The father of the 11-year-old boy from Los Angeles who pulled the Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch autographed card thought it was either a checklist or a Topps promotional card. The kind of inserts typically thrown away.
The mother asked, “Who’s Paul Skenes?”
The boy knew.
He knew even through sleepy, crusty eyes around 6 a.m. on Christmas morning. And he knew the redemption card he pulled from the fifth pack of the one hobby box of 2024 Topps Chrome Update Series he received as his primary present was genuine.
The young collector described his emotions in a journal entry his mother encouraged him to write after finding one of the most sought-after cards in recent history in terms most parents have likely cringed hearing before: “My brain pooped.”
“I said, ‘So if you share this with the world, you really want to tell the world that your brain pooped?’” the father asked his gobsmacked son. “And he smiled and I think that was, to be honest, his favorite part,” the father said.
The Athletic spoke with the 11-year-old boy and his parents for an exclusive interview a week after Topps’ announcement that he redeemed the much-hunted Skenes card. The boy and his parents were granted anonymity because of fears of harassment for the 11-year-old who hit the card. It’s the same anonymous path the family has taken throughout the process, never publicizing their discovery themselves through social media and remaining incognito when deciding which auction house to use to sell the high-value card. The Athletic independently verified the identities of the boy and his parents by matching them to publicly available profiles and accounts. The Athletic has also had visual confirmation of the boy in possession of both the redemption card and the actual patch card prior to it being graded.
GO DEEPER
Pirates’ offer for Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch declined, card going to auction
A deliberate, guarded process embraced by Topps has brought scrutiny to the Fanatics-owned card company, Fanatics Collect (the company’s auction house the family chose to sell the Skenes card) and PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator, who graded the card) from conspiracy theorists thinking the story from every angle was concocted and orchestrated by Fanatics.
“There are definitely little things that we might have done differently,” Fanatics Collect CEO Mike Mahan said in a Thursday interview with The Athletic. “But look, given all of the various sensitivities around privacy and the (Los Angeles) wildfires, I’m not sure that there was a lot that we could have done differently. Are there some things that with perfect hindsight that we would do or not have done to dispel conspiracy theories? Yes. But I’m proud of the fact that we protected the anonymity of a father and an 11-year-old boy.
“If people want to be critical of that, so be it.”
The redemption card that the boy found in his hobby box. (Photo courtesy of the family)
The 11-year-old Shohei Ohtani fan presented his parents with a Christmas list in November: a 24-pack hobby box of the 2024 Topps Chrome Update Series. That’s it. That’s the list.
“You know you’re only going to have one thing under the tree,” the mother said. “And it was a hefty price. So he was like, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’”
Prices for boxes had been increasing through the months with the collecting world hunting for the set’s MLB Rookie Debut Patch one-of-one autographed cards. Skenes headlined as the biggest chase because his star power combined with the public bounty posted by the Pirates and Livvy Dunne, Skenes’ girlfriend, an LSU gymnast and social influencer. The parents scoured for a “semi-reasonable” price on a box after the cost soared from the original $210 tag. According to Waxstat, which tracks sealed box prices, the average price for a box is currently around $650. Boxes on eBay sold for around $515 on Thursday.
The family eventually purchased a box from online marketplace StockX. The boy wrote in his journal entry that the family paid $320 for the box.
“Then comes Christmas morning and I’m thinking there’s this one main thing we have, but we have some books or something,” the mother said. “But he just goes straight for the first present and opens it up.”
The boy opened three packs and stopped to allow his parents and his brother to open their gifts.
“Then on the fifth pack, it was there. I was shocked,” the boy said.
The actual MLB Debut Patch card wasn’t what was pulled. What he found was a thin redemption card with a picture of the actual card. Redemptions are used when a card isn’t autographed in time to be included in the product itself or as a way to protect particularly valuable cards from the potential damage of sitting in a package. The back provided the instructions on how to redeem the card from Topps.
“It wasn’t even on my mind that I would pull it,” the boy said. “I thought it would go to some big breaker (someone who opens boxes of cards online in large quantities and typically sells the contents by team or player).
“So I’m like, ‘Dad, I pulled the Paul Skenes.’ And he was like, ‘No you didn’t.’”
The father admitted his skepticism, having never seen a redemption card before.
“So then I put it under the light and it was like ‘Oh my God, I think this is real,’” the father said. “And I was immediately just kind of stupified, and then that went into excitement and then I was just kind of slackjawed.”
After coming to terms with the gravity of the potential value of the card, the family also realized what kind of exposure it would bring to their doorstep. So the father researched potential auction houses where the card could be sold, all while being as anonymous as possible.
Maintaining their privacy as the finders and sellers of the Skenes card was important for two reasons.
The family feared the media attention surrounding the potential seven-figure value of the card and associated bounties that became a national news story would be too much for the 11-year-old boy. Plus, the family felt publicly boasting the good fortune wouldn’t be appropriate given the tragedies their friends and many others endured through the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
“It’s been a really hard time in the community,” the mother said, tearing up. “It’s not the time to be walking around and saying, ‘I got the golden ticket.’”
The family evacuated from its Los Angeles area home twice because of the fires. The home sustained no damage, but the threat and upheaval caused a delay in the timeline of acquiring the card from Topps and choosing an auction house to sell it.
“There was a portion of time where we had to just kind of set aside what was happening with the card and deal with what was in front of our faces,” the father said.
The family took the steps to redeem the card shortly after pulling it on Christmas morning. The father said he contacted three auction houses: Robert Edwards Auctions, Heritage Auctions and Fanatics Collect. The family had its first contact with Fanatics Collect on Jan. 2.
Nineteen days later, Topps announced an 11-year-old collector pulled the Skenes card from a single hobby box. Three days after that, Topps announced the card would go to auction with Fanatics Collect, which will put the card up for sale in March.
The Pirates made the most public pitch of them all at the onset of the set’s release, offering two season tickets behind home plate at PNC Park for 30 years and a host of other unique experiences and items. Plus, Dunne offered the card holder a chance to sit with her in a suite during a game if the person took the Pirates’ deal. The team maintained its bounty for the card once the news broke that it had been found.
The father said he thought the Pirates’ offer was “amazing” and “really cool,” but added it was geographically impossible to accept given the family lives in the Los Angeles area. The team publicly extended a visit to the boy and the family the same day it was announced the card would go to auction. The father said the family would be open to taking up the Pirates’ offer for a visit, but both parents expressed concerns about whether a visit could reveal their identity.
Once the identity, or lack thereof, of the person who pulled the card and where it would be auctioned off became news, the loud Internet chatter began, calling shenanigans on every aspect of the situation, with some calling it an inside job from Topps and others suggesting the journal entry was fabricated.
“An 11-year-old boy holds the card of the year that everybody’s talking about and everybody’s chasing,” Mahan said. “Something everyone unequivocally should celebrate and people are skeptical, and that skepticism doesn’t happen if it weren’t for years and years, and frankly decades, of neglect of the collector.”
Skenes pitches in his MLB debut against the Chicago Cubs at PNC Park on Saturday, May 11, 2024. MLB Debut Patch can be seen on his sleeve. (Photo: Joe Sargent/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Mahan still doesn’t know the name of the boy who pulled the Skenes card, nor the names of his parents.
“In this case, you understandably had the highest profile card of the year, arguably, the century,” Mahan said. “You had a father of an 11-year-old son who wanted to remain private. … And we wanted to work that out with the father in a way that he felt comfortable with.”
Topps and Fanatics stayed true to that strategy despite the potential perception of the situation. For example, critics attacked Topps because in January boxes were being sold by entities for inflated prices compared to when the product first came out as it still seemed possible to pull the Skenes card even though it happened on Christmas.
“We didn’t sell anything during that time,” Mahan said. (Topps had sold out their inventory of the product by the time the Skenes card was pulled.) “And the other thing is when he called us, the circle on this was very tight. When you have the privacy of an 11-year-old boy at stake, that becomes the focus. … I’m the father of an 11-year-old boy myself. I understand that desire not only to keep it private, but to keep it insulated.”
Mahan said, though, he understands why some people expressed skepticism with the process.
“There’s a lot of collectors that want transparency and want communication and want integrity and want honesty and for years, they didn’t get it,” Mahan said. “And so now, all of that is pent up when something really extraordinary happens. … And so I understand why people are skeptical. I understand why people want Fanatics, as a big company comes in (to the hobby space), to prove it to them.”
The father said one of the company’s executives flew to Dallas and picked up the card from Topps headquarters, then flew back to Los Angeles the same day (Jan. 22) and brought the encased Skenes card to their house. The boy was able to hold the encased card and “gawk at it” until the next day. That’s when a Fanatics Collect representative took the card to PSA to have the card graded. It garnered a top score of 10 for card quality and 10 for the autograph quality. The grade also received scrutiny from critics who assumed PSA handed out a top grade because of the hype surrounding the card.
“I saw some chatter out there that of course the card got a 10!” PSA president Ryan Hoge said on the company’s podcast last week. “We’re not going to just grade a card a 10 because it’s an iconic card unless it was worthy of the grade. I mean, our grading, our graders have high standards, high integrity and it’s like we’re not going to just do that for that one card.”
After the dual 10 grades, the father said a Fanatics Collect representative flew with the card back to the East Coast, where it will be going through the marketing and auction process.
And as for the journal, the mother said she really wanted her 11-year-old son to be able to look back at this moment when he’s older and recall it with the same excitement as he’s living now.
“We come from a family of storytellers and I wanted him to tell his own story,” the mother said. “This is a story that you’ll remember forever and you’ll look back at it 30 years later and read it in his voice and his interpretation of what happened. And so I said, ‘I’d love for you to write it down.’”
Of course, there’s the money element after the card is sold, likely for six to seven figures.
“Upon pulling it, he decided without any prompting from us, I mean this is almost within seconds of pulling it, he wanted to share the money with his (immediate) family and with his brother,” the father said. “So we’ve decided to split the money between him and his brother and we’re going to invest it for education. Also it’s going to help those in need from the fire (all of Fanatics’ earnings from the sale will be donated to local charities for that cause).”
The mother added: “It’s one of those moments where, clearly, you’re better than all of us. That’s part of this whole experience, like that was his impulse.”
But maybe there’s some room for fun with at least a small portion of the sale.
“The first day he said, ‘I want to split it evenly with my brother for college education,’ and we were like, ‘Oh, we’re so proud of you, that’s so sweet,’” the mother said. “And then the next day he was quiet. He said, ‘Mom, um, do you think maybe it might be possible that I just take a little bit before we start saving for education and maybe buy some packs of cards?’”
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(Lead illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Paul Skenes photo: Justin Berl / Getty Images)
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