Kentucky fan gets big payoff from rare Duke card. Here’s what he did with it.
A University of Kentucky basketball devotee who lives in North Carolina made an extraordinary find last month, and he followed it with a grand gesture.
Jimmy Mahan, who attended Henry Clay High School and UK in Lexington, is a basketball card collector with the appropriate Twitter name of @KentuckyCards. He knew the significance last month when he found a card featuring two former Duke stars — R.J. Barrett and Zion Williamson. The rookie card featured the autographs of both players and was 1/1 — meaning it was the only one that exists.
Opening a box of Panini Prizm Draft Picks basketball trading cards live on YouTube, his expression immediately shifted when he saw the autographed card. He told ABC 11 he felt like an 8-year-old on Christmas morning.
A box of the Panini Prizm cards retails at about $275, and the card featuring Barrett and Williamson would be worth thousands.
He wrote in his eBay listing that he flew to Dallas, where he had the card graded by Beckett, a sports card pricing company. It was graded at 9.5/10, a near-perfect rating.
Mahan — who makes a living as a basketball card collector, according to his LinkedIn page —would typically sell a card of this type for a large profit. But he said, “it just seemed like there was a better option.”
When he put the card up for auction on eBay, he said 100 percent of the proceeds would go to The Crossnore School, a North Carolina children’s home where he and his wife worked for four years.
“The strength and determination of the children and the employees there remain a wealth of inspiration in our lives,” he said. “We both work elsewhere now, but Crossnore is never far from our heart. And when we weighed the idea of more ‘stuff’ for us, or a few more Kentucky collectibles for my Man Cave, the decision to change paths was easy.”
And besides, “I saw enough of (Williamson and Barrett) after they beat us by 1,000 last year!” he wrote on Twitter, remarking on Duke’s season-opening 118-84 win over Kentucky last year.
The card received 61 bids, and the winning bid netted $15,200.79. He told Beckett.com that $15,000 could fund three children for a year and change their lives.
“I love Zion and I love basketball and I love Kentucky, that’s great,” Mahan told ABC 11. “But this can help and immediately change a kid’s life. That’s way more important.”
Mahan has received praise from the basketball card collecting community following his generous donation. Beckett wrote that “it’s impossible to not love this story.”
The Sports Card Nation Podcast wrote on Twitter that “you will never meet a more down to earth decent human being” than Mahan.
“He’s been doing incredible things for quite some time & we can all take a page from his book!” the podcast host said.
This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 10:29 AM.