Chargers great Junior Seau dead at age 43
By Chris Olds | Beckett Sports Card Monthly Editor
Junior Seau, a bruising linebacker for the San Diego Chargers throughout the 1990s, was found dead in his Oceanside, Calif., home on Wednesday, according to a report by TMZ.com. He was 43.
A fan favorite of many in Southern California after he was a first-round pick out of USC in the 1990 NFL Draft, Seau was a 12-time Pro Bowl selection and a member of the NFL’s All-Decade Team for the 1990s. He was a member of the Chargers Hall of Fame, and, in 2009, he was named to the franchise’s 50th Anniversary Team. Seau played in two Super Bowls — once with the Chargers in 1994 and the New England Patriots in 2007 before he retired in 2009.
In all, Seau appears on 2,308 different cards in the Beckett.com database, cards valued at a total of more than $19,000 before the news. (Need a Seau checklist or OPG? Click here.) He appears on six Rookie Cards from 1990 and was a tough signer for card companies as he appears on only 86 different certified autographs.
Seau’s most valuable Rookie Card is in 1990 Fleer Update, an RC that typically sells for $5 or less, while most of his other RCs (Topps, Pro Set, Score, etc.) made in an era of overproduction typically sell for $1.25 or less.
Seau’s first autographed card appeared in the landmark 1991 Pro Line Portraits Autographs set, while his most-recently released signatures can be found in a few 2011 sets — most notably 2011 National Treasures, which included five different signed cards.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
