An autographed baseball card with Mark Zuckerberg sells for $105,000

The sports-card market has been dominated by legendary names such as Mickey Mantle and LeBron James for a long time. Is Mark Zuckerberg joining the list?

An autographed card with a picture of Zuckerberg in his Little League days sold for $105,000 at an auction that ended early Wednesday evening. The price may prove to be an early benchmark for an item related to Facebook and Meta META, founder, as it doesn't compare to the record-breaking $12.6 million that a 1952 Mantle card fetched earlier this year.

Stephen Fishler, the chief executive officer of ComicConnect.com, told MarketWatch a few hours before the auction ended. Fishler pointed out the rarity of the item, which he said was the only known surviving example of the card from Zuckerberg's youth.

There is nothing you can compare it to. Fishler said that he could not draw a line between this card and anything. He said that while Mantle cards are highly prized in 1952, hundreds of them are known to exist, along with Mantle cards from other years.

The reason there aren't Zuckerberg cards from other years is that Zuckerberg wasn't a sports figure. The card was essentially created as a novelty item and given to the future tech entrepreneur by a young Zuckerberg to Allie Tarantino, a counselor at a day camp in White Plains, N.Y.

Tarantino asked Zuckerberg to autograph the card in order to make the young camper feel like a star, he told MarketWatch. He held onto the card the way he held on to various other items — as a summer-camp keepsake. When Zuckerberg rose to fame, it was only years later that Tarantino, who now works as a fifth-grade teacher and also serves as a program director at that same New York camp, realized that he might have something of value.

He told MarketWatch that it was a weird, one-of-a-kind piece.

Tarantino knew Fishler, and the two had talked about selling the card at some point. With the market for collectibles experiencing a boom during the epidemic, Tarantino decided now was the time.

Fishler said that Zuckerberg has given his blessing on the sale of the card. Zuckerberg talked about the card, and an NFT made from it, in an Instagram post, referring to it as his old little league baseball card. The NFT from the card sold for 11Ethereum the equivalent of $14,800 in a parallel digital auction that ended Wednesday.

Tarantino said that he plans to use the sale money to pay down his mortgage and help fund his children's college educations. He isn't ruling out making a special purchase - but he collects comic books, not sports cards, so he is more likely to buy a rare comic with his Zuckerberg cash.

I thought I would treat myself.