The Real Golden Ticket May Never Be Found

In less than 48 hours, the $75,000 bounty set by Blowout Cards for the 2018 Bowman Shohei Ohtani Superfractor Autograph will expire. With Ohtani becoming a bonafide baseball superstar in America, one has to wonder just how much the 1/1 card will sell for once it actually has been pulled. The hype around this card is HUGE and should not be surprising considering the Superfractor is the premier parallel in #TheHobby and has been for well over a decade. Just look at what Mike Trout’s Super sold for recently.

I’ve been around long enough to remember the days when Evan Longoria had the same type hype that follows guys like Trout, Bryce Harper, and Kris Bryant. Unfortunately, despite his Rookie of the Year season and four, 30+ home run campaigns in 11 years, the hype fell extremely short of what the reality turned out to be. Sure, Evan will end his career somewhere close to 350+ home runs and over 1,000 RBI but those numbers are definitely not what we were expecting.

Still, as exciting as Ohtani Mania has been as has my daily Twitter and forum checks to see if the 2018 Superfractor has been pulled, I can almost guarantee the Evan Longoria Superfractor being pulled and/or discovered could be just as big for collectors as it has been the only notable Superfractor to have never been seen. The image below was a mock-up created nearly a decade ago. Every major star of the past 10+ year has had a Superfractor but this one still has yet to see the light of day.

So what gives? Has the card been pulled by a non-internet friendly collector and stayed dormant in a private collection? Or better yet, is it still in a box of 2006 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects, hiding inside a fresh pack? Boxes of this product are STILL readily available on eBay, 12 years after its release date and sell for considerably cheap. By readily available, I mean 11 Hobby boxes all for around $150-$200 a piece. Considering the checklist, that’s not bad.

As for the card itself, despite Evan’s dud of a career, they sell for respectable prices. Recently, a Refractor #’d to 500 sold for $177. You can imagine what the lower numbered parallels might pull. One guy has an Orange Refractor numbered to just 25 copies with an asking price of $7,500. That’s unrealistic and will never happen but if the Superfractor is ever found and placed for sale, it would not be surprising to see its final price reach North of 10,000, even if Evan is this generation’s Kent Hrbek.

One final theory I’ve read online is that this card was never produced and/or packed out by Topps Company. As much as I like to bag on Topps, that seems like a ridiculous conspiracy simply because other big cards from this set and many that came after it were posted and appeared on forums and eBay. I do have to wonder how the Ohtani Superfractor hasn’t yet surfaced considering just how much wax has been ripped from day one. If ever there was a card conspiracy, that Super would be the source.

Remember, whoever finds the Ohtani Superfractor will essentially have their lives completely changed. Blowout Cards’ low ball offer of $75,000 (originally $60,000) is nowhere close to what the first sale of the card will hit. With the Ohtani Hype Train in full motion, the media hype created by this card thanks to Blowout Cards’ bounty, and how much collectors are anticipating it, the Superfractor will certainly be a card that hits six figures on the secondary market. Topps definitely knows this.

Stay #WOKE baseball card collectors. The next 48 hours could be very interesting.