A few weeks ago, Leanne and I were in Augusta for the Junior EYBL Peach Jam. We had a few hours between games, which was enough time to go somewhere nice to eat or find something productive to do. Instead, we stopped by a card shop, bought some boxes, and went back to the hotel to sit on the bed and open packs. That decision probably tells you more about us than anything else I could write.
I’ve collected cards since I was a young kid, so the hobby isn’t new to me. My first chases were Ricky Henderson and Michael Jordan, it moved on to Ray Allen, and now Ja Morant has become the main player I collect (VJ Edgecomb has also been added). I’ve also gotten into VeeFriends, particularly the Warthog, the Dog and the Hippo, because apparently collecting basketball cards for more than four decades wasn’t enough. The point is, I understand the hobby, the players, the products, and the strange ways collectors decide that one particular piece of cardboard matters more than another.
Leanne’s entry into collecting has been completely different. Three months ago, I don’t think she had ever opened a pack of cards in her life. Now she has her own collection, her own players, and very specific ideas about which boxes we should buy. She started with Ja because he’s part of the family, but then she added Jaylen Wells, whom she calls “the Baby,” and Carter Bryant, whom she calls “the Other Baby.” So, in her mind, she collects Ja, the Baby, and the Other Baby. It makes perfect sense to the two of us, which is probably all that matters. She also collects Disney cards, specifically Winnie the Pooh characters. If you know Leanne, then that also makes perfect sense.
One of my favorite parts of opening packs with her is listening to her read the players’ names. She mispronounces names so badly that I’m convinced she does it intentionally now just to see my reaction. She may not know how to say Giannis Antetokounmpo, but I bet she knows how to say De’Aaron Fox. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to pronounce it correctly when she pulls his card. And when she pulls a Ja card it will be announced as his full government name or simply as “Tee Morant’s son”. Somewhere along the way, the mispronunciations, the laughing, and the running commentary became as much a part of the experience as the cards themselves.
That’s really why we open packs together. We aren’t sitting there believing every box contains a life-changing card. Most of the time, they don’t. We do it because it gives us something to share. We laugh, we debate, we hate on certain players, and occasionally stop because one of us pulls something we’ve never seen before. She picks the boxes and usually decides which packs belong to whom. I open them and pretend that her box selection process isn’t based entirely on some feeling she can’t explain.
That afternoon in Augusta, we went into the shop planning to buy a hobby box. That was the plan, at least. At some point, Leanne wandered off, found a blaster box sitting slightly askew, and decided that particular box needed to come back to the hotel with us. There was no market analysis behind it and no discussion about the product odds. She simply looked at it and felt like we were supposed to buy it. That’s how she always chooses them. I stay out of the way.
So we bought the hobby box and the blaster, went back to the room, and started opening packs on the bed. We took turns like we always do, with Leanne choosing the packs and deciding the order. Then I opened one of the packs from the blaster she had selected and pulled a one-of-one Cooper Flagg rookie card.
She picked the box. I pulled the card.
I laid the card on the bed. For the first few seconds, neither of us completely understood what we were looking at. I saw the one-of-one marking, looked at Leanne, and then looked back at the card to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. We laughed, stared at it, and kept asking each other whether this had really just happened. We had walked into the shop for a hobby box, but the biggest card we had ever pulled came from the random blaster Leanne decided we couldn’t leave behind.
The card was exciting, but we also had another Junior EYBL game later that evening. That meant we had to leave the hotel room, and suddenly two otherwise rational adults were trying to determine the safest place to hide a sports card. My first idea was to put it inside the Bible. And that’s what I did after sleeving it. The reasoning was simple: God would protect it.
That plan lasted until Leanne pointed out that if someone broke into the room, the Bible would probably be the first place they looked. Rationally, no one was going to break into our hotel room searching for a Cooper Flagg card they didn’t know existed. Also, I’m not entirely sure why we believed a hotel burglar’s first move would be checking the Bible. But in that moment, her concern made enough sense that we reconsidered.
The card ended up inside Leanne’s makeup bag. Don’t ask why. I have no idea.
We left it there in the hotel room while we went to the game, and the next day it made the drive from Augusta back to Columbia in that same makeup bag. Every time we tell someone that part of the story, they laugh. We laugh too, because the whole thing sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. A one-of-one rookie card from the NBA Rookie of the Year spent its first road trip surrounded by makeup because that was the safest plan we could come up with.
During the ride to the game, Leanne posted about the card on Facebook. At that point, only a small group of friends knew what had happened. Somehow, immediately, the post started making its way into the collecting world. Messages started coming in from people we knew, people we didn’t know, and collectors who wanted to know whether we were willing to sell it.
Then the offers started.
Within hours, someone made a multi-thousand-dollar offer and was willing to drive somewhere to meet us with cash. Since then, the numbers have continued to rise. As I’m writing this, we’ve received offers of $9,500 and $11,000+. Some very large dealers have also reached out, and I haven’t returned several of their calls. That isn’t a negotiating tactic, and I’m not trying to manufacture a bidding war. Honestly, the attention has been more stressful than I expected.
If this were purely a business decision, I think the answer would be fairly straightforward. Cooper Flagg is coming off a Rookie of the Year season, and basketball will return to the center of the sports conversation once preseason begins. My business instinct tells me the card could be worth substantially more when the hype train starts moving again. I would not be surprised if the current offers looked low a few months from now, and there is a reasonable argument for putting it away and waiting.
But that’s only one part of the decision.
If this had been a one-of-one Ja Morant card, the conversation would have been completely different. We would not be discussing dealers, market timing, or whether preseason creates a better selling window. The only real dispute would be whether the card belonged in my collection or Leanne’s. We both collect Ja, and I already have Ja cards displayed in my office beside a couple pairs of Ja 3s hanging on the wall. That card would have been part of a collection we had already chosen to build.
Neither of us collects Cooper Flagg, and that changed the nature of the pull. The card was valuable to us because of what happened when we found it, but it wasn’t necessarily meant to become the centerpiece of either of our collections. Once we understood that, the question stopped being only about whether we should sell it. It became a question about when we should sell it and, more importantly, who should own it next.
That is where the offers have become more complicated. We are seriously considering taking less than the highest offer because this no longer feels like a simple financial transaction. The person behind the offer matters. Is he a good person? Will he appreciate the card? Will he take care of it? Is he buying it because it means something to him, or is it simply another piece of inventory that will be listed again next week?
I know that may sound irrational. A dollar is a dollar, and the card itself won’t know who owns it. But collecting has never been entirely rational. People form emotional connections to players, teams, moments, designs, and memories. The physical object becomes the place where all those emotions are stored. That’s why two cards made from nearly identical materials can have completely different values, and it’s why the right owner can matter almost as much as the right price.
A one-of-one Shohei Ohtani rookie card recently sold for more than $3.3 million, and the reaction outside the hobby was predictable. People couldn’t understand how a piece of cardboard could be worth that much money. But no one paid millions of dollars for the manufacturing cost of the cardboard. They paid for scarcity, provenance, cultural significance, and the opportunity to own a piece of a story that exists only once.
That is how most valuable objects work. A Picasso isn’t valuable because of the cost of the paint and canvas. A Rolex isn’t priced according to the value of the steel. An NBA franchise isn’t worth billions because of the seats and hardwood inside the arena. People assign value to what an object represents, and the market reflects how strongly they believe in that meaning.
Our Cooper Flagg card has its own story now. It came from a blaster box Leanne picked because she had a feeling about it. I pulled it while we were sitting together on a hotel bed in Augusta between Junior EYBL Peach Jam games. We briefly trusted God to protect it inside a hotel Bible before deciding a makeup bag was the more secure option. Then it rode home to Columbia surrounded by cosmetics while offers started arriving on our phones.
Someone else may own the card twenty years from now, but they won’t own that story.
Leanne and I will still talk about the meal we never went out to eat because we decided opening cards sounded like more fun. We’ll still laugh about how she picked the box and the look on my face when I pulled the card. We’ll still argue about whether putting it in the Bible made sense, and we’ll always remember that a card worth thousands of dollars made its first trip home inside her makeup bag.
That realization has made selling it easier for me. When the card leaves, our memory doesn’t leave with it. The buyer receives the one-of-one Cooper Flagg rookie, but the day in Augusta remains ours. The card can move into the next chapter of its story without taking anything away from the chapter we shared.
That’s also why I’ve started thinking about this less as ownership and more as stewardship. I don’t feel like we own this card in the permanent sense. I feel like it was placed in our hands for a period of time, and our responsibility is to take care of it and eventually help it reach the person who is supposed to own it next. Maybe that happens now, or maybe we hold it longer. But when it happens, I want the decision to feel right to both of us.
I still believe holding it could be the better financial move. I still believe we may look back during preseason and realize we left a significant amount of money on the table. But maximizing value and making the right decision are not always the same thing. Sometimes the numbers tell you one answer while your gut keeps pulling you toward another.
We didn’t pull a card that afternoon.
We pulled a decision.
