The coveted Cooper Flagg Rookie Debut Patch card – reportedly worth millions – is going to auction.
The card of the Newport, Maine hoops phenom will be featured in a Fanatics Collect sale to take bids from September 10-24, the company announced Friday.
The “Premier Auction,” the elite class of the company’s sales, charges a 20 percent fee to the buyer but no charge to the seller.
The auctioneer’s consignment follows “an extraordinary pursuit that began shortly before midnight on August 10, when the Flagg card was pulled during a livestream break at a Rhode Island card shop,” a Fanatics spokeswoman said.
In an effort to get in touch with the collector, Fanatics vice president Kevin Lenane briefly reached the shop through its landline, but the phone was soon flooded with calls and ultimately unplugged.
With no meeting arranged and trying to find some way to get in touch with the collector, Lenane boarded the 6 a.m. ferry from Port Jefferson, New York to Bridgeport, Connecticut and took an Uber to the Rhode Island shop.
Another member of the Fanatics team flew a red-eye from Los Angeles to Providence.
They arrived at the shop and spent the next two days there.
On the first day, the collector was not yet willing to share his information, so Lenane spoke with him the only way he could: over the shop’s now re-plugged in landline.
On day two, Jason Williams came to the shop himself and had discussions with Lenane that stretched roughly 12 hours.
Williams made the decision earlier this week to consign the card with Fanatics Collect.
Williams, a 50-year-old grandfather from South Carolina, acquired the Dallas Mavericks star’s most-wanted relic via a box break earlier this month.
With Williams’ decision to sell the card, “Cooper Flagg fans desperate to get their hands on his Holy Grail rookie card are now in luck,” reports California Post.
“It’s one of those things that if you’re in the collecting world everyone’s been waiting for,” Lenane told the outlet.
Williams bought into the now-famous box break August 10 with RhodyBreakers card dealer for $515.
He told the Post days later he “cried like a baby” when he realized the Flagg card was his.
“It just overwhelmed me,” Williams said, “because I knew the magnitude of what had happened.”
Since Flagg, who averaged 21 points per game in his first season with the Mavericks, signed the card in July, demand for the item has been insatiable, according to the Post.
“Williams initially said he wasn’t going to rush to sell the item, but ultimately opted to put it in Fanatics Collect’s hands this week after building a relationship with the organization since he became the coveted card’s owner,” the Post said.
Under auction rules, Williams would receive a bonus based on the highest bid the listing attracts.
For instance, if the Flagg card were to sell for more than $1 million, Williams would receive 115 percent of the “hammer price.”
