Paul Skenes' 1-of-1 baseball card sells for $1.11M at auction
Paul Skenes' 1-of-1 baseball card sells for $1.11M at auction
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Can Pirates phenom Paul Skenes win the NL Cy Young Award after winning Rookie of the Year?
USA TODAY Sports' Gabe Lacques shares his expectations for Paul Skenes ahead of the 2025 MLB season.
Sports Seriously
A baseball card featuring Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes sold for $1.1 million on Thursday.
The sale price includes a buyer's premium, as there were 64 bids on the card via the Fanatics Collect auction. The proceeds from the auction are going to the LA Fire Relief Fund to help those who were impacted by the wildfires that devastated Southern California earlier this year.
Topps says that only five baseball cards have sold for more than Skenes' card, including a 2022 sale of a Mickey Mantle 1952 Topps card for $12.6 million.
The buyer of the 1-of-1 card, which features Skenes' autograph and a patch the NL Rookie of the Year wore on his uniform when he made his major league debut on May 11, 2024, was not identified.
Skenes' card drew so much attention that the Pirates offered the person who eventually retrieved the card a bounty for it, including seats behind home plate at PNC Park for the next 30 years, an exclusive meet-and-greet with Skenes and two autographed jerseys and a chance to host a softball game at the ballpark.
Skenes' girlfriend, LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne, also said the winner would get a chance to sit with her in a suite.
An 11-year-old from Los Angeles pulled the Skenes redemption card, and the family turned down the Pirates' offer and gave the card to Fanatics Collect so it could be auctioned off.
Skenes, who is scheduled to make $875,000 this year, went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA and 170 strikeouts last season and will be Pittsburgh's 2025 opening day starter when the Pirates take on the Marlins in Miami on March 27.
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It was a beautiful reminder of how much better we are as people when we support one another. Around Mile 10, I spotted Chris Bennett, Nike's running global head coach, giving out high-fives and encouraging people to push forward. (He even ran with the last bunch of runners and helped them across the finish line.) As I neared the end, I felt bamboozled because there were at least two massive archways that looked like the finish line, but actually weren't. I still had a ways to go. I could've cried tears of joy when I finally reached the end. I clocked in at three hours and three minutes, which I was pleased with because my only goals were to finish, have fun and make it to the concert. The winner was Sofia Camacho, a drag artist and Nike run coach based in New York, who clocked in at one hour, 15 minutes and 25 seconds. After grabbing my medal, I walked as fast as my sore limbs would allow back inside the stadium. The trek felt tortuous because we had to climb up multiple sets of stairs, then journey down a walkway that was roughly 10 levels that felt never-ending until we reached the bottom where the stage was. Some people gave up on watching the show simply because they didn't have the energy to make it down. By the time I got there, I was disappointed to see that Doechii was already on her final two songs of her 30-minute set, but the energy was so high that I quickly forgot and just enjoyed the moment while I could. The show ended just before 10:40 p.m. while some folks were still running including one of my friends who missed the show and wasn't able to get a pair of Barbie pink Nike slides and socks they were passing out. After the show, we were instructed to exit the stadium — thankfully there was an escalator — but I still had to muster up the energy to go back to the entrance at the other side of the stadium so I could retrieve my belongings from the bag check area. 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