‘Tom Brady is my pension’

In January, as news of Tom Brady’s retirement sent shockwaves through the NFL community, one question began dominating social media: Where were you when Brady was drafted in April 2000? The answers were staggering. There was a flurry of middle-aged dads sharing photos of their college days on NFL Twitter, and well-established sportswriters posting pictures of themselves as kids. An entire generation of adult fans were too young to remember. An NFL with Brady as its face is all they had known.

But one British fan, who resides in the sleepy Midlands countryside, knew exactly where he was, and he has the physical evidence to prove it.

In a bank vault in Manchester, England, alongside a will and a house deed, sits a rookie Tom Brady memorabilia card. It belongs to Phil Jones, a 66-year-old NFL fanatic and joint-president of the BucsUK fan club. An avid collector, he happened to be in Florida during the 1999 Orange Bowl and watched from a hotel room as Brady capped his college career at Michigan by throwing four touchdowns in a dramatic comeback win over Alabama. He took a liking to the quarterback. Months later, when his friend in America sent him a recording of that 2000 NFL draft, he checked to see where Brady was taken.

– Man in the Arena now streaming on Disney+
– Tom Brady’s retirement lasted 40 days

So, the following season, when he came across four Brady rookie cards at a memorabilia event in the lead-up to Super Bowl XXXV, Jones asked what the seller wanted for them. The sixth-round rookie did not command much of a price. Jones bought the cards for $6.

Included in the bunch was a non-numbered 2000 Playoff Contenders Tom Brady RC rookie card. A similar card fetched close to $50,000 online in October, but high returns for cards that aren’t graded or numbered are an anomaly.

The market for sports memorabilia boomed during the pandemic, in what has become something of a gold rush. Even as the American economy became bruised, sports cards began breaking all known…