One man’s sentimental memorabilia might earn him a small fortune.
Summer camp counselor Allie Tarantino was once the favorite counselor of young Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Before leaving at the end of camp one summer, Zuckerberg gifted Tarantino a Little League baseball card with Zuckerberg’s photo on it. Touched by the gift, Tarantino asked Zuckerberg to sign the card, like a professional baseball player, Metropolis Comics & Collectibles wrote on its Facebook page today.
Now 30 years later, Tarantino still has the signed card. He has decided to see how much the card is worth. “It’s like my version of a midlife crisis. I’m 50 years old—what am I going to do with this?” Tarantino says.
The card is set to be sold at auction through ComicConnect sometime next month. The buyer will receive documentation authenticating Zuckerberg’s signature and attendance at the summer camp—Camp Elmwood.
Not only will the physical card be sold, but bidders have the opportunity to purchase an NFT—non-fungible token—of the card as well.
Meta has recently started supporting NFTs. Zuckerberg himself posted about the auction of the NFT baseball card on his own Facebook page. “In honor of expanding digital collectible NFTs to 100 more countries on Instagram and launching new integrations with Coinbase and Dapper, I’m sharing my soon-to-be NFT old little league baseball card, which someone recently found and sent to me…”
ComicConnect founder Stephen Fishler called the auctions “a virtual steel cage match.” The bidding for the physical card will be done in U.S. dollars and the bidding for the NFT in Ethereum blockchain currency.
Fishler has no idea how much the items could sell for as they are truly one-of-a-kind. Rare baseball cards of famous players can sometimes sell for millions of dollars.
NFTs are still relatively new with the first one appearing in 2014. They represent objects in the physical world and are encoded with similar software to cryptocurrency. Typically, they are bought and sold with cryptocurrency as well, Forbes reported.
More recently, the popularity of NFTs increased when they became known as a way to purchase digital art.
NFTs have a unique code used to identify them, making them one-of-a-kind or limited edition, increasing the value.
