Pablo Torre Finds Out - 23 and Me: Our Worldwide Hunt for the Missing, Million-Dollar Jordan Rookie Cards

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Forty years ago this week, the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan — giving rise to the holiest of basketball grails. Twenty-three autographed Jordan rookie cards would be scattered across the globe, in the form of Wonka-esque golden tickets. But at last check, nine of these cards had vanished. Correspondent Bradley Campbell gets to the bottom of a seven-figure mystery — spanning four decades, three continents, black-market conspiracies and an armored-car robber — that presaged the modern era of sports collectibles as an asset class. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. And there's like 50 freaking Michael Jordan rookie cards all stacked up. And I was like, where the fuck did he get these? Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff Kings Network. Are you done fiddling with your gray hairs? Yes.

I'm for calling him white. Yeah. Yeah. Greed just makes me sad. White. I'm like, okay, maybe it's stress-induced. I try to convince myself that. I want to remind you why we're here today.

Yeah. Which is another, I would say, almost disturbing marker of our senescence. The NBA drafted this week. 40 years ago, really, Michael Jordan got drafted. 40 years ago. That's like completely different. We used to write letters back then. Yes.

But even more important to me than paper is cardboard. Okay. So I don't know if you collected sports cards growing up, but I did. And I still viscerally remember the high. The high of opening up a pack of, let's say, 92-93 skybox or upper deck. And feeling as I put my fingers to the foil pack like everything was possible. Because the pack of cards was not just a mystery box. It was also my way of feeling connected.

to the athletes that I loved. I mean, think about what you do now to feel connected to an athlete. You play fantasy sports, you follow them on social media, you gamble on them legally, you maybe even buy an NFT or some shit, you do any of that stuff. Card collecting came before all of it, and it was kind of like all of it in one. Now, it is worth noting here that I cannot actually remember selling a single sports card for money. That, to me, was never the point. Even though I did read price guides, of course, like Beckett's Basketball Monthly,

as if, you know, I would one day monetize my collection, but I never did. Never monetized my collection. Not why I got into it. And to be very clear, that's not why Bradley Campbell, returning Poblotori Finds. Ina got into the hobby either. All of which is to say that Bradley happens to be the perfect person to finally solve a mystery, a truly global mystery that brought us together and back in time today. Cardboard for both of us was huge.

Was almost everything growing up. God, I remember I used to beg my mom to like, please drive me like the half hour of 45 minutes to Salem Center. Then I would like run out of the car, sprint upstairs. It was a two level mall into a card shop. And then I would join other kids and we would just stare at like, a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. He has his little hat on.

He's got the gold neck. That was your grail. That was like my Kornor diamond, my star of India. It felt like it had some sort of like mystic power. Right. Something that you could not touch, but you almost just needed to look at to feel its power. Yeah, completely.

It just, it held a magic in a way. And for me, and it's a little embarrassing to confess given that this show has been devoted to in some ways torturing his family. and debunking the myths around him. But it's Michael Jordan. Okay. I'm that guy.

I'm that kid. Like so many millions of seven-year-olds in 1992, falling in love with the dream team and then the Bulls. So for me, when I think about my previous life as a card collector, which both of us were, I actually think of my own trauma, which is I was a kid who collected Michael Jordan cards. That was my favorite thing.

I just remember how I organized it. I had a binder, a three-ring binder, as so many of us did. And I took it to the park one day. And I remember passing around my binder exclusively, but specifically sorted with Michael Jordan cards. And I remember getting it back from the kids I showed it to. Okay. Then later, opening it back up and realizing that my Michael Jordan cards were stolen.

And that was kind of, in some ways, like the end of, my innocence. I never I could never trust again. And I spent a lot of time obsessing over this card collection. Sure. And I remember to bring it back around to this week and the 40 years ago

this week milestone of Michael Jordan getting drafted. Of course, the holiest of Grails was a Michael Jordan rookie card. Oh, they're the biggest thing. Which I did not have the luck to acquire. I wish I could have gotten it if only to have it stolen for me so I could have touched it.

These are the coolest things. Yo. So the fact that you are, I mean, flex. We have so many, so many objects of varying strangeness that come through this studio. This though, this Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card is, I'm trembling. It's hard for me to look. I mean, this is the most valuable thing. I feel like we need nitrate gloves.

What it looks like, Bradley. When you explain for people who maybe you're just listening to this, why this is so iconic. I mean. It's not just that it's Michael Jordan's rookie card. He's flying through the air, his tongue's out. It is exactly what I think of when I imagine him is actually this photograph, all in his right hand, leaping towards the rim. Gravity doesn't apply to him.

And the striping on the card, the red and blue and white and blue and red, feels both patriotic in a sense, and also like its own country. Like it's a flag unto itself, the nation state, the empire of Michael Jordan began here. This card, which I want to put right here very gently. It hasn't been graded yet.

Yep, exactly. I want to point out that these cards are more than just like totems, they're assets. Yeah, I mean, it's wild is that they're not really treated like we treat them as kids. No. Or it's just like the kids now. It's like they grew up

got finance jobs and are now spending millions on these cards. And then they get them graded or rather authenticated. Yes. Like financial instruments. Completely. These cards now are not for kids. And that card in particular. Drake, he got to do something really cool.

He kind of teamed up with Ken Golden of Golden Auctions. They're like a big name in sports memorabilia. And he did an Instagram live where he opened a sealed 19. 1886, 1987 Fleer basketball card set. And then he gets a Michael Jordan rookie card. So the legend of this card in particular, it brings us to the story that we're here to do today. Yeah. Because it's not about this specific card.

It's about an even more valuable version. So explain what the hunt for 23 is, Bradley. The hunt for 23. It was started by the company Upper Deck, and they bought back 23, of these Michael Jordan rookie cards from trusted sources. And then they had Michael sign each one, each of the 23. Then they hid little redemption cards in their packs, sent those out. Like golden tickets.

Completely Willy Wonka. Randomly distributed throughout packs around the world. And then if you open it up and you got one of these redemption, you could send it in and you could get one of these cards, autographed by Michael Jordan. Kicker here, though, is that Upper Deck made a deal with Jordan. to never sign another rookie card again. So these 23 were supposedly the last 23 cards

that Michael Jordan ever signed. And so these autographed Michael Jordan rookie cards went for how much at auction? It went for over $1 million. That was in 2022. At the time, the most money anyone had ever paid for one of those 23 rookie cards. Right.

So the Hunter for 23, I want to describe the listing, here on the Christie's website, Bradley, because there's a clause in here, a clue that I think a lot of people just sort of didn't pick up on, but you brought it to me. Yeah. And I have been thinking about it ever since. So what is the part of this listing that you ended up having to investigate? Well, of the 23 cards released, only 14 cards are known, graded, and in the hands of private collectors, which immediately makes you think.

Doing some math here. 23 minus 14 is 9. Where are they? Where are the missing nine autographed Michael Jordan rookie cards, the last of their kind? Yeah. And so fans, collectors, me now, like we've all been competing to find out the answer to where these cards are. What happened to them, the millions of dollars that they contain.

After three continents, four countries, and a long talk with an armored car robber, I have something to tell you. So Bradley, on some level, this assignment is very simple, right? Yeah. It was to find out what happened to the nine missing Hunter 23, autographed Michael Jordan, Fleer rookie cards. So how did you begin this task? By running directly into wall. Upper deck, the people that ran the promotion, I'm like, I'll just call them, see what happened in the nine missing Jordan cards. Yes.

Or just to see what, like, what's going on? They wouldn't call me back. I called, again, wouldn't call me back. I called their general information line. They wouldn't call me back. I emailed them. They wouldn't email me back. I emailed all their PR people.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. And I was like sitting there and I'm like, why aren't you getting back to me on something pretty simple? Right. Like, this feels, I don't know, feels kind of smooth. It feels outright suspicious to me. Exactly. I mean, they could just answer the question.

This is what happened to the cards. Here's what we did with them. Yeah. They're worth seven figures, again, individually. But for I guess the people who are unfamiliar with Upper Deck, this institution is apparently secretive card company. Sure. What's their whole deal then?

Yeah, the open stay of cards. God, their history is crazy. They started as a hobby shop, like a little card shop that we used to go to in Anaheim, California next to a Chinese food shop. And then they got a little bit of investment. and then a guy with incredible printing prowess. He actually did color separation for architectural digest. He went into the shop, saw all the cards there, and they're like, these are terrible.

I can make better ones. And so they got into business to create their own cards. And in several years, they became like the power player in kind of $1.2 billion business at the time. This is like 91. Right. And I remember upper deck. I remember them as aesthetically. God, they're gorgeous.

Prettier than they're. than the rest. Step above. The holograms that they use, all of it making it feel like this was trending towards a currency. Definitely. And they had the foil packs.

All of it feeling like a bank was certifying this. Yes. They were great. And the biggest thing they did was they made an investment like Nike, like the Bulls,

in Michael Jordan. If you wanted to get anything autographed by Michael Jordan, if you want to get any sort of authentic memorabilia, you had to go to upper deck. Right. They were exclusively,

the home of Michael Jordan. It's exclusive and also incredibly clever what they're advertising. So with all he's achieved, can you believe somebody in Chicago would raise a sacrilegious idea of trading Jordan? Well, somebody did.

It turns out the billboard was the brainstorm of the upper deck company to help advertise its basketball trading cards. I think we got what we expected that it would create a real buzz about who is this that has the gumption to say trade Jordan out there in the marketplace. And then the following year in 1993,

MJ heads to the baseball All-Star game in Camden Yards and he's like decked toe-to-toe in upper deck swag. Wait, what does this swag look like? Oh, you have like a baseball helmet with like a big upper deck

bumper sticker on the side of it and he's flexing on Tom Selleck in the home run derby which Jordan wins. I was going to say, as Michael Jordan would in the 90s. No big surprise that Jordan out hit everyone else to wind up the game's top score.

Of course this was all in fun And so was Jordan's racking on another champion, Kirby Puckett. And I think the wildest part is like upper deck, you just see this thing growing, and they're just like, okay, we have Jordan, we have money, let's go get his rookie card. But instead of just buying up all of the rookie cards, they just bought Fleer. Right. And so Fleer, again, is the manufacturer of the Holy Grail rookie card that you brought to this desk. It's the one that I'm trying not to run out of the room with right now. Like, this is Fleer.

This is their work. And it's beautiful. It's stunning. But it's also, it feels analog compared to what upper deck was doing. Completely. It feels almost like an ancient artifact compared to upper deck. Yeah, definitely. And so what they did is they went and again,

they bought back 23 of those cards from trusted sources. And then they launched the hunt for 23. And so your hunt for the missing nine cards. Where does that take you in the present tense? Australia. I mean, you're imagining men at work, aren't you? I am. Thanks.

Who you come from an undown-under? Hello, Matt Cassie. Hello. Hey, how you doing? I'm good. I just got some serious reason. So because Upper Deck wouldn't talk to me, I had to go find experts in the hobby industry. And one of them happened to live in Brisbane, Australia.

His name was Matt Cassidy. He started a website. All about Jordan cards, and he called it jordancards.com. When I set it up, the domain name I just bought because it was about Jordan cards and I wasn't going to fluff around. I like it. It's Bronsiele, you know, does what it says on the can. That's right, yeah. He was this huge Luke Longley fan.

I mean, of course. So, of course he loves the Bulls. Yeah, yeah, so of course he loves the Bulls. And, yeah, Jordan on top of that. And you have, again, the Michael Jordan rookie card. Dude loved it. Yeah, it was a perfectly designed card for the time, I think. But then, of course, Upper Deck had taken to the next step with this,

having him sign them, limiting it to 23, and then making him sign a contract where he's never allowed to sign this card ever again. So that's it. Yeah, so Upper Deck was also ahead of its time insofar as it was manufacturing the scarcity. They knew how to drive the value of an asset up. It's to have fewer of them available. Yeah, I like De Beers, man. Yeah, seriously.

So I talked to Matt and wanted to get Intel on the whole Christie's auction and the hunt for the remaining nine. And I was going on and setting up the whole thing and finally he interjected like, Mike, I'll been on that hunt too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they put 23 out. And I've never been able to verify from Christie's how they found this out. But Christie's said there were only 14 redeemed. So I wrote to Upper Deck basically saying, hey, what happened to the rest? Surely you didn't destroy them, but total radio silence.

I contacted Upper Deck about it and I didn't get anything back. So I called their customer service line. And then I asked them again and they were like, we just don't give any information out. It was strange. It was one of the stranger conversations I've had with the company before. I don't know if they're in a vault somewhere or I even just ask for, you know, what's your policy on unredeemed collectibles like this that are potentially worth a million dollars each year? And they just said we don't comment on that. So I reckon that means they probably still got them.

So the global community of Michael Jordan stands has been turning its eyes towards upper deck and they're not giving anybody anything. And so did you actually find someone, Bradley, who pulled one of these redemption cards, these golden tickets? I did. And that takes us to Belgium. Yeah, like a child detective, I suppose. Yeah, my hero, Tintin. Just like him, I tracked him down, the gentleman I wanted to find. Ivan Weddington, who could be a good character in a Hersch novel.

But I got him to tell me the story of how he acquired a sealed box of Fleer from a collector that he met online in 2007. What actually happened was that back then you had this German-based forum called dascarbord. EU. And one of the boxes was 2006-2007 Fleer EX, I think it was called at the time. But one of the cards that I pulled was redemption. I don't even exactly remember what the exact wording was of the redemption. redemption, but it said something like redemption for Michael Jordan autographed card.

And so he filled out a form on the Upper Deck website, punched in the kind of secret redemption code, added his address, and then just like, boom, hit Redeem. I must have been so viscerally exciting. Oh my God, yeah. Not that long after I got an email from FedEx saying we have a parcel on the way for from Upper Deck so a few days later the doorbell rang and there was the FedEx guy

with my Upper Deck parcel. I kind of had a hunch that I had to record it for people so I had my wife film the opening of the parcel. And it's the one. It is the autographed Michael Jordan Flair

rookie card. The one and only, it's got a hologram on the back to authenticate it. It's autographed in blue ink. That video, which you can see and should see on YouTube with Drafings Network, it makes me happy because he is so nervously and genuinely excited and shocked. And, I mean, again, like holding this thing, which isn't even autographed, That gives me that feeling by proxy. I can only imagine what he is actually going through.

Pablo, it's a fake. This. Yeah, it's a counterfeit. I bought it for like 10 bucks from a collector. Wait, hold that. Wait, so why would you do this? And number two, real question. Yeah.

How do you acquire a counterfeit Michael Jordan Fleer rookie card? This thing that now that I look at it, I guess I should not feel any of the feelings that I'm feeling. It's pixelated as hell. It's like a reprint ever print. Sorry. I'm now looking closer. Wow, I thought this would make a good gag and now I'm like, oh God, I've really heard you. It feels like PTSD.

Sorry. I started this with a story about how people stole Jordan cards from it. I thought it would be a good moment in the show. And now it's happened to get. I guess, God, geez. Where did you, where did you get this? Not to sound like a cop. Where did you get this?

I can't, I can't give out my sores. But you can't be surprised though, dude. So, like, everyone's chasing the same card. It's like, of course there's going to be counterfeits. It's Michael fucking Jordan. But, okay, so if you can't tell me where you got it from, Mr. Campbell. Do we know who, what kind of people? were making them, like this black market, like who was behind it?

A friend of an armored car robber who I talked to a while back. Of course. Have you ever heard the tale of the football player turned armored car rubber? It's a story so wild, it almost seems fake. All right, so that description was not an exaggeration. I feel obligated to just jump in here and point that out. The story of Anthony Curcio, if you are not familiar, is the story of a football star from Idaho, who then pulls off one of the most creative bank heists in American history.

The guy used an elaborate system of pulleys and disguises to rob a brink's truck and then escape down a river using an inner tube. Now, Curcio eventually wound up an inmate in federal prison, but more crucial for our purposes here, is the fact that he also wound up the subject of a separate podcast series reported by one Bradley Campbell. Bradley had spent hours upon hours interviewing Anthony Curcio in person. And you'll hear Curseo's voice in just a second here. Because luckily for our purposes, Bradley saved those tapes. This is where it felt like the world just got absolutely small. Because within that story about Anthony Curseo, there was one.

part that we actually had to cut. And this was this entire hustle that he did with sports cards. And it started at a friend's house in Ellensburg, Washington, which if you get on the map, just go right to the center of Washington. That's where the hustle took place. I go over there and, man, you know, we're young and he's got this, everyone else has these crappy college apartments and he's got this massive, like rented house and all these, He is like three or four four wheelers, snowmobiles, all these toys and stuff. It's like, damn, dude. Like, you're really going freaking hardcore.

I was just like, how the fuck are you doing this? This is amazing. Like, how do you have all this shit? And he brings me into this room. And I think opened, oh, you opened one of those like under the table, slide out, like pencil drawer things. And there's like 50. freaking Michael Jordan rookie cards all stacked up.

And like, they're not in cases or anything. And I was like, what, where the fuck did he get these? They were reprints of the Michael Jordan rookie card, even back then. You know, Michael Jordan is so popular that that was probably what created it. And so nobody had them. Nobody knew that they were out there. So nobody was really made to be like fearful of them. So Anthony looked up his buddy's eBay history.

Okay, I see that about one Jordan every two months is being sold. I don't get it. It still doesn't add up. So the friend finally explained how the hustle worked. You think that I'm ending the auction to one person. I'm really contacting all of them saying that the first person didn't, first person flaked out on me. Are you still interested in the card?

I saw that you bid blah, blah, blah. Then he go to the next one. So he's just not selling one, but he's selling several. Contacting the bidders offline. Who lost out? And he said, there's no better way to convince someone to buy something than just telling them it's not available. That was one thing I learned from this dude

and absolutely nothing else. Why would anybody trust these people? Gray eBay rating. But more than that, it's because this guy owned his own card. grading company. So he would fake authenticate his own fake Jordan's and sell him it's real. So now I'm just impressed.

The idea that you are also the security department. Right. Verifying all of this stuff is legit. And the rumor that I had was it the printing plates that made this original Jordan rookie card, someone got their hands on them and was using these plates. Like the physical plates. Yes, and was using them to counterfeit Jordan rookie cards. So that might have been how Curcio's friend got such authentic-looking cards.

So I checked out this rumor. I tried to corroborate it with a private collector who has what's believed to be the largest private collection of cards in the world. And he was like, oh, yeah, I've heard that too. So there's just a lot happening here. Sorry. There are two mysteries here that were now. dealing with. One is the mystery of the missing printing plates

that you just dropped on us. Yes. And the other is the hunt for the missing nine autographed Michael Jordan cards. And they're linked. And they're linked because, of course, if you have a thriving black market of counterfeits, what that does is it drives up the value

of anything that's actually legitimate. That you know that it's authentic. That is graded and known. And as the Christie's auction listing indicated, numbered. numbered. Yes. Yes. And that's why you're getting over a million dollars each for the things that we set out to identify. Part of the reason.

Seismic events it happened. One that changed the course of history. And then another that spiked the value of all things, Jordan. So the first two installments of the last dance, this is that 10-part series that aired on ESPN last night. It looks at Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls rise to the top of the NBA. So if you're listening, you may remember this. How can you not? The one-two punch of COVID and the last dance.

It sends the card industry into that asset class financial stratosphere. Yeah. Because everyone's locked inside and we're all developing weird hobbies, but something a lot of us were doing that we hadn't done since we were kids was, yeah, watch Michael Jordan dominate on television. And then once we were done, it's like, wait, do I have any Jordan rookie cards? Right. And so people were climbing, like going back into like their gear storage and then going

up in their attics and their basement searching for- This hard me. Oh God, I bet it did. I bet it did. This moment in time. It's not going to hurt you as bad as it hurt my friend, Michael Fox. And so one morning my wife was going through a box and she's like, oh, look at this love letter. She found all these different love letters from, you know, before me.

And so I got a little jealous and I was like in my head. I was like, well, I have love letters. I'm going to go find them and I'll show you. So off he went searching for an emotional self. I went up into the attic and as luck would find it, I didn't find many love letters. Apparently I thought they had existed but didn't. But what I did find was boxes and boxes of sports cards. So they'd been sitting there for years.

I'd been transporting them to do. different houses that I lived in and it had been assuring my wife that they were going to someday pay for the kids college education and that that's why it was worth carrying them these just massive totes of cards. He was shuffling through the cards and it was legit like time traveling. I was a Jordan fanatic, man. I was born at 82. I grew up in Portland.

So I was like a ripped city kid, bust a bucket. Kevin Duckworth, Jerome Cursey, Clyde to glide. And then as the 90s happened, it was the bull. and, you know, one year the Trailblazers made it to the finals, and that was like the classic Jordan is on fire and he does this to the camera. All to say, I grew up, you know, loving Michael Jordan, collecting cards, but not really knowing what I was collecting. And I opened up this box and I found two 1986 clear Michael Jordan Ricky cards.

And like in his head, he's like, man, I can't. I can send my kids to private school now. Right. It all came rushing back. I was like, holy cow, I remember this card. I remember getting it, opening in the pack, like looking at it with friends. And then I turned it over. And I remembered it was also signed by MJ.

Hold on. I feel like you're burying the lead here. Your friend has two Michael Jordan autographs. MJ autographs. It was signed. first by Jeremy Banning, one of my close childhood friends. He had pulled it in the pack. And, you know, I was like, well, I knew that was a good card.

I didn't know how good of a card. But he quickly wrote Jay on the card because he wanted to make sure everyone knew it was his. And at some point, I don't know if I packaged, you know, a bunch of Trailblazer cards or what I did to finally get that 86 Jordan. But I traded for it. And of course, what is it, what does a five or six year old do when he gets that card? He crosses out the J and he writes M next to it.

It was Michael's card. So back during the pandemic, I found two 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan Ricky cards that are marked MJ, one by Jeremy Banning and one by Michael Fox. So again, for people who are just listening to this. Oh, my gosh. These are actual. Actual. Not counterfeit.

No, no, no. No, no. Michael Jordan Fleer rookie cards. Yeah. Except they've been autographed. On the back. Yeah, on the back. By two children.

Like, two six year olds or seven-year-old. Not the actual MJ. Oh, man. Terrible handwriting. Like, they're gripping the pencils, like a fist, just going M&J. And he even tried to like erase the J once it was his and stopped halfway. Like, oh, no, no. I'm racing the card.

What am I doing? What am I doing? Yeah. But yeah. So, anyway, I think the obvious takeaway from this is just don't teach kids how to write. Correct. Correct. One thing modern society is moving towards is deserved.

We're going to avoid this in the future. But what we're getting is this sense of why these cards, these artifacts are in fact so valuable. Again. Yeah. Because they were held protected by children. Yes. And so they ruined them. Completely.

Sometimes. And they did not get secured as what they would be in the future, which are multi-million dollar assets. Right. So you have those two things. You have the counterfeits over here. You have kids being kids over there. And then you have these authentic 23. Right.

And so the hunt for the missing nine. Right. The missing nine of those 23, which you promised me you would get to. Yes. So it takes you across three continents and four countries. Yes. The armored car robber. Your friend's attic.

But how close did you actually get to finding the nine missing autographed Jordan rookie cards? Did you find a way even to like get closer to upper deck? No. No. I mean, I was legit defeated. I'll be honest here completely. Just sitting myself like I have nothing to turn in. You know, it's kind of like it felt like in baseball where you track a fly ball from home plate and you're sprinting after it.

You run. You hit the warning track and then you just run into a wall and like nothing is there. And at that point I was just like, is there a thing? savior out there who kind of gets me that could help me out and then God one appeared. All right. Hang on. Oh, I got ice here. All right, there we go. We got matching hats. Oh, no. All right, so we got good taste. Yeah, well, I'm from Brooklyn. I'm from Brooklyn originally. So, man, I live near

Ebbets Field or the former Ebbets Field. Yeah, it's what's his apartments now. Oh, my God. You're probably. I just, I did not plan this. What happens is you show up to a Zoom call with this stranger. You're wearing your Brooklyn Dodgers cap, which I've seen you wear around the office. Yeah. A lot. And the guy whose face materializes happens to be wearing the exact same thing.

It was incredible. It was an incredible one. Who is this man? He's this great, great guy named John Newman. He hosts a podcast called SportsCard Nation. I mean, we ended up talking for an hour and a half about cards, about life. It just got deep. And then I got comfortable just to confess to him.

Like, I had failed as a reporter and I had like no contact. I could not get anyone from Upper Deck. The problem you would have there, I'm not saying it's impossible, is a lot of people that were there at that time are somewhere else or not in the space. You're not in the hobby space anymore. You know, my guy Chris Carlin was the face of Upper Deck for 24 years. He was just there. He was like a rookie. Oh, man.

I would reach out to Chris. He's a good friend of mine. You can name drop me. That will help. Oh, okay. Not to be cocky. And then that's the moment where I came into the studio where we are a while back. I'm like, Pablo, I'm going to a card show in Toronto to see a guy who hopefully might solve the mystery of the missing Jordan cards.

And you were like, yeah, I was like, I like an expense report heat check. I do. But Levitard, when he realizes, when he finds out that we're sending you to yet another country. Yeah. I had doubts as to whether this would even be worth it. I mean, honestly, like the idea of like you bounding in, I'm going to Toronto. And I was like, we should prepare for you to find out nothing at this random card. you're going to show up to.

Yeah, but I felt like we had to take a chance. I mean, to sound a little cheeseball, it felt like, you know, if you want to find a card, you've got to open the pack. All right, I made it here to Toronto. It's raining today, but we're here at the SportsCard Expo. It's out in an industrial plaza. Let's go inside. So you're in Canada, obviously hockey country.

How much Michael Jordan is there? It was crazy. He's everywhere. It's like among Hanson jerseys and Connor Bedard and Connor McDavid and Wayne Gretzky and Gordy Howe. And then Jordan. Right. The Jordan LeBron thing. No, it doesn't exist in the hobby industry and car collecting. It's just Jordan's there by a mile. Craziest part about the Expo was you saw that stratospheric rise in cars because everyone was carrying around these little briefcases.

that had combination locks, which they would store their graded cards, and almost like they had the nuclear codes, like the nuclear football they were toting around. Those guys, unlike me and your friend with the attic, it seems like they actually knew the value of the stuff in their collections. Like they were not settling for the three-ring binder. No, no, definitely not. Definitely not.

So anyways, I went through wandering these giant airplane hangers full of cards and people and collectors searching for Chris Carr. Not the New York radio personality. Right. Not that Chris Carlin. Another Chris Carlin, the guy at Upper Deck, and the person that hopefully had the intel on the missing nine Jordan cards. All right, so the contact that I have said that for me to come to PSA,

he should be in the booth. All right, here we go. I'm gonna stop recording. So I finally tracked down the booth that he's at, And I shake his hand. He's like, uh, actually, could you come back in an hour? And I was like, and he walks away. And I'm like, am I getting ducked? It's happening again. It's happening again. Like, it's happening again. Like, I just get filled with this absolute feeling of peer defeat. But then, thankfully, hour passes. He comes back. My name is Chris Carlin. I worked with Upper Deck for over 24 years.

It was cool. Listen to him. You like told me what went into a good hunt. In trading cards, there's a lot of Willy Wonka type of promos, golden ticket types of things. But really what anyone who works at a trading card manufacturer worth of salt is trying to give collectors something to talk about, trying to give customers something that they appreciate and want, which in the case of Michael Jordan is anything Michael Jordan. So in regards to the hunt for 23 promotion, the thing was huge. MJ signing those rookies was a pretty big deal. Yeah, the cold thing was when he was talking about the hunt for 23 promotion. He said it was specifically designed for kids.

You know, we're trying to get that next generation of collector in, and Jordan was such a perfect way to drive interest in opening up packs of cards, whether it be getting something signed by MJ or winning a trip to his flight school. It was pretty exciting for people back. back then. And then I got to ask Chris the question. Yes. There is a question here.

And then I came to Toronto to find out. Your expense report was writing on this literal multimillion dollar question that both of us have been obsessed with, which is what happened, Bradley, to the nine missing Jordan cards? The weirdest part, Pablo, is he really didn't seem to know what the hell I was talking about. Where are they? Yeah, all I could say is that Upper Deck made sure that they were all distributed. So what that means is that all of those redemption cards, those golden tickets. Right.

Not all of them were sent in to Upper Deck. So that means not all of the signed 23 Jordan cards were immediately sent out to people that found them in packs. So basically, Upper Deck had whatever the leftovers were, the unclaimed, unredeemed Jordan autographed rookie cards. And their company policy stated that all. prizes had to be distributed. They couldn't just be collected or kept by Upper Deck employees. Which would have been a real coup if you were an Upper Deck employee. Exactly. I'll take

this home with me. Yeah, sure, sure. So what was their policy? Well, they had to devise a workaround to make sure that they got out to fans of Upper Deck. Wait, so what was the workaround? Who got these cards? You remember how I said

that the promotion was all for kids? Yes. Well, they decided to award these cards. to kids who did things that kids today no longer do. Write letters. I would often see bins of mail coming in from people who were trying to participate in some type of sweepstakes for the price of a postage stamp instead of the price of a pack of cards.

So after the Hunt for 23 ended, Chris just simply called and then sent these fans any leftover autographed Jordan rookie cards, like the last of their kind. So the seven-figure fortunes were just made nailed out to kids. Yes. By envelope because they wrote a letter.

Yes. And so, okay, the missing nine, the hunt we've been on. Right. Do we know who got those cards? So the answer to the mystery of the missing nine Jordan cards is that they were never missing. Like, they're out there in the world. If you remember, Christy's was saying there's only 14 cards that are known and graded. Right.

These nine cards aren't treated like everyone expects them to be treated. Right. In some ways, they're treated like they were when we were kids. A lot of times they end up in personal collections. And these private collectors, you know, they say that they're private for a reason. You know, they don't like other people knowing what they have. So we always get excited. As prizes to keep in a personal collection.

Right. Like a binder. Yeah. A binder. A binder. they this time, smartly of them, are not telling anybody about. Exactly. So Bradley, even more than I want to congratulate you on getting to the bottom of this mystery,

I want to salute you for truly lowering the value of the 14 known autographed Michael Jordan rookie cards that Christie's has, in fact, cited. Sorry. And, oh, I should add on that, too, they're not the last autographed Jordan rookie cards that Jordan signed. Despite the exclusive contract with Upper Deck. Yeah, he broke it when he lost a bet with Kurt Bush, the NASCAR. It always went to gambling with Michael Jordan.

I mean, what we're doing, though, across the board here is we are moving markets. Moving markets. Oh, yeah. So the one unanswered question on that note that I have has to do with the other mystery that you cited, which is that there were these original printing plates that your armored car robber friend and his friend had acquired. So what happened to those? So if you remember, Upper Deck bought Fleer when Fleer went bankrupt. And I asked Chris Carlin, where did they go? You know, a lot of times they were just pitched.

So if someone was dumpster diving, they might have got lucky. But I don't know. That particular sets, they weren't widely collected or looked at the same way they are today as an assets rather than a tool to make the trading card. So the rumor holds. Okay. So the bad news for everybody who has the Michael Jordan cards that I have lusted after for my whole life, basically. The bad news for them is that actually there may be no shortage of Michael Jordan rookie cards in reality because the technology exists to make them apparently forever, maybe. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Someone's college tuition is now gone thanks to your report. Right. But Pablo, to make it up for you. Yeah. I had time after I solved the mystery to walk around the card show and was able to buy a pack for you to hopefully replenish. As an apology.

Both an apology for what I put you through and hopefully find one of those Jordans that you got Rob. Oh, boy. Oh, you got to admit, though, I also bought a present for myself. I have the upper deck 1989. I know. Sound of foil. I can hear. Right. I mean, so you got me Skybox

92, 93, which is like, again, Dream Team era, like this is... Yeah. Oh, boy. I got the 89. So anyway, you ready? I think. There's only one way to end this episode,

and that is... Let's rip. This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.