The mystery surrounding the buyer of the world’s most expensive sports card was lifted Monday morning when Kevin O’Leary, best known as “Mr. Wonderful” on Shark Tank, confirmed that he and two business partners purchased the 2007–08 Michael Jordan–Kobe Bryant Logoman card for an astonishing $12.932 million. The historic transaction took place early Sunday at Heritage Auctions, shattering records and cementing the card’s place as the crown jewel of modern sports collectibles.
Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box, O’Leary revealed that he teamed up with Paul Warshaw, CEO of Bottom Line Concepts, and Matt Allen, better known in the collectibles industry as “Shyne,” to win the one-of-a-kind card. “We bought it together,” O’Leary said. “Yes, we did, and I’m very proud to own it. I’ve been looking at this asset class now for three years. It’s an extraordinary return.”
The Logoman card, which features game-worn jersey patches from both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, instantly surpassed longstanding icons such as the T206 Honus Wagner and the 1952 Mickey Mantle as the most valuable card ever sold at auction. Its record-setting price has sent shockwaves through both the sports memorabilia industry and the wider world of alternative investing. O’Leary himself likened the purchase to fine art, tweeting a comparison to Andy Warhol and telling CNBC, “The majority of capital gains accrue to the rarest Pollocks or Warhols. You wait a decade, look at them again, and the value is extraordinary. It’s a very thin market, but as an alternative asset class, I’m all in.”
The purchase was the culmination of a long night of bidding across multiple time zones. O’Leary stayed up in New York, Warshaw was in Miami, and Allen participated from Spain — all determined to secure the card at any cost. Although O’Leary is a partner in a collectibles fund called Secure Collectibles, he made it clear this was not a short-term investment. “I don’t think this piece will come to market again during my lifetime,” he said. “It’s going to be part of an index I’m going to continue to grow with my partners. We look at it no different than our Bitcoin, Ethereum, or gold holdings. For me, this is going to be a 5% weighting into my portfolio, maybe more. But it’s a lot more fun.”
O’Leary credited Warshaw with convincing him to take collectibles seriously as an asset class three years ago. At first skeptical — “I thought it was nuts. Why would anybody pay a million bucks for a piece of cardboard?” — O’Leary said he became persuaded after analyzing the numbers and tracking the performance of rare sports cards. “He said, ‘You don’t get it.’ And over time, I realized he was right,” O’Leary admitted.
Not everyone has been fully on board, however. O’Leary joked that his wife was less than enthusiastic about the record-breaking purchase. “My wife thinks I’m nuts,” he said. “She just went to bed saying, ‘This is too crazy.’ Then I woke her up the next morning and said, ‘We own the card.’”
The Jordan-Kobe Logoman now stands as not only a record-breaking collectible but also a cultural artifact linking two of basketball’s greatest icons. For O’Leary and his partners, it represents both an investment and a passion project. “The people I’m meeting in the hobby are truly crazy,” O’Leary said with a smile. “But this is one asset class where being crazy seems to pay off.”
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