Sports cards bring brothers together

Elliott Seng, Staff Writer

What do Kenny Pickett, Matt Ryan, and Wander Franco all have in common? 1. They’re all athletes. 2. They’ve been to freshman Bobby Minson’s house.

Or at least, their faces have.

That sounds confusing, so let me help you out. Check out The Weathered Store near Chastain Park. It’s a sports memorabilia shop, and it’s where Minson’s card-collecting journey began.

Although, if we’re being as accurate as possible, it started with his older brother, Jack.

“He came home over Thanksgiving break and told me that he’d been collecting and selling baseball, football, basketball cards,” Minson said. “He got three boxes of sports cards that day. I got a baseball and basketball box. And I started my collection there, and it’s been growing ever since.”

The shop has cards for almost every sport (including hockey and golf), but Minson also attends card shows where he trades and sells his cards.

“If it’s a player that I really like, it goes in my personal collection,” Minson said. Some of his favorite players include Ronald Acuna Jr. and Chipper Jones from the Braves, Matt Ryan and Julio Jones from the Falcons, and New York Yankee Aaron Judge.

If it’s a high-quality card he’s not excited about, Minson will sell it for $25-30. For the players he’s not a fan of, he’ll trade them off or sell them for a better player. His most valuable card is either a PSA 10 Josh Allen or a case hit Kenny Pickett.

“A case hit means there’s only one in every 12 boxes of cards,” Minson said about the rookie quarterback for the Steelers. “A few months ago, it was worth about 200 bucks.”

As for Bills quarterback Josh Allen’s card, a PSA rating of 10 is the highest condition for a card.

According to PSA Grading, “for a card to earn a 10, the edges of a card must be flawless to the naked eye and virtually perfect when looked at under magnification. The surface of the card is looked at by card graders for loss of glossiness, wax stains, scratching, and printing defects.”

However, Minson’s most unique card might be a Matt Ryan cut in the shape of a crown. There are only 99 of them in the world. Minson’s always been a sports fan, but that’s not why he collects so many unique cards.

“It’s something I can do with my brother,” he said. Jack is graduating from the University of Notre Dame this year, then he’ll have to go off into the adult world. But until then, the brothers will keep collecting cards together.