EAGAN, Minn. — For the past five months, Zach Guerrero-Sorvaag has been streaming to an audience of thousands from Triple Diamond Sports Cards and Collectibles in Eagan, where he chats nightly with a dedicated group of sports fans through YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and TikTok.
"I live and breathe not only sports cards but just sports in general," Zach said. "It's just what brings me happiness."
Zach is known as a "breaker," which means he opens sets of cards that customers have purchased and announces the results on the livestream. Some people join the stream to discover which players' cards they've obtained through the packs, while others join to observe the action and talk sports on the chat function. It's a perfect job for someone like Zach, who loves the element of surprise and has enough stamina to interact with fans long past midnight.
This past Tuesday evening, Zach launched the Triple Diamond Sports streaming platforms in Eagan just after 7 p.m.
He had a feeling this night might be different.
The date was Dec. 12, otherwise known as "Tom Brady Day" in recognition of the future Hall of Fame quarterback who wore the uniform number 12. Topps strategically chose Dec. 12 as the release date for the new Bowman 2023 Draft card set, which features a collection of baseball prospects selected in the most recent Major League Baseball draft. Inside the new set, Topps added a fictional Tom Brady baseball card -- yes, baseball -- showing him in the uniform of the Montreal Expos, the franchise that drafted him out of California's Serra High School in 1995.
Brady never played for the Expos organization, which moved to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. As many know, Brady decided to instead attend the University of Michigan on a football scholarship, setting in motion a career on the gridiron in which he would win seven Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But Topps rolled out a clever promotional campaign for the new Brady card, including a commercial that portrayed an alternate reality in which Brady played professional baseball instead of football. At the end of the commercial, Brady awakes suddenly from a dream before the camera shows one of Brady's new Expos cards -- with a gold vinyl around the edges and Brady's autograph on the front.
That card, known as a Superfractor "one-of-one," would be inserted into one of the Bowman 2023 Draft sets released on Tuesday. Someone, somewhere, would obtain that rare version when buying the new Bowman set.
When Zach woke up Tuesday morning and prepared to head to Triple Diamond Sports in Eagan for his nightly online stream, he said he told his girlfriend that "we're going to hit the one-of-one of Tom Brady. I know we are!" He had heard of friends overseas, in Asia, searching for the card, and he heard that some buyers were putting thousands of dollars down on early-release Bowman draft sets to obtain the Superfractor.
The chances of Zach selecting the one-of-a-kind Brady baseball card were minuscule.
But it was fun to dream.
"This has been a hyped release for a long, long time," Zach said. "We've been waiting for this product to come out for months now."
Zach's stream on Tuesday started in typical fashion. "This is a full case of the brand-new 2023 Bowman Draft hobby. Your names and teams are there on the right. Good luck to everybody," he told his audience. The collectors waited patiently as Zach pulled card after card in methodical fashion. The card for Blake Mitchell, the eighth overall pick of the Kansas City Royals earlier this year, would go to whoever bought the Royals pack; Ethan Salas would go to whoever bought the San Diego Padres; and so forth.
For about $200, one collector bought the Washington Nationals -- which would also cover the selection of the Tom Brady Expos card, since the Nationals were once the Expos.
About an hour into the chat, Zach noticed a gold vinyl card in the deck. Could it be the Brady one? He didn't know. But as he drew closer and closer, selecting Wyatt Crowell, Braden Taylor, Kendall George... Emmett Olson....
Was that Brady?
Zach exploded on the livestream.
"TOM BRADY! TOM BRADY SUPERFRACATOR ON RELEASE DAY! BANG! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! TOM BRADY ON RELEASE DAY! HOLY %@@! TOM BRADY SUPER!"
Reflecting on the moment, Zach said he still has not gotten over the shock.
"It was surreal. The one card that everyone wants in the set and it's in Eagan, Minnesota, in my hands. I couldn't believe it," Zach said. "I still can't believe it."
The staff at Triple Diamond Sports went into pandemonium. One of the owners, Alex Davis, had left the store for the night and watched Zach select the Brady card on the live stream.
"I was running around my house screaming and yelling and just so overjoyed with excitement," Davis said. "It was unlike anything we've ever experienced."
Davis said this particular Brady card, with the autograph and gold vinyl, could sell for at least $500,000 and possibly up to $1 million. That's a huge payout for the customer, who lives out of state and understandably wishes to remain anonymous.
"I've been in contact with him since we pulled the card pretty much nonstop," Davis said, "and I don't think he's slept in two days."
The store is now sending the card to be graded before it can arrive in the hands of the customer. At that point, it will likely be resold through auction.
Incredibly, the same customer also got another Tom Brady card in the same Bowman draft set. Too bad that one was only worth a measly $3,000 to $5,000. (Somewhere out there, another special Brady baseball card with an autographed inscription that says "If baseball doesn't work out, there's always football," will also command hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lucky buyer).
Triple Diamond Sports Cards and Collectibles doesn't get paid the big money for selling the pack that included the card, but the store has become famous in the industry since finding the Brady card this week. On Thursday, a curious Vikings quarterback by the name of Kirk Cousins stopped into the store with his son, joking with one of the owners that "we might have to compete" for the autographed card.
"It's really neat, from our perspective," Davis said. "This will really put us on the map there, and our customers are so wonderful. Everyone has been reaching out. It's such a great ride and we're really excited to see where this card sells and how much it sells for."
Employees like Zach Guerrero-Sorvaag will always be able to say they were part of history.
"It's so amazing. This hobby is just amazing," Zach said. "I just love it."
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