Let’s start this article our with some depressing math. The median personal income for full-time workers in the United States is $35,977. So let’s imagine that you’re the median American, and let’s also imagine that the government decided you don’t have to pay taxes on that money because you’re a real cool cat. And then you work for 30 years, and you don’t spend a dime of that money on anything. That would net you $1,079,310.
You’re still worth less than Giannis’ rookie card.
Seriously. Last Saturday, a “2013-14 Panini Prizm Giannis Antetokounmpo Black Mosaic 1/1 rookie card” sold for $1.1 million at auction. And it wasn’t even signed.
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No one has ever paid that much for an unsigned modern era trading card before, even a unique “1/1” card. It’s bananas on multiple levels.
At the same auction, a difference Giannis rookie card (a 2013/14 National Treasures Rookie Auto Patch, #54/99, graded PSA 10, for those of you who have any idea what that means) sold for $553,500.
Man. The other day, I was going to order a quesadilla but it cost eight bucks, and I thought, “Should I really be paying eight bucks just for a quesadilla?” And simultaneously, somewhere else on this planet, an actual human being was thinking, “Yeah, I think I can drop a cool milly on this trading card. I mean, it is a 2013-14 Panini Prizm Giannis Antetokounmpo Black Mosaic 1/1 rookie card, so why not?”
Bananas.
