Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout recently pulled his own rookie autograph — and one of his best overall cards — while opening packs with his son.
In a video posted to Instagram on Thursday, Troust sat at a table with his 4-year-old son, Beckham, opening boxes of 2009 Bowman Draft.
“We need a big Trout card,” he said as he started to open packs.
The video cuts through a number of packs, and as Trout works toward the hit, he pauses before revealing his own 2009 Bowman autograph.
“No way, dude,” Trout says. “No way. No way. Oh my gosh, dude. Let’s go. Bro, we just pulled it. We just pulled a monster. Let’s go baby.”
A known card collector, Trout celebrated, well aware they had pulled one of the most important baseball cards of the modern era.
Currently out for the rest of the 2024 season with a torn meniscus, the three-time MVP has been one of the most important athletes in the hobby since exploding into the league as the Rookie of the Year and MVP runner-up in 2012.
Without a large portfolio of cards to chase, the key rookies for Trout have long been his 2011 Topps Update Base and a number of Bowman prospect cards, including 2009 Bowman autographs.
Despite injuries stalling what many have expected to be a first-ballot Hall-of-Fame career and the memorabilia market that follows — Card Ladder’s Trout Index is down 40% over the last year — Trout cards are still responsible for extremely high prices.
A PSA 10 example of the card Trout pulled sold for $8,540 at Goldin in June, while the record for any Trout card is the 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractor Auto 1/1 BGS 9/10, which sold for $3.84 million in 2020.
Recent sales of his 2011 Topps Update Base PSA 10 have averaged between $850 and $900, though the card sold for as much as $9,300 at the height of the market in 2020.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.