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Banking on the local guy
Rare Tyler Soderstrom baseball card sells for $8.5K
Tyler Soderstrom card
This Tyler Soderstrom 1st Bowman Chrome Autograph in the red parallel numbered to just 5 in near perfect condition sold for $8,500. It marks the most expensive sale of any card of the Turlock native (Photo contributed).

They say that an item is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Well, one person just set the standard as far as the Tyler Soderstrom memorabilia and collectibles market goes.

On March 5, an individual on eBay bought a Soderstrom autographed baseball card for a whopping $8,500 plus taxes and shipping, marking it the most expensive card of Soderstrom’s to ever sell.

But what makes this particular card of the Turlock native and Turlock High alumnus so special? Rarity.

The card is from the 2020 Bowman Draft set. For those unfamiliar with the set, Bowman is a brand from Topps that focusses heavily on minor leaguers and baseball’s top prospects. That being said, some of the most sought-after cards of any baseball star or top prospect are their first Bowman cards, especially autographs in different colored parallels.

The $8,500 card that sold is exactly that – Soderstrom’s first ever Bowman autograph in the red refractor parallel, numbered to just 5. That’s right, only five in existence.

According to CardboardConnection.com, there are 1 in 10,640 odds of pulling a red autograph of any kind from the 2020 Bowman Draft set. The odds of pulling a player’s first Bowman in a red parallel is even higher, and pulling a player as highly touted as Soderstrom is another level of lucky, as the Oakland Athletics draft pick in 2020 is one of the top prospects in all of baseball (ranked #39 by MLB Pipeline).

Not only did the rarity play a factor in the sale, but so did the condition. The same red parallel autograph has sold one other time in the past, in June 2021 for $3,206.75 on MySlabs.com, an online marketplace for graded sports cards. That particular card, which was numbered 4 out of 5, was a PSA 9. As for the card that sold last week, it was numbered 2 out of 5 and was graded a 9.5 by Beckett.

At the time of this publication, there is just one other red parallel autograph on the market, this one numbered 1 out of 5, and it’s graded in perfect PSA 10 condition. The asking price on eBay is $27,000.

It is yet to be determined whether cards 3 and 5 out of 5 have been found. Additionally, Soderstrom’s one-of-a-kind gold superfractor has never hit the market since the cards came out three years ago. These cards could either still be in packs waiting to be pulled, lost in a child’s backpack or being quietly stashed by a collector or investor waiting for the perfect time to sell. In case you want to test your luck at finding them, the cheapest sealed box of 2020 Bowman Draft is listed for $729.99 on eBay.

The buyer of the $8,500 card is not public. Regardless, it’s safe to say they’re either a Tyler Soderstrom mega fan or are big believers that the Turlock native can make them some bigger bucks in the future.