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If you’re of a certain age, you could be sitting on — or have squandered — a fortune.
A number of SI for Kids cards from the 1990’s have sold for five to six figures, highlighted last week by a Serena Williams card from 1999 that fetched $117,000 in an auction. According to NBC Sports, it was the most expensive women’s card ever sold.
“The price on the Serena Williams card was a little surprising,” Jesse Craig, the Director of Business Development at PWCC, the auction house that sold the card, admitted to The Post.
Darren Rovell, a sports business reporter for the Action Network and an avid memorabilia collector, agreed on the “non-traditional” angle and expanded it to cards that were distributed outside standard packs.
Craig explained that “non-traditional” sports outside the four majors — soccer, tennis, and golf — are having big movement.
The Serena Williams card was not the first SI for Kids card to sell for astounding money. Rovell, writing for ESPN in 2001, chronicled how a Tiger Woods card sold for $125,000. That card has actually fallen in value since then, as he noted that one sold on eBay for $55,000 last year. Last June, a 1992 Mia Hamm card sold for nearly $35,000.
Arguably the greatest women’s tennis player of all-time, Williams is a logical draw, and this particular card has an element of scarcity.
“This specific card is one of her earliest rookie cards, and there’s only been eight that have been graded as a 10 by PSA,” Craig said. “The supply [constraints] are there, and it was only a matter of time for the demand to catch up and hit a big number.”
One of the reasons SI for Kids cards have caught on in value is that they were on the cutting edge of identifying future stars on the rise, and thus were among the athletes’ earliest card manufacturers.
Craig also pointed to the “nostalgia” angle, where kids from the 1990’s are in their thirties and forties now — with some disposable income and a fond recollection of the era. Throw in the fact that so many of these cards were discarded or damaged in the hands of adolescents, and not many have survived in mint condition.
Rovell also explained another oddball element of the cards’ value.
“It’s hard to get them perfectly perforated,” he said. “It has to show all the nubs — so you can’t cut it [with scissors]. If you cut it, you’ll get a horrible grade. So you have to tear it perfectly.”
The perforation angle goes a little deeper than SI. Rovell pointed out how a perforated 1994 Miami Football Bumble Bee Tuna card of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson became the “card of COVID” and was transacting for five figures.
The fact that SI for Kids had a relatively narrow audience is another factor.
“If this was SI, they would have no value at all,” Rovell said, “Because so many people saved those. There are much fewer SI for Kids out there.”
PWCC, which specializes in trading cards, has monthly auctions of cards they expect to go for over $25,000; January’s had 260 cards hit the block.
The platform has a Kobe Bryant PSA 10 SI for Kids card from his 1996-97 rookie season — the only one that currently exists with a perfect grade — going up for auction on Thursday.
“I’m curious to see, with all the movement we’ve had in the SI for Kids cards, where this one lands,” he said.
Rovell did caution that there are elements that could prevent this. Increased attention with stories like this one could bring more cards out of the attic to get graded, and who knows what type of stockpile of the original magazines that Sports Illustrated themselves could have in a warehouse somewhere. If the market got flooded, values would inevitably drop.
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