Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Wins Tom Brady’s 2000 Rookie Autographed Trading Card with 6-Figure Bid

Robert Kraft’s got a winning hand.

When attending Fanatics’ inaugural “Holy Grails” auction on Tuesday night, the owner of the New England Patriots bid the highest on Tom Brady’s 2000 rookie card while sitting beside the team’s longtime quarterback himself.

During the first-of-its-kind event in partnership with Sotheby’s, a selection of the rarest cards in sports history were auctioned off in front of notable celebrities, athletes and business titans at the Harlem Parish’s 100-year-old reimagined church in New York City,

Four of those cards featured in the night’s auction were Tom Brady cards, achieving a combined total of $813,600. Kraft, who has owned the Patriots since 1994, acquired Lot 12 (a 2000 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket Autograph Tom Brady card graded at a 9.5 with the autograph graded a 10) for $120,000.

The gesture was iconic, given the victorious history the duo have had together throughout Brady’s 20 seasons with New England between 2000 and 2019. The franchise won its first Super Bowl in 2002, with consecutive titles in 2003 and 2004 (ultimately, totaling six championship wins together).

Prior to the start of the auction, which marked the first sale since Sotheby’s and Fanatics announced their partnership in June 2024, Brady and Kraft shared conversations and laughs as they reunited at the event and mingled with guests in the cathedral-turned-sports haven.

Kraft was all smiles during the evening — and at one point, even tore open a reporter’s decades-old deck of trading cards and hilariously ate the gum stashed inside the pack mid trade! “I was hungry,” he joked on the event’s red carpet alongside Fanatics’ founder and CEO Michael Rubin.

While Kraft’s bid was legendary, the night was filled with several memorable moments on the auction floor (which was designed in a diamond formation to resemble a baseball field, with pews positioned like first and third baselines and the auctioneer at the “pitcher’s mound”).

The highest bid of the night came attached to a rare 1955 Topps Roberto Clemente Rookie Card, which sold for $840,000, marking the most valuable card transaction at the auction. Also, a 2005-06 autographed LeBron James card sold for $576,000 after a four-minute bidding battle.

Brady’s appearance at the auction in New York City was fresh from the broadcasting booth in Texas on Sunday, when he called the Dallas Cowboys’ matchup against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 3 of the 2024 NFL season.

Since announcing his retirement from the league in February 2023 after 23 seasons, the seven-time Super Bowl winner was tapped by Fox Sports as its lead NFL game analyst. He made his broadcasting debut on Sept. 9. to call the Dallas Cowboys’ 33-17 win over the Cleveland Browns.

Ahead of Brady’s debut, his former longtime teammate Rob Gronkowski spoke with PEOPLE exclusively about why the retired QB would succeed in his latest football-focused career.

“If anyone can pull it off, it’s definitely him,” Gronkowski said of Brady. “He’s a great public speaker as well. That’s very surprising. He’s taken the public speaking game to a whole new level every time I see him.”

“He was the greatest player of all time to play the game of football,” Gronkowski continued of the NFL legend. “I would say that contributes because he knows the game of football better than anyone else… so if he just projects what he knows, he is going to do just as good in the booth that he did on the football field.”

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