Junior Caminero MLB Debut Patch Sells For $66,000 At Auction
It’s going to be a very happy holiday season for one mystery baseball card collector.
The Junior Caminero 1/1 Topps MLB Debut Patch—pulled on Fanatics Live on Nov. 21, graded a 9 by PSA and then put up for auction immediately on the Fanatics Collect auction site—sold late last night for $66,000 (including the buyer’s premium).
The patch received 60 total bids, many of which came during frenzied final hours that saw the price more than double.
It’s the highest price paid at auction for any Debut Patch since Topps first introduced the concept last year.
The name of the lucky collector who got (and then sold) the Caminero card has not been made public.
The record could be broken whenever the Paul Skenes Debut Patch finally surfaces, depending on what the lucky collector decides to do with it. As of press time, the Skenes patch still has not surfaced, at least publicly, despite more than two-thirds of Debut Patches having already been pulled.
The highest-profile Rookie Debut patch that has been knowingly pulled so far is that of Elly De La Cruz, which graded a perfect PSA 10. It is not know yet what that lucky collector plans to do with the card longterm.
The highest price paid for any Debut Patch so far is the $150,000 bounty paid by online retailer Dave & Adam’s Collectibles for the Anthony Volpe patch last year (Volpe was the biggest name with a Debut Patch the first year of the product).
If it goes to auction whenever it’s pulled, various experts say the Skenes patch could get five to 10 times the $66,000 that Caminero’s patch fetched. Or whoever pulls the card could take the Pirates’ massive offer of 30 years of season tickets and many exclusive Pirates experiences, including meeting Skenes himself.
Other Rookie Debut patches that could earn large amounts at auction include those of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga, due to the added international interest in those cards, especially Imanaga’s, which he signed with his Kanji signature. Neither of those patches have publicly surfaced yet either.
