‘Vegas Dave’ Mike Trout card fetches record $3.9M at auction
A rare Mike Trout baseball card reportedly owned by Las Vegas sports gambling consultant Dave Oancea sold for nearly $4 million at auction Saturday night, breaking the previous record of $3.12 million paid for a Honus Wagner tobacco card in 2016.
Oancea, often referred to as “Vegas Dave,” told the Review-Journal he paid $400,000 in 2018 for a rookie card of the Angels’ superstar outfielder, a one-of-a-kind 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractor.
The card was sold at Goldin Auctions in Texas. The identity of the purchaser was not disclosed.
“Everybody laughed at me and said I was stupid for (buying) a piece of cardboard,” Oancea told the RJ this month. “I made a video when I bought it, saying that this would be the most expensive card in the world, that it would break the record, that it would hit 4 or 5 million one day.”
He was almost right. The sale price of the card was $3.936 million.
“Are you serious? Wow,” Angels manager Joe Maddon told the Los Angles Times before Sunday’s game in Oakland. “I’m into art. That puts him right up there with, what did the ‘Mona Lisa’ sell for? What does anything by da Vinci sell for? That’s pretty phenomenal. It’s absolutely astounding.”
Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.