2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket Tom Brady RC AUTO /100 #144 BGS 9

Thomas is a touted quarterback from Serra High School, but he has also received tremendous attention from Major League Baseball scouts and thinks he may get drafted this summer. He loves catching, but he can sense he has the anthropological makeup of a quarterback. With interest from Cal, UCLA, Illinois, Michigan, and more, it would be hard to pass up the Division I football life—even for the thrill of becoming a professional athlete. If you decide to take on the challenge of college football, go to Michigan. If you decide to take on the challenge of minor-league baseball, go to Montreal. That may be how Tom Brady would have started the “Future Endeavors of Tom Terrific” story had he stylized his early life after one of Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery’s Choose Your Own Adventure books. The popular series of juvenile fiction, which allowed readers to make their own choices to transform the story as they read by picking between decisions at the end of certain pages, boomed during Brady’s formative years in the 1980s, and with more than 270 million (and counting) books sold, it is the fourth-best-selling children’s series of all-time. Last season, Brady won his 270th career NFL game (including playoffs)—an accomplishment of similar magnitude, considering Peyton Manning is second on the list with an even 200. If there was ever an NFL player who chose his own adventure, it is Brady—starting with a college choice most California-cool QBs would have never considered. “It’s going to be tough, a Western boy going back to the Midwest, but I think I can do it,” Brady said after committing to Michigan. “I sort of wanted to be away from home, on my own.” After battling the likes of Brian Griese and Drew Henson for playing time with the Wolverines, Brady was plucked out of the doldrums by Bill Belichick and the Patriots with the 199th overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft—taking his talents from coast to coast. With that low draft status came fewer flashy photo shoots, fewer prickly interview questions, and fewer hand cramps from signing rookie cards. Brady only appeared in 11 mainstream autograph sets in 2000, while fellow quarterback Chad Pennington, who was taken in the first round, has a portfolio of rookie autos that is fivefold in size. Only four of Brady’s rookie autos picture him in a Patriots uniform, including the 2000 Playoff Contenders Championship Ticket /100 Rookie Auto. The ticker tape will be falling as the crème de la crème of modern football cards parades its way through this month’s Premier Auction. Only seven of these cards have come away from a Beckett assessment with a BGS 9 distinction, and none have ever received a higher designation. In New England, Brady was essentially an afterthought behind Drew Bledsoe, but a mid-game injury to the $100 million starter in 2001 afforded Brady an opportunity to shine. “I don’t think we’re talking about John Elway here,” Belichick said after Brady’s relief appearance, “but I don’t know how many of those there are.” Brady would have been too focused on the highest-leverage opportunity of his career to think about adding to his adventure book, but just imagine the choices he could have presented himself with the goal of proving Belichick’s comparison wrong. To play in your first Super Bowl, skip to February 2002. To surpass John Elway in Super Bowl titles, skip to February 2005. To surpass John Elway in career touchdowns, skip to September 2012. To surpass John Elway in career passing yards, skip to November 2014. To engineer the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, skip to February 2017. To win a Super Bowl with a different team, skip to February 2021. To take the field and win as a 45-year-old, skip to September 2022. “Much of the success I’ve been lucky enough to have in my career I owe to a lifelong ‘will-over-skill’ mindset,” Brady once said. “Because I found that challenges bring out the best in me, today I think back on them as gifts.” Brady’s intrepid career has been the gift that keeps on giving to football fans—much like how the Choose Your Own Adventure books kept giving back to their readers (some stories had more than 40 possible narratives). The original series was discontinued one year before Brady broke into the NFL, but Brady, like the books, has withstood the test of time, remaining relevant in an ever-changing landscape that always has something newer and flashier vying for people’s attention. The same can be said for Brady’s Championship Ticket Rookie Auto—there may not be a patch or embedded gems or a troy ounce of precious metal, but a hint of reflective rainbow foil and a perfect autograph is all the card needs for one collector to write the shortest Choose Your Own Adventure story of them all: To add the unmistakable pinnacle of Brady’s card catalog to your collection, skip to October’s Premier Auction.