ST. PETERS, Mo. — The thrill of opening a pack of sports trading cards is a unique feeling. You never quite know what you may get.
And for 10-year-old soccer fan Jett Meyer, one recent break delivered a memory he'll never forget.
"We were just going for the CITY (SC) cards and didn't think we'd get that Messi," Jett said.
"That Messi" just happened to be one of the rarest and most valuable soccer cards in the world right now. It's a 1/1 Topps superfractor. "1/1" as in it is the only one of its kind.
"I think it's one in 34,000 packs to get a superfractor … I can't really wrap my head around it really. It's kind of like winning the Lotto," Jett's dad, Brad said.
Jett and Brad have bonded over dad's passed-down love of cards and picked up a case of the new Topps MLS release as soon as they arrived at RestlessCraft card shop in St. Peters.
"On release day? It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of a thing," RestlessCraft co-owner Dune Trull said. "When you talk about a hit of that magnitude, you just never think it's going to come through your shop."
"I just kind of froze, you know? Because this is so crazy. The very first case we open we get a one-of-one Messi," Jett said. "We started researching it afterwards, and it said just a 1/1 on its own is like one in 34,000 packs. And the first case we ever open … we got the Messi."
Jett and his family will have no shortage of bidders for the rare find. So far, they've gotten some offers approaching $30,000.
"It has been really crazy because I've been telling my friends I got one of the rarest cards in probably the world out of just our first case, and they all thought it was really cool," Jett said. "And I've been ecstatic about the offers we've gotten for this card. I think the highest offer has been like $27,000 … That's a lot of money."
And don't worry. Jett has a plan for at least some of that money once they decide to sell.
"We think we're going to sell this one … see how much we get," he said. "Some of it will go to my college fund, so that will be nice.".
And while the money will be nice, the memory created for the Meyer family will be something that's just as valuable.
"Money talks, but at the same time it was a great memory with my son. So I have that memory, too," Brad said.
"To have him and Brad sit down together, open the case together and for that card to jump out of that case … you couldn't write a better script than that," Trull said.
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