Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg’s Little League baseball card fetched a six-figure sum at auction, according to a report.
The authenticated card, displaying a photo of an 8-year-old Zuckerberg and his autograph, sold for $105,000 at an auction conducted by ComicConnect.com, MarketWatch reported Wednesday. The undisclosed buyer also paid a 15% premium on the closing price for a total of $120,750.
“There’s nothing you can logically compare it to. I could not draw a line between this card and anything,” ComicConnect.com CEO Stephen Fishler told the outlet.
The Aces Sports Star card was sold by Allie Tarantino, the young Zuckerberg’s “favorite counselor” at a camp in White Plains, NY. Zuckerberg signed the card and gave it to Tarantino, who held onto it for the next three decades as the Facebook founder became one of the world’s richest – and most closely scrutinized – individuals.
“I’ve been telling this story for quite a while, about how I knew Mark as a camper, and it always astonishes people to see that this card actually exists,” Tarantino said in an earlier press release about the card.
“But I feel that my part of the story is over, so due to Mark’s prominence in the tech world, and the fact that he’s one of the most famous people on the planet, I figure now is a good time to sell this card and put it on market,” added Tarantino, who now works as an elementary school teacher.
The six-figure sale price, while sizable, still pales in comparison to the auction prices of widely-sought MLB memorabilia. In August, a 1952 Topps card for New York Yankees legend Mickey Mantle sold for a record $12.6 million.
Zuckerberg’s card lists his hometown as Dobbs Ferry, NY, and details the tech tyke’s “stats” for the Red Robins during the 1992 Little League season – in which the 3-foot-11, 48-pound slugger posted a Ruthian batting average of .920.
The right-handed batter had 23 hits that included a home run. It also shows his favorite team, the New York Yankees, and Roger Clemens as his favorite player. It is the only known card of its kind, according to Fishler.
The Meta mogul was fully aware of the auction – even promoting the proceedings and sharing a picture of the baseball card on his Instagram account in August.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote on Aug. 4 with a laughing emoji in the caption.
The NFT version of the card sold for 11 Ethereum, or approximately $14,800, in a separate auction that ended Wednesday, according to MarketWatch.
The Post has reached out to Meta for further comment.
Zuckerberg, 38, has since hung up his baseball cleats and taken up a new athletic pastime. The Meta CEO is an avid fan of mixed martial arts and takes jiujitsu classes at a gym in San Jose, Calif.
His personal net worth has gone into a prolonged slump, plummeting more than $70 billion this year as Meta contends with a tanking stock price and a difficult shift toward the metaverse.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
