The article I had read said that Fanatics said their proceeds would be donated and the journalist took that to mean 100% of the proceeds. My hunch is the 11 year old kid is not donating 100%, if any, of his proceeds.

I don’t blame the kid for auctioning the card.

Funny.

But, don't hate the player, hate the game.

This whole offer from the Pirates has led to the dumbest reactions from people over the last few days. When the Pirates made the offer, it was getting shared everywhere. I had numerous family members who don't even follow baseball write me and ask me about it. I couldn't avoid it for the first two weeks because I search for Pirates news twice daily. I used to cover the team, mostly the minor league system, for 15 years. I still do occasionally for a friend's site, so I still search news daily.

Anyway, ever since the news came that the kid turned down the Pirates offer, I have seen over 1,000 (literally, not just throwing out a high number) responses that say something like "why would they offer that to an 11-year-old from LA?".

This was a huge story in November that apparently 99% of baseball fans missed. These people really think that the Pirates heard an 11-year-old in LA won it and THEN offered him 30 years of season tickets.

If I somehow didn't hear the original story, I would spend a few minutes searching the internet before I asked a stupid question for all to see. Common sense would say that can't be right, but these people are just all in on group asking a dumb question over and over and over...

No one can tell me that Topps didn't knowingly sit on this card for months and release it into the market at a particular time. The hysteria around this chase card leds to tens (hundreds?) of millions of sales for them. These boxes were going to $800 to $1500. Had this card been "discovered" a few days after they went on sale it would have cost them boku bucks and been a marketing disaster.

+ 100

I was talking with my local card shop owner yesterday about this generally. First, all of the boxes have been long gone for a while. It could be due to this card but it also has other strong rookies.

He mentioned to me about some soccer boxes he bought for his three shops that had some big time soccer card in it. The big card was found in pre-release. Box value dropped dramatically and they can barely move them.

I think these hobby shops get distribution and they are pre-sold pretty quickly via Fanatics. Yes, breakers and flippers and markup occurs, but not sure a full conspiracy is happening.

The kid opened the card packs on Christmas Day, so obviously it was purchased before then and sent out by Topps even earlier. It was only announced as found in the last week, but that wasn't the day the kid got it

LOLOLOLOLOL

The kid told you in his journal entry. The box the card came out of was purchased after just after Black Friday, 2 weeks after the product was released.

The shoe shine boy at grand central station told.me he bought a few boxes.

You should check back with him and see if he too pulled one of these 1/1 cards...then we will have a conspiracy we can really pursue.

Here are a couple of articles from The Athletic about the card.

Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch controversy explained: The card, the bounties and the backlash

The Athletic also interviewed the boy who pulled the card.

Meeting the 11-year-old collector who pulled the Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch: ‘I was shocked’

This product is stacked and Skenes isn't the only chase. I would be very surprised if there was any drop in price for these boxes. There are still big MLB debut patch cards that have yet to be found. Yamamoto, Merril and Evan Carter's patches are still live.

The Chrome Update set is the only option for anyone to pull a Skenes flagship Topps rookie card too.

Product has a lot going for it even without the Skenes patch being live.

I posted this right away. Anyone who believes otherwise, I know a guy who has a minty fresh Frank Chance and some other big cards.

Seems like in the matter of a few weeks the card is opened by an 11 year old, sent to Topps, floated to multiple auction houses, sent to PSA, and earmarked immediately for an auction. Record speed all around.

I will remain a bit skeptical.

You don't send it to Topps. You scratch the back and input a code online. Part of the promotion was what they called "White Glove Treatment." They flew someone there to take it and personally submit it to PSA. From there, PSA did same day service. None of these things takes much time at all. In fact, the longest delay was due to evacuations of the family. The whole process with Topps and PSA took a couple days at the most.

EDIT to add: The family shopped around at auctio houses prior to redeeming it. It appears from the timeline that they actually redeemed the card on January 3rd, after pulling it on Christmas.

I don't understand the skepticism. Topps wants the card to get pulled more than anything. It's major publicity. All of the product is already sold to retailers and breakers before it even gets released. Even if it got pulled on day one all of the product in the market now was already sold. There is nothing gained in holding the product. It's already sold out. It hasn't been available on the Topps site since it's pre-release.

Easy to be skeptical when one lacks details or facts pertaining to a situation.

Donating the entire thing would be a drop in the bucket and great publicity for Fanatics.

You don’t think the insane explosion in pricing of these boxes for months on end in the secondary market and all the publicity the Skenes card engendered — sports stories in The NY Times, local news, and everywhere else — was valuable to Topps as a brand? Their business model is fueled by the mania surrounding these overpriced chase card products. While all the products were sold on day 1, the phenomena of people breaking boxes and reselling product at huge markups is essential to their business model. And just got an unprecedented level of publicity.

Like a beautiful singer wearing a fancy dress or piece of jewelry to the Grammys. It’s all about marketing the brand.


QUOTE=packs;2493274]I don't understand the skepticism. Topps wants the card to get pulled more than anything. It's major publicity. All of the product is already sold to retail and breakers before it even gets released. Even if it got pulled on day one all of the product in the market now was already sold. There is nothing gained in holding the product. It's already sold out. It hasn't been available on the Topps site since it's pre-release.[/QUOTE]

But how does the price of the boxes on the secondary market impact Topps's bottom line if all the product sold by breakers and retailers was purchased at retail price from Topps?

In essence, if I hold onto a box of 2018 Topps Chrome because there could potentially be an autographed Ohtani rookie inside, and I later sell that box for 10 times what I paid, Topps doesn't benefit from the sale. The box was already sold at retail price.

Topps does not have a back log of this product either. It was hyped beyond belief and has been sold out on the Topps site since the pre-release. I'm wondering why you think they'd benefit from withholding the card from a product that is sold out already. They didn't have to do anything to move it in the first place.

.

How does Beyoncé wearing a one of a kind dress at the Grammys affect the bottom line of the dress designer? It suggests to millions of other people that they should be all over this. So next time they start selling a product you can buy, pay up.
Eyeballs on the company. Eyeballs on the product.

I don't see any similarities between the two comparisons. Topps moved this product based on the checklist, not the fact that there were big cards in other products unrelated to this one. The checklist sold the product. Knowing the card was on the checklist made people want to buy it. I don't think anyone is going to be interested in another product without the same checklist as a result of this product featuring this card.

I do want to agree though that Topps does sometimes hold players from products, but not because they're chase cards. For example, Topps could have included Skenes in the Series Two Chrome set but instead held him for the Update set. Every year there is someone who doesn't make it into the newest Bowman Draft set too. This year it was Charlie Condon. Last year it was Dylan Crews. Their first Bowman's are usually held for the next Bowman Chrome release. Both Crews and James Wood were withheld from the Update set and will be featured in the 2025 Topps Series 1 set instead. I don't know if this is due to contracts or some other factor though and I'm not sure it's truly "withholding" the player from a set.

I'm not going to go back and reread the story, but I thought I read he pulled a redemption card and that Topps either had already sent the card to PSA pending the redemption card or did so immediately upon being notified that the redemption card was hit.

Now the kid is a millionaire or pretty close to it

Not really. Fanatics gets 10-20%, then the IRS and California take their share. He may end up with 500k.

1914 Cracker Jack PSA 1.5 Joe Jackson for $150,000 in the same auction.

Hopefully he buys in some mutual funds at 5% and by the time he is 21 will have a nice nest egg.

Agree. He should be able to find something that will bring ~10% per year and be a millionaire before he is 21.

Apparently the card was purchased by Dick's Sporting Goods.

https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/n...CNM-00-10abd1h