Alex Becker
This may be the rarest sports card in the history of the world.
A signed Mark Zuckerberg baseball card from 1992 is set to be put up for auction next month. Yep, that’s right the founder of Facebook has a baseball card and it’s about to sell for a lot of money.
Back in 1992, Zuckerberg was a camper at Elmwood Day Camp in Westchester, NY. As the overconfident person we all know Zuckerberg to be, at 8 years old he decided to have a real baseball card made of himself from his season at camp. When he was leaving camp at the end of the summer, he decided to gift the card to his favorite counselor Allie Tarantino, but not before signing it.
Now 30 years later, Tarantino is putting the sacred card up for auction. “As somebody who collects things, it’s always really difficult to part with whatever you have in your collection,” Tarantino said about his decision to sell the card. “But I’ve always been like weirdly curious about how the public would react to something that’s like this that’s a weird combination of pop culture and memorabilia. It’s like my version of a midlife crisis. I’m 50 years old — what am I going to do with this?”
The card is also being sold with an NFT version because it’s Mark Zuckerberg meaning it needs to have some sort of techo-twist to it. The NFT will be a 1/1 and is a package deal with the physical card. However, interested buyers will have the opportunity to bid in both USD and Ethereum due to the double-sided investment. This new dual-style bidding will get competitive as Stephen Fishler, the founder of the auction company ComicCollect, has called it “a virtual steel cage match.”
It’s unclear how much this card will sell for considering there is nothing else really like it. Sports cards can sell for upwards of millions with a Mickey Mantle card currently on auction at ComicCollect for $10 million. This card however is not a real baseball player, instead it’s one of the richest men in the world as a child. Many people online find the idea idiotic, claiming there is no real value because Zuckerberg isn’t an athlete. I’d say Zuckerberg is significantly more influential than any athlete and considering it’s signed by him, one-of-a-kind, and an NFT this will probably sell for millions of dollars.
The money will all go to Tarantino. As a 5th grade teacher who still works summers at the same day camp, it’s safe to say that no matter what the card actually ends up selling for, it will be a life changing amount of money for Tarantino.
This is a crazy story for sure, but what I think makes it crazier is the fact that Zuckerberg even had a card made of himself to begin with. I mean what 8-year-old makes a single baseball card of himself and then gives it away. Also, on the back of the card, Zuckerberg gave himself a .920 batting average. Mark definitely knew he would be the shit one day and honestly you gotta respect it.
For anyone interested in bidding, the auction has not opened just yet but you can find all information at https://nft.comicconnect.com/.
