What happens when you pull Jayden Daniels’ biggest rookie card: Navigating bounties and freak outs

The screen name “Dr. Moist Muffins” regularly appears within the live-stream chats for the Rochester, N.Y. based sports card retailer WeTheHobby. “Moisty” could be buying cards or simply conversing with someone opening the boxes or fellow watchers of the shop’s Fanatics Live stream.

WeTheHobby’s Joey Carrion guided a relatively minor 2024 Panini Prizm football box break — where large quantities of cards are opened and customers buy the rights to every card of a certain player or team that’s pulled — on New Year’s Day. Not too many watchers bought into the live team auction on the groggy Jan. 1 midday break, but one who did was “Moisty.”

He didn’t have much competition at the onset, allowing him to land the Washington Commanders at random with the spin of a wheel and secure the set’s most coveted team for only $36. Why are the Commanders of particular interest to football card collectors right now? All because of quarterback Jayden Daniels, this year’s biggest rookie card chase.

After buying a few teams, Dr. Moist Muffins turned back into the real life Dr. Ojash Raval from Des Moines, Iowa. Raval was entertaining his visiting mother and brother that morning while keeping one eye on his laptop to watch which cards might fall into Moisty’s lap.

“So as I’m watching this thing, I’m just talking to my mom or my brother and just hanging out and then actually I ended up taking a phone call. I was on the phone with a friend and watching the stream on the phone,” Raval said. “I can’t hear the stream at that point. I can only watch it.

“And I see Joey just looking a little funky. He’s like, kind of rubbing his fingers like something’s going on. I look at this card and I’m like, ‘oh, it looks like it’s black and it’s a Washington rookie.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s probably the other guy.’”

The “other guy” being Commanders rookie defensive tackle Jer’Zhan Newton, who also has a card in the Prizm set.

Carrion thought the same thing within the moment.

“You see that like the way that I was doing it, I wanted to sweat it because there’s another Commanders rookie that starts with a ‘J,’” Carrion said. “Then I was going from the left to the right (with the top card covering the Commanders player).”

Then Carrion dropped a euphoric boom within the sports card community.

“JAYDEN DANIELS! BLACK FINITE! ONE OF ONE! THAT IS A FREAKING NUKE!” Carrion screamed after pulling away a Justin Jefferson card, which was used as a curtain to tease the reveal.

It was the Daniels one-of-a-kind rookie card, one of the most sought after rookie cards of any set of any product released in the past 12 months.

“You can’t really hear it because it was way too exciting, but I’m like, ‘Give me a sleeve! Give me a sleeve! Sleeve it right now!’” Carrion said, referencing the protective plastic sheaths that trading cards are put into. “That was the first thing I was thinking because I needed to get that card out of my hands because I’m starting to shake now. Your heart is racing and your hands are starting to shake and you have to protect the card all at the same time.”

Meanwhile, across the Internet at Raval’s residence…

“I didn’t know about the degree of what I fell upon there,” Raval said. “As he reveals the card and has a moment, I had to get off the phone. I had to go and figure out what’s happening here. And so it’s tough because you want to talk to everybody in the room, but you’re just texting on an app while everybody’s freaking out.”

The Jan. 1 skeleton WeTheHobby crew crashed into the room to celebrate the monster Daniels hit. And then someone in the room announced that there was an open $200,000 bounty to purchase the card from whoever landed it. Bounties have become increasingly common in the trading card world as wealthy collectors, businesses and even Major League Baseball teams put their best offer for the hobby’s rarest cards out into the world before they’re released, in the hopes that whoever finds those cards will deal directly with them rather than sell at auction or keep their find to themselves.

“I think within 30 seconds they had two people that were very interested in the card already in the chat for WeTheHobby that weren’t originally watching the break,” Raval said.

Neither of them were the person who issued the bounty, which came from Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, husband of all-time tennis great Serena Williams and a lifelong Commanders fan, less than a week before Carrion pulled the card.

“I didn’t even know there was a bounty on the card,” Raval said. “I was just living life doing regular stuff on New Year’s Day.”

Later came a text to Raval from Justin Stenglein, WeTheHobby’s director of on-air operations: “Hey, uh, do you want to come up with a plan for this card?”

Determining the value of a card like the Daniels Black Finite or the 2024 Topps Chrome Update Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch autographed card is difficult since a person is selling hype as much as the scarcity of the card.

How do you know you’re maximizing the value of the card? That’s the sweat. That’s the gamble.

That’s part of why accepting a bounty offer for a card might seem like the way to go. Some of the more notable bounties of late include:

• Ohanian’s $200,000 offer on the Daniels card in late December.
• The Pittsburgh Pirates’ multi-layered package for the Skenes card, which included two season tickets behind home plate for 30 years. Livvy Dunne, Skenes’ girlfriend and gymnast/social influencer, added tickets to a suite with her for a Pirates game to the team’s offer.
• Dave & Adam’s $1 million offer on a 2023-24 Upper Deck Series 2 Connor Bedard Young Guns Outburst Gold one-of-one rookie insert card (which was abruptly rescinded after less than a year of going unclaimed).
• Chicago hobby shop Mint Memorabilia put out a $25,000 bounty on a Caleb Williams autographed Topps card inscribed with “Green Bay sucks,” which caught the Bears quarterback’s eye.

Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan, who oversees Topps, said he’s all for a public bounty.

“If you want this card and you have all the money in the world, you’re not entitled to the card,” Mahan said. Fortunately, in the world of social media, there is a megaphone to say, ‘Hey, I want this card and I’m willing to pay for it.’ And it’s been effective for people. A lot of people get the cards that they want that way. … I think it’s just a reflection of the interest, it’s a reflection of the value, and it’s a consequence of the pack-pull business model that you’re smart if you let people know, ‘Hey, I want this,’ and then people come to you and you can engage in a conversation.”

Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions for Heritage Auctions, said for a card worth as much as the Skenes MLB Debut Patch card, limiting yourself to one person publicly offering a bounty wouldn’t be the recommended route for a seller.

“Nine times out of 10, auction is going to yield them the best results,” Ivy said. “Because you’ve got to think of it, if one person reaches out to them and they’re willing to pay that number, there are probably several dozens of other people in the world out there willing to pay that number, if not more. So an auction is the fairest way for them to bid against each other and find out what the true market value is for a piece like that.”

That may be a predictable reaction from someone like Ivy, who operates an auction house, but he said he’s admitted to potential clients to run to an offer, though, instead of selling the item at auction if the offer exceeds his expectations.

As for Raval, the questions compounded quickly. Who are these people reaching out? Does he have to fly to pick up the card because neither he nor WeTheHobby trusted the card in the mail? How would he receive the payment for the card?

The speed and intensity of the whole process overwhelmed Raval.

“I was trying to be pretty anonymous about it and just stay out of the way,” Raval said. “I just shut my phone for the first hour because I was tired of fielding messages, and so I was just on my own. And then Justin eventually texted me saying, ‘I’m getting way too many messages right now.’ Immediately they had messages on top of messages of what was happening with this card.”

Raval said WeTheHobby helped him field five legitimate offers, including the bounty offer from Ohanian. WeTheHobby kept the card in the shop’s vault to avoid any shipping hiccups, meaning Raval never had the high-value card in his possession despite owning it.

Ohanian basically set the starting price for the card because of his public offer.

“(WeTheHobby) kept me one degree away from pretty much everybody, per my request,” Raval said. “I was just like, ‘Justin (Stenglein), I’d love to have some guidance on this. I’m not looking to have a full blown bidding war.’ But whoever comes to you at the highest price and is legitimate and then we can do wire transfers with, that would be a done deal. Perfect. So he (Stenglein) did his magic in the background and called me one day and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a person at this price. Does it work for you?’

“I had said, ‘Hey, if anybody can get to this number, then they consider the card sold to that person.’ And so somebody got to that number and that card was sold that day.”

Raval did not reveal who bought the card, nor did he reveal the final price tag. But he said the card sold for more than the initial $200,000 bounty price tag and within five days from card pull to sale. Raval added that Ohanian finished within the top three suitors, but didn’t come away with the card. Stenglein said a WeTheHobby representative flew down to Florida with the card to hand deliver it to the new owner shortly after the sale.

Ohanian announced in mid-January that he purchased a 2024 Panini Absolute Jayden Daniels Kaboom Green vertical one-of-one insert card with a PSA 9 grade after losing out on the Daniels Black Finite chase — a rare and valuable card, but one not regarded quite as highly as the Prizm Black Finite among collectors.

Even though he didn’t take the offer, the bounty seemed to pay off for Raval as it set a market for the card.

GO DEEPER

Exclusive: Hear from the family that found the Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch card

The same could be the case for the 11-year-old boy who hit the Skenes MLB Debut Patch card and elected to pass on the Pirates’ offer. That card goes to auction with Fanatics Collect next month.

Regardless of the latest bounty outcomes, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin assumes the practice will only continue given their popularity within the hobby and increasing value on unique cards. And he’s all for it.

“I think a lot of people are smart putting bounties up where they think something has worth to them,” Rubin said. “I do it in business all the time, I’ll pay this for that. I mean, it’s a pretty logical thought.”

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(Top photo: WeTheHobby)