Stephen Strasburg SuperFractor Raffle site is live
By Chris Olds | Baseball Editor
The hard part is over with — and now you can have a chance to own one of the most talked-about baseball cards ever made while helping raise money for a charity and some Little League and softball organizations.
The card? The $21,403 Stephen Strasburg SuperFractor from 2010 Bowman.
The benefactors of collector Devin Grant‘s generosity? The Bryan Stow Fund — the San Francisco Giants fan who was nearly beaten to death by two men after a Dodgers game on Opening Day — two California Little League organizations and two softball leagues near where Grant lives.
The website? That’s www.strasburgsuperfractorraffle.org.
The raffle tickets are $10 with a third of the proceeds going to the Stow fund and 30 percent going to the Half Moon Bay Little League, 30 percent to the West Sacramento Little League and five percent each to the Half Moon Bay Softball League and the West Sacramento Softball League.
Grant, who found the card in a pack of Razor Rookie Retro at Peninsula Sports Cards in Belmont, Calif., recently decided that he’d rather have the card do some good than sit in his collection.
“It took about two days to know that this was something bigger than me,” Grant told Beckett Baseball before the site’s launch. “I mean the act of pulling the card was phenomenal, but a card like this has some firepower and I felt that it could be used in a more powerful way.”
The card has, indeed, been a powerful force in the hobby initially selling for $16,403 before the Washington Nationals pitcher made his debut last summer and then re-selling for $21,403. It was sold the second time after its owner, Robert J. Power, received several negative and harassing messages after the publicity about his buying the card. The card was purchased by Leaf’s Brian Gray, who placed it into packs of his repackaged product that launched last year — but the card had never been found until now.
Now, though, the card, which has generated plenty of publicity — and money — on its own, can help generate more and benefit kids and a baseball fan who was the victim of a senseless crime.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
Wasnt’t this card graded by BGS?
I would alomst like to see something like a ticket tracker added to the site. It would be interesting for several reasons. One being that all could witness how much publicity the raffle is getting and the second being that one could weigh their chances of winning. Either way I congratulate Grant’s generosity and find this to be a very fun, creative, and charitable way to move the card.
I do not see anywhere the date of the winning selection
Thanks for your questions guys. Anyone is welcome to email me directly if you have questions. I will updating the website with estimates of tickets sold. We will have a lot of tickets out there trying to be sold so it will take us some time to be completely accurate.
rpc- this card was graded a 9.5 by BGS and is still in its graded case. The pic used was one prior to grading.
Ryan- We will try to update amounts at some point. I can tell you this. I have 25,000 tickets printed and I would be very happy if we could raise over $100,000.
SportsCards- We are looking to end the raffle sometime in late August and will update website about final date.
devin
Those pics on that site are cropped. Compare the pic from link 1 on that page to the one they have pictured. Those are edited to make it look centered better than it really is…
I think it is a great act of kindness!
The site says “Sometime at the end of August”..
Yes it was. In the original story there is a picture that shows both Devin and his godson with the Strasburg card in a BGS holder. I wonder who ever wins the card will have it re graded and if it would receive lower grades than it originally had.
why would you break a bgs 9.5 out of its holder something doesnt seem right about this one
It’s nice to see goodness in the heart of Devin give all the proceeds away to good causes. Pulls like that come once in a lifetime if your lucky.
I’m kind of curious what the legalities of holding a raffle like this are? Doesn’t PayPal hate raffles?
Gambling is regulated at the State level, I think, I could be wrong. Obviously the rules are more lenient when it is for charity, but with this being a nation wide available raffle, i wonder how that works? Also he has advertising on the website for his own business’, and a couple of the charities are very closely related to his own family members (Nephew). I think he is trying to do a good thing here, and it appears perhaps benefit a little himself, which is OK with me, but the whole thing definitley raised some questions in my mind. Looks like Devin is reading this thread, so it would be interesting to hear if a lawyer looked at this whole deal, also any others opinions on this thread about these types of questions.
Good luck hope it generates some revenue for their charities
Why is Beckett supporting an illegal raffle?
From mod: That’s a pretty big word to throw around.