Sacramento doesn’t have a pro football team, but you wouldn’t know it by the thousands of enthusiastic fans who showed up to see NFL legend Tom Brady outside the Golden 1 Center Thursday afternoon. The seven-time Super Bowl champion was there to promote his collecting and trading card shop, CardVault by Tom Brady, which is located in Downtown Commons.

The mid-afternoon rally drew fans wearing Tom Brady jerseys from his two NFL teams, the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Two men wore plastic goat heads to honor Brady, who’s been dubbed the “greatest of all time” quarterback. Children sat on their father’s shoulders to get a glimpse of the superstar, who threw autographed footballs to the crowd.

“This is the best turnout we’ve had yet,” Brady told the crowd. “And it doesn’t surprise me, back home in the state where I grew up, 90 minutes from San Mateo, to see you guys coming out and showing up. I love you guys so much. When (co-founder) Chris and I talked about where we wanted to start in California, I said it’s got to be Sacramento.”

Nicole Curran of West Sacramento brought her 12-year-old son Cruz, who told Comstock’s that he used $300 in Christmas gift cards to buy cards at the CardVault, including one of his favorite players, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts.

“The Vault is such a great opportunity for Sacramento. It gives kids and young adults and even adults like me to be able to come and have the opportunity to appreciate cards; to appreciate the value of cards. It’s a great learning opportunity for kids to learn how to trade cards. It’s not just Pokémon. It has everything to do with sports memorabilia,” Curran said.

Sacramento is the first California location for CardVault, which has 12 stores so far across the U.S. Co-founder Chris Costa tells Comstock’s that today’s trading cards are very different from the stack of cards that used to come with a stick of gum 50 years ago.

“They’re getting players to start signing cards that get put into packs, and they’re also taking pieces of players’ jerseys and putting them into cards. They’re creating a rarity that had never existed in the generations prior,” Costa said.

The popularity of cards has exploded in recent years, with thousands of new cards bought each day and trading cards for as much as $1 million. The values can increase with age. A 2008 card autographed by Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan sold for nearly $13 million in 2025.

Costa says cards are also part of the collecting trend. Some people may collect expensive watches, purses or wine, but as the popularity of athletes rises, the trading card industry has taken off as well.

“It’s also the growth of sports as part of our culture, right?” he said. “So with the advent of the invention of social media and the position that athletes now have in our society compared to what they had in our society, 10, 15, 30, 50, 100 — how far back you want to go — they are more iconic than they’ve ever been.”

While in the past, trading cards have only been about athletes, they now come in a broad range of categories, from Pokémon to Disney characters to Marvel superheroes and K-pop stars. This has led to the trading world diversifying and attracting more people of all ages, including women.

Costa and mothers like Curran also like that collecting cards teaches children about financial skills. They’ll buy a card and follow along as its value goes up. They’ll invest in others and learn how to buy and trade, similar to trading stocks.

“One of the coolest parts of our space is you can have a kid coming to one of our shops, can spend 20 bucks, and he can leave with the biggest smile he’s had in years. But you can also have somebody come in and pull out a briefcase and put five cards on the table that they’ve been holding for 10 years that are worth a million dollars and everything in between. And I think that’s what makes our industry so unique and so special,” Costa said.

As for Brady, Costa says he was able to get his endorsement for the business because Tom has always been an avid collector and sees the potential of where the industry is going. Costa and his co-founders started CardVault in 2020, but it became CardVault by Tom Brady in 2025, when the football star acquired a 50 percent ownership stake in the business.

“Today’s turnout was just the craziest turnout we’ve ever had for an event in our company’s history,” Costa said. “It was shocking. We were all blown away. We’re so grateful to run in Sacramento, and it’s such an amazing community, and we already knew that, but today definitely cemented that in all of our minds.”

–

Follow @comstocksmag on Instagram!