PHOENIX — Don't blink or you might just miss it.
With the rise of former Perry High School star Brock Purdy and his San Francisco 49ers, the collector market is in lock step.
Joe Wysmierski with local hobby shop Phoenix Sports Cards, known in the collector world as “The Gold Miner,” recently struck the find of a lifetime – a one-of-four autographed Purdy rookie card.
“You're peeling back the wax, you're peeling back the plastic and you see the B and then you see the last name you see the P,” Wysmierski told 12News in an exclusive interview. “You're getting excited you're feeling heated up from the inside out that infernos starting to build.”
At the beginning of the NFL season, basic versions of Purdy’s rookie card fetched a mere $5. Now it’s up to $75.
The value of Purdy’s card is two-fold:
He was Mr. Irrelevant in the most recent NFL draft. That’s the nickname given to the last pick, who usually doesn’t amount to NFL glory, or at least so quickly.
Add in manufacturing delays, plus the small chance Purdy would see the field at the start of the season behind 49ers quarterbacks Trey Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo. Wysmierski said no one expected Purdy’s rise up the ranks.
“There was no thought that you know that he was going to be as big as he is,” Wysmierski told us about the collector card makers, adding “like with any business they've got to put their assets in certain areas.”
Those one-in-a-million chances now make Purdy’s card a diamond in the rough and draw comparisons to another low NFL draft pick turned greatest of all time.
“Nobody knew that Tom Brady, as a sixth round pick, was going to become the greatest of all time, right? Wysmierski said. "Otherwise people would have been making his product from his rookie year. They would have flooded the market.”
Purdy and his 49ers are on the mix to play in Super Bowl LVII, right here in the Valley at State Farm Stadium. If he can string together three more wins in a row, he would become the first-ever rookie quarterback to hoist the Lombardi Trophy.
And if that happens, Wysmierski said the value of his rare card, and any other Purdy rookie collectible, would go through the roof.
“He can win the Super Bowl, but he can also be the Super Bowl MVP, and then it goes even higher.”
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