Kare11
Tom Brady baseball card discovered at Eagan collectible shop
The autographed card, which could be worth up to $1 million, was found in a pack at Triple Diamond Sports Cards and Collectibles this week.
EAGAN, Minn. — For the past five months, Zach Guerrero-Sorvaag has been streaming to an audience of thousands from Triple Diamond Sports Cards and Collectibles in Eagan, where he chats nightly with a dedicated group of sports fans through YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and TikTok.
“I live and breathe not only sports cards but just sports in general,” Zach said. “It’s just what brings me happiness.”
Zach is known as a “breaker,” which means he opens sets of cards that customers have purchased and announces the results on the livestream. Some people join the stream to discover which players’ cards they’ve obtained through the packs, while others join to observe the action and talk sports on the chat function. It’s a perfect job for someone like Zach, who loves the element of surprise and has enough stamina to interact with fans long past midnight.
This past Tuesday evening, Zach launched the Triple Diamond Sports streaming platforms in Eagan just after 7 p.m.
He had a feeling this night might be different.
The date was Dec. 12, otherwise known as “Tom Brady Day” in recognition of the future Hall of Fame quarterback who wore the uniform number 12. Topps strategically chose Dec. 12 as the release date for the new Bowman 2023 Draft card set, which features a collection of baseball prospects selected in the most recent Major League Baseball draft. Inside the new set, Topps added a fictional Tom Brady baseball card — yes, baseball — showing him in the uniform of the Montreal Expos, the franchise that drafted him out of California’s Serra High School in 1995.
Brady never played for the Expos organization, which moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. As many know, Brady decided to instead attend the University of Michigan on a football scholarship, setting in motion a career on the gridiron in which he would win seven Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But Topps rolled out a clever promotional campaign for the new Brady card, including a commercial that portrayed an alternate reality in which Brady played professional baseball instead of football. At the end of the commercial, Brady awakes suddenly from a dream before the camera shows one of Brady’s new Expos cards — with a gold vinyl around the edges and Brady’s autograph on the front.
That card, known as a Superfractor “one-of-one,” would be inserted into one of the Bowman 2023 Draft sets released on Tuesday. Someone, somewhere, would obtain that rare version when buying the new Bowman set.
When Zach woke up Tuesday morning and prepared to head to Triple Diamond Sports in Eagan for his nightly online stream, he said he told his girlfriend that “we’re going to hit the one-of-one of Tom Brady. I know we are!” He had heard of friends overseas, in Asia, searching for the card, and he heard that some buyers were putting thousands of dollars down on early-release Bowman draft sets to obtain the Superfractor.
The chances of Zach selecting the one-of-a-kind Brady baseball card were minuscule.
But it was fun to dream.
“This has been a hyped release for a long, long time,” Zach said. “We’ve been waiting for this product to come out for months now.”
Zach’s stream on Tuesday started in typical fashion. “This is a full case of the brand-new 2023 Bowman Draft hobby. Your names and teams are there on the right. Good luck to everybody,” he told his audience. The collectors waited patiently as Zach pulled card after card in methodical fashion. The card for Blake Mitchell, the eighth overall pick of the Kansas City Royals earlier this year, would go to whoever bought the Royals pack; Ethan Salas would go to whoever bought the San Diego Padres; and so forth.
For about $200, one collector bought the Washington Nationals — which would also cover the selection of the Tom Brady Expos card, since the Nationals were once the Expos.
About an hour into the chat, Zach noticed a gold vinyl card in the deck. Could it be the Brady one? He didn’t know. But as he drew closer and closer, selecting Wyatt Crowell, Braden Taylor, Kendall George… Emmett Olson….
Zach exploded on the livestream.
“TOM BRADY! TOM BRADY SUPERFRACATOR ON RELEASE DAY! BANG! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! TOM BRADY ON RELEASE DAY! HOLY %@@! TOM BRADY SUPER!”
Reflecting on the moment, Zach said he still has not gotten over the shock.
“It was surreal. The one card that everyone wants in the set and it’s in Eagan, Minnesota, in my hands. I couldn’t believe it,” Zach said. “I still can’t believe it.”
The staff at Triple Diamond Sports went into pandemonium. One of the owners, Alex Davis, had left the store for the night and watched Zach select the Brady card on the live stream.
“I was running around my house screaming and yelling and just so overjoyed with excitement,” Davis said. “It was unlike anything we’ve ever experienced.”
Davis said this particular Brady card, with the autograph and gold vinyl, could sell for at least $500,000 and possibly up to $1 million. That’s a huge payout for the customer, who lives out of state and understandably wishes to remain anonymous.
“I’ve been in contact with him since we pulled the card pretty much nonstop,” Davis said, “and I don’t think he’s slept in two days.”
The store is now sending the card to be graded before it can arrive in the hands of the customer. At that point, it will likely be resold through auction.
Incredibly, the same customer also got another Tom Brady card in the same Bowman draft set. Too bad that one was only worth a measly $3,000 to $5,000. (Somewhere out there, another special Brady baseball card with an autographed inscription that says “If baseball doesn’t work out, there’s always football,” will also command hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lucky buyer).
Triple Diamond Sports Cards and Collectibles doesn’t get paid the big money for selling the pack that included the card, but the store has become famous in the industry since finding the Brady card this week. On Thursday, a curious Vikings quarterback by the name of Kirk Cousins stopped into the store with his son, joking with one of the owners that “we might have to compete” for the autographed card.
“It’s really neat, from our perspective,” Davis said. “This will really put us on the map there, and our customers are so wonderful. Everyone has been reaching out. It’s such a great ride and we’re really excited to see where this card sells and how much it sells for.”
Employees like Zach Guerrero-Sorvaag will always be able to say they were part of history.
“It’s so amazing. This hobby is just amazing,” Zach said. “I just love it.”
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The chief was discussing the shooting of Davis Maturi, who for months had been contact with the MPD about escalating harassment from his neighbor, John Sawchak.
MINNEAPOLIS — Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said his department “failed” after a man was shot, allegedly by his neighbor in the city.
“We failed this victim. 100%, because that should not have happened to him,” said O’Hara in a Sunday evening press conference.
The chief was discussing the shooting of Davis Moturi, who for months had been contact with the MPD about escalating harassment from his neighbor, John Sawchak.
Sawchak was charged with shooting Moturi as he was pruning a tree on his front yard on Oct. 23.
Moturi remains hospitalized with a fractured spine, two broken ribs, and a concussion.
O’Hara and the MPD came under a heavy attack from the Minneapolis City Council after it was revealed that the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office had charged Sawchak, but the MPD had not arrested him.
“MPD still has not arrested the suspect despite charges from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office for Attempted Murder, 1st Degree Assault, Stalking, and Harassment and a request from the HCAO for a warrant with $1 million bail. MPD told the HCAO they do not intend to execute the warrant ‘for reasons of officer safety,’” said the letter from the Minneapolis City Council.
“We failed to act urgently enough,” said O’Hara, before citing staffing concerns as a contributing factor.
It was a stark difference from the tone the chief initially took on Friday, then saying “If we wound up in a deadly situation, the headlines would read ‘MPD shot mentally ill person’.”
On Sunday, O’Hara said his previous comments were meant as a response to accusations that the MPD “didn’t care,” about the case.
“This is the result of over-politicizing policing in Minneapolis,” said O’Hara.
O’Hara stated that the MPD will, for the moment, continue waiting for Sawchak to exit his home to arrest him, but the chief added “We are running out of options before we have to escalate the matter.”
The heated back-and-forth between the city council and the chief continued earlier Sunday when Minneapolis City Council member Emily Koski released a statement questioning O’Hara and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey actions in the matter.
“Our Chief of Police is hiding behind excuses, and our Mayor…is just hiding.” said Koski in the statement.
Cities across Minnesota expanded voting hours and locations for the upcoming presidential election.
MINNEAPOLIS — Expanded early voting hours and locations are giving Minnesotans more opportunities to cast their ballots before the general election.
Over 1,000 people visited Minneapolis Elections & Voter Services over the weekend to make their voice heard.
“We have always voted as a family. We have this right as Americans to vote, and we wanted him to know right from the get-go that you’ve got to vote in every single election because this is our voice, this is our opportunity to really pick the future that we want based on the candidate that we vote for,” said Kelly Wallander.
Kelly and her husband, Claude, picked up their son Harrison from college, so they could all vote in the general election for the first time as a family.
“It’s interesting. It’s cool to see elections on TV, basically as long as I can remember, and now know that I’m a part of it and being able to vote with my parents is cool,” Harrison said.
“I like voting early just because exactly you miss the line and you get it in there,” Claude said.
Director of Elections and Voter Services for the City of Minneapolis Katie Smith said the past two days have been busy.
“We’ve had really solid turnout. We’ve had about 42,000 people who have already voted in this election,” she said.
She anticipates next weekend will be even busier.
“Every year we kind of looking at how many people we’re planning for and how many people are coming through. We try to always expand our service hours as we get closer and closer to the election,” she said.
Smith said they’ve also started using pop-up voting locations to reach more people.
“In 2023, there was a legislative change that allows for us to have sites around the city that are open for different lengths of time as well as different dates form our main site. We’ve really taken the opportunity to host some one-day early vote pop-ups… in some unique and really great spaces throughout the city,” Smith said.
Sunday’s pop-up was at the Capri Theater. Paige Gayle voted here along with her sister.
“I like early voting because it’s convenient, it’s fast and it’s quick,” she said. “I work on actual election day, so for me it was important to get out beforehand.”
Smith said offering more voting opportunities for people in Minneapolis is crucial to their work.
“It’s so important to be able to offer all of these voting methods so that people can find something that works really well for them and make their voting plan,” Smith said.
Voters tell KARE 11 one of the perks to early voting is little to no wait. Voting early also gives them peace of mind and is one less thing to do on election day.
“It’s so much more convenient. This way I don’t have to worry about it. I’ll still be working on election day, so I would have had to go in before or after work. Now, I don’t have to worry about it. I know my vote will be counted,” Macy Bauers said.
Bauers said she votes in every election and hopes more people take advantage of early voting in the coming days.
The two adults who were killed were both male, according to the department, which is investigating the shooting.
MINNEAPOLIS — Three people were shot, two of them fatally in a Minneapolis encampment on Sunday afternoon, according to the Minneapolis Police Department.
The shooting occurred on the 4400 block of Snelling Avenue shortly after 3 p.m., said the MPD.
The two adults who were killed were both male, according to the department, which is investigating the shooting.
A woman was also taken to the hospital after the shooting and is in critical condition, said the MPD.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
