card, and the condition of the card.

If you’re a card collector that knows little to nothing about investing in the stock market, or vice versa, here’s a good way to break things down:

In the investment world, “blue-chip” large-cap stocks are mature companies that have weathered the ups and downs of multiple business cycles over the years.  These are generally companies that are past their peak “growth” phase, but they’re still generating steady profits, and they often pay back their shareholders in the form of annual dividends.  While these large-cap stocks may not be likely to double or triple in value in the near term, they can offer slow and steady returns over the years with relatively low volatility.  Some examples of blue-chip stocks are names like Apple (AAPL), Coca-Cola (KO), American Express (AXP), and Home Depot (HD).

In the card collector’s world, think of large-cap blue chips as the cards of some of the best players of all time in their respective sports who have already retired or are closing in on retirement.  These are the All-Stars, Hall of Famers, and GOATs (greatest of all time) that created lasting legacies with fans during their playing days.  Now past the “growth” phase of their careers, the value of the blue-chip cards are no longer going to increase because of player performance, but rather scarcity and condition as the years pass from their playing days.  Examples of “blue chips” in the collecting world are the cards of players like Mickey Mantle, Nolan Ryan, Jim Brown, Joe Montana, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Wayne Gretzky.

For the cards of players that didn’t form lasting legacies during their careers, unfortunately, their cards are going to be much less valuable, or even “bankrupt” like a large-cap stock of yesteryear whose profits slowly dwindled to nothing over time.  Eastman Kodak is a name that comes to mind here.

Next up in the investment world are small-caps or growth stocks.  These are the younger companies out there that may be currently experiencing rapid revenue growth even though they’ve yet to generate any real profits.  For these companies, the sky is still the limit as long as their management teams execute and their industry remains relevant.  If everything works out, growth stocks can double, triple, or even become “ten baggers” (stocks that go up 10x in value), but the future is still unknown, so they’re typically much more risky and volatile than blue chips.  Over time, only a small percentage of small-cap growth stocks will eventually turn into large-cap blue chips, so investors must do their research and choose wisely!

The small-cap growth stocks in the card collecting industry are the up-and-coming “prospects” found in modern-day packs like 2023 Bowman Draft that we wrote about earlier.  These are players that are still super early in their playing careers, whether they’re rookies in the NFL or NBA or still in the minor leagues for baseball.  Because the sky is still the limit and these athletes could turn out to be Hall of Famers, collectors looking for the “next” Tom Brady or Michael Jordan pay a premium for “potential,” but buying these cards is much more risky than buying “blue chips” since only a small percentage of players ever make it to the top of the mountain.  Players who would now be considered “small-cap, growth” stocks in the card world might be quarterback CJ Stroud, running back Bijan Robinson, NBA rookie Victor Wembanyama, or minor leaguers like Jackson Holliday with the Orioles or Paul Skenes with the Pirates.

In the card collecting world, you can either buy individual cards of players, which are called “singles” in the industry, or you can buy boxes or packs of products like 2023 Bowman Draft.  When you buy packs of cards, the contents are unknown, but there’s a chance you could pull a rare card of a player you’re looking for.  Buying an individual card of a highly sought-after rookie or prospect is much more expensive than buying a pack that simply gives you a chance to pull the same card.  By buying a low-cost pack, you have a chance to pull a really valuable card, but there’s also a very good chance that you’ll buy the pack and NOT pull anything valuable; essentially losing your money.  That’s what makes opening packs the riskiest part of the trading card industry.  More often than not, you’re going to lose money, because the companies producing the packs have to make money!  In this way, opening packs instead of buying singles is like trading options instead of buying individual stocks.  Trading options costs much less than buying the underlying stock, but the payoff can be huge even though your option can also just as easily expire worthless.

Hopefully you enjoyed some of the comparisons above!

We mentioned that opening packs is the riskiest part of the trading card industry, but that’s exactly what we did when we bought and opened our boxes of 2023 Bowman Draft in search of rare cards like the Tom Brady auto.  To find out how we did, check back tomorrow!  We’ll highlight everything we pulled (did we pull a Brady???) and then see if their combined value based on recent eBay sales gets us anywhere close to back to even!

Is there a Brady auto in one of these boxes…