Pittsburgh Pirates phenom Paul Skenes recently gifted girlfriend and LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne a custom trading card featuring their dog, Roux, for her birthday earlier this week.
The front of the card shows Dunne holding Roux with the caption “Happy Birthday Liv!” at the bottom. The back of the card, which is modeled after a Topps card, also features the typical stats and biography.
Listed as an English Retriever, Roux’s career stats include her favorite activity (chewing on sticks), favorite food (steak) and favorite human (Liv).
Dunne shared photos of the card on social media this week with a simple caption of “ELITE GIFT.”
According to Dunne, the couple adopted Roux in October 2023 with the hopes she would distract them from their careers.
“She has been such a blessing in our lives. Paul wanted Roux at first to keep him company during spring training, but I ended up taking her because I wanted her all to myself,” Dunne told Country Living Magazine in July.
“So she’s stayed with me in Louisiana, and we just decided we wanted something that was a distraction outside of our sport. Something that didn’t care how good we did in the gym or how fast we threw the ball."
Currently the favorite to win Rookie of the Year in the National League, Skenes has been a huge draw for card collectors since making his debut — despite the fact hobbyists have long preferred position players over pitchers.
Possibly his best card created to date, Skenes’ 2023 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Autographs Superfractor 1/1 recently sold at Goldin for $123,220, a record for any Skenes card. That exact card had previously held the mark for any Skenes card after selling for $80,520 at Goldin in June.
While Skenes has seen widespread success with trading card releases from Topps, Dunne has had a number of cards from Leaf sell well on the secondary-market. According to Terapeak, a Leaf dual autograph 1/1 of Dunne and Skenes sold for $1,100 on eBay in August, and another dual autograph of the couple, also a 1/1, sold for $875 in September.
Dunne’s highest-selling solo card is a 2023 Leaf Metal Autograph /3, which sold for $1,000 on eBay in January.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.