Tom Brady Rookie Card Sells for Record Amount

Tom Brady just broke another record. Over the weekend, it was announced that a rookie card of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback sold for $2.25 million. This comes nearly one month after another Brady rookie card sold for $1.32 million, which at the time was believed to the highest-selling football card in history.

The $2.25 million item is a 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Rookie card which is autographed and number 99 out of 100. This means only 100 copies of the card were produced. The card that was sold on Friday graded as an 8.5 with a 9 on the autograph. The buyer of the card wishes to remain anonymous.

“I wasn’t shocked (by the price), but I was certainly surprised,” Lelands president Mike Heffner said to ESPN. “I know the market is headed upward, especially with rare and desirable cards such as that one, but I didn’t really anticipate it. I had an inkling just feeling the performance of the other cards over the past month, it was certainly a possibility but these modern cards are definitely for real.”

The Brady rookie card that sold in March beat out a Patrick Mahomes card that sold for $861,000 in February, which was a record at the time. In January a Brady card set the record when it was sold for $555,988. ESPN reports that the sports card industry is seeing growth in sales as a Brady card with a higher grade than the one that was sold this past weekend only sold for $400,100 two years ago.

This comes nearly two months after Brady led the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win. It’s the first championship for the Buccaneers since 2002, and for Brady, he has now won seven Super Bowls in 10 appearances. It’s likely he could win another one next year as he signed a contract extension with the Buccaneers.

“We went through all of them,” Brady said after the Super Bowl this year. “We dealt with them, tried to understand the challenges that were going to be presented. There were a lot of them, but guys just did what we were asked and tried to show up with a great attitude and work however it was. We were pretty fortunate on our team – guys were really disciplined with all the protocols in place. Ended up getting the job done.”