Paul Skenes, he’s so hot right now

The Major League Baseball season might be in the rearview mirror, but baseball is firmly on the minds of sports fans right now, as Topps has released its 2024 Chrome Update Series, featuring some extremely rare and valuable cards. The top of the Topps is the MLB Debut Patch Autograph rookie card of Pittsburgh Pirates’ phenom Paul Skenes.

Just one card exists for each player.

Starting last year, players making their major league debuts wore a special patch on their uniform sleeve to commemorate the occasion. The 2024 Chrome Update Series includes 251 cards of players who debuted between June 1, 2023 and May 24, 2024, complete with the game-worn patch and autograph. Just one card exists for each player.

And the card for NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes is the most coveted of the set.

An offer you can’t refuse

Card collectors knew of this and all other highly desirable baseball cards, but the general sports public likely did not until the Pittsburgh Pirates posted a generous offer to the person who eventually finds the card. The highlight of the deal is two season tickets behind home plate for the next 30 years:

And now, like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, everybody is searching for that Golden Ticket. But do any of us have a chance? Not really.

According to Topps’ website, the odds of pulling one of the 251 MLB Debut Patch Autograph cards are 1:28,105 if you open packs from a Hobby Box. Those odds go down to 1:4,985 with a Jumbo Hobby Box, and down to 1:446 for a Breaker’s Delight box.

It won’t be cheap

But forget all that. There are all sorts of different types of boxes and odds for each and honestly, it can all be a little confusing. And they are all different prices, so you can’t automatically point to the Breaker’s Delight and think you have better odds those boxes contain fewer cards and are more expensive per card than the others.

People like you and me who just want to pick up a few packs at Target are never going to find it.

The bottom line is that there are only 251 of these cards, so they are already very rare, and each player’s is 1-of-1, so the odds of finding the Paul Skenes card are infinitesimally long. People like you and me who just want to pick up a few packs at Target are never going to find it. It’s the people with greater resources and a means to monetize the cards even when they don’t hit the big-ticket items, particularly those who own hobby shops or make their living streaming or creating YouTube videos, who will find them.

So, to make things easier, let’s listen to Grand Salami Sports Cards and Breaks. Posting on X, the card-collecting duo calculated that (using secondary market prices because the cards are sold out everywhere), depending on the type of case one bought, it could cost someone over $200,000 and possibly close to $300,000 just to find one single MLB Debut Patch Autograph card. And of course, the odds of that card being Paul Skenes is still 1:251 (well, 1:250, since Elly De La Cruz’s card has been found).

But hey, if you want to gamble and don’t mind paying a premium for a high-demand product right now, go for it! Even if you don’t get anything valuable, it can still be fun.