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Lou Gehrig 1/1 card receives $100K bounty

Offer is latest in flurry of bounties for chase cards in recent weeks

Cover Image for Lou Gehrig 1/1 card receives $100K bounty

Trading card retailer Dave & Adam’s Card World has placed a $100,000 bounty on the Lou Gehrig Bowman Chrome Retrofractor 1/1 Superfractor from 2024 Bowman Chrome Baseball.

Introduced by Topps in 2023 Bowman Chrome Baseball, Retrofractors are super short-printed cards for baseball’s greatest players that never received a 1st Bowman card. In addition to the base Retrofractor, numbered parallels including Gold, Orange, Red and the 1/1 Superfractor appear across Bowman Baseball, Bowman Draft and Bowman Chrome.

Set to release on Wednesday, 2024 Bowman Chrome Baseball features Retrofractors for Gehrig as well as Sandy Koufax.

First used in 1996, the 1st Bowman designation marks a player’s first official baseball card. Topps began using the designation regularly in 2003, and it has since become the key card for baseball’s top prospects before the release of their rookie card in a flagship Topps set.

The Gehrig offer is the latest in what has been a number of recent bounties placed on high-value cards, most notably the Topps NOW 1/1 triple autograph featuring LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant.

It’s also the second bounty by Dave and Adam’s Card World for a Bowman Retrofractor following the $200,000 it offered last year for the Babe Ruth Bowman Chrome Retrofractor 1/1 Superfractor from 2023 Bowman Chrome Baseball. That 2023 Bowman Chrome Baseball release also featured Retrofractors for Roberto Clemente and Johnny Bench.

According to Card Ladder sales data, more than 300 Bowman Retrofractors have sold since their debut, with the highest public sale the $4,000 paid for a 2023 Bowman Chrome Roberto Clemente Retrofractor Orange /25 in 2023. A redemption for the 2023 Bowman Draft Carl Yastrzemski Retrofractor Autograph 1/1 Superfractor sold in 2023 for $3,750.

While the $100,000 bounty would be far from Gehrig’s most expensive card — the highest public sale is $783,400 for a 1925 Exhibits PSA 6 rookie card at Goldin in 2021 — it would be among his most expensive ultra-modern cards. To date, the highest public sale of an ultra-modern Gehrig card is $127,000 for a 2020 Panini Flawless Dual Cuts Autograph 1/1 featuring Ruth and Gehrig.

Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.