Beau Thompson has purchased pallets of sports cards from Goodwill a total of 21 times over the last several years.
Every one of those pallets has a story, he says, and for between 80 cents and $1 per pound, he has paid to sift through those cards, hoping to fill his bargain boxes at the next local card show.
But the story of his most recent pallet was so good he thought it was fake.
Thompson recently paid $700 for a 700-pound pallet from a Goodwill in Wisconsin, and this particular lot of cards produced his biggest find yet — a 2009 Bowman Chrome Mike Trout Draft Picks and Prospects Autograph Blue Refractor. Among Trout’s most important and valuable cards, a BGS 9.5/10 example recently sold for $12,505, and a PSA 9 copy fetched $15,000 in August.
“I don’t deal in cards like this,” Thompson told cllct. “My business is low-end. You know, $100 and under, and it’s few and far between on $100 cards. It’s a ton of $1 and $2 cards with volume.”
According to Thompson, who has become best known for his collection of unique Chicago Cubs cards — which tops 1 million cards and counting — this pallet of cards didn’t immediately seem special. Pallets often come with about 150,000 cards, and it’s not uncommon to toss 10,000 that are simply unsellable.
He often has to get his hands dirty before he finds anything of value.
“I got this pallet probably two weeks ago,” Thompson said. “When I get these pallets, I’ll go through, open up boxes, and if I think there’s something in there, I’ll go through it right away. If it looks like it’s a bunch of commons, I’ll set it aside for a rainy day. Tuesday was a rainy day.”
The first box Thompson opened wasn’t inspiring, filled with mostly what he could immediately tell was junk wax. The second, which contained the Trout, was actually filled with mostly hockey cards — along with some 2009 Bowman.
After nearly setting the box aside with that junk wax, Thompson decided to dive into the rows of Bowman cards. He wasn’t sure what to look for, but he thought a refractor for a star could pop up. Tucked inside one of those rows was the Trout.
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The possibility that a legitimate Trout could appear in one of these pallets had never even crossed his mind.
“The odds are one-in-a-million that this is going to be the original card,” Thompon recalled. “Here’s another Trout reprint … I flipped it over, and it doesn’t say reprint. After that initial thought process, I’m thinking that I’m actually looking through 2009 Bowman, and this is 2009 Bowman.”
Stunned, Thompson’s first thought was that it could probably sell for a few thousand dollars. A quick eBay search returned better news.
“I think this is a $10,000 card,” Thompson remembers telling his wife.
The pull of a lifetime for Thompson could have been something similar for the original owner. While many of the pallets are filled with unwanted cards attached to good report cards or team bags filled with discarded base from breaks, some of this pallet appeared to be owned by another passionate collector.
Along with a number of autos and even Allen & Ginter boxes that had the contents placed back in, hits and all, it seemed like the previous owner could have even been a set collector.
“In this particular pallet, it seemed like it was a collector who liked opening boxes, but kind of ripped and just put them away.”
As of Thursday, the story of this pallet is far from over.
According to Thompson, he plans to have the Trout graded by PSA and will sell it when the market is right. The first pallet he ever purchased in 2021 had a 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout rookie card — he waited out the market before flipping that card for about $600, so he’ll use the same strategy again.
Despite a great background story, Thompson says the Trout has no chance to remain in his personal collection, which is exclusively filled with Cubs-related items, including the custom Beau Thompson Topps Chrome Superfractor 1/1 gifted to him for his millionth card.
He originally began buying pallets as a way to drive his One Million Cubs Project — he believes he has pulled at least 20,000 unique Cubs cards from Goodwill pallets — while also adding inventory for card shows.
But with that project completed, Thompson has greatly slowed the number of Cubs cards he buys, and the sale of the Trout will most likely help fund his card business. Buying a great Cubs card isn’t out of the question, though.
“I won’t say I’m not going to buy a nice Cubs card, because I might,” Thompson said. “But the money isn’t in my account yet — it’s just a card in a top loader right now. Once the money hits my bank account, maybe I’ll sing a different tune."
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.