Emma Roberts loves the chase. “I’m a treasure hunter at heart,” Roberts said the other day, eying a box of rare baseball cards inside a glass case. “I collect dolls and vintage books. I’m always on the hunt for first editions.” The actress’s latest fixation is sports cards. Until recently, she hadn’t been able to indulge her obsession while at her house in Sag Harbor. “The closest card store used to be in, like, New York City,” she said. “Which sucked, because, when my fiancé and I come out to the Hamptons, we’re always wanting to rip cards, and there’s been nowhere to do it.”
In May, a store called CardVault by Tom Brady opened next to the Brunello Cucinelli boutique in East Hampton. (The local paper described Brady’s appearance at the grand opening as “like the Second Coming.”) Roberts is a regular.
“Oh, hey, Emma,” Blaise Malabre, a twenty-three-year-old CardVault employee with a “MOM” tattoo, said. “What are you looking for today?”
Roberts, who had on a black minidress and gold Celine flats, rattled off a list: “Topps Marvel Chrome and a Garbage Pail Kids Blaster. You can pick which one. And—” she pointed to a case of cards with old-timey graphics—“a Topps Allen & Ginter Hobby Box, please.”
Another clerk disappeared into the back and emerged with a case of Roberts’s requested box, from 2017:“Take your pick.”
“Picking” the box is an essential part of a card nut’s ritual. Collectors can either buy individual cards—and know just what they’re getting—or gamble on sealed packs and boxes. (“Way more fun,” Roberts said.) Some are duds, and some contain rare inserts, autographs, or “chase” cards.
Roberts ran her hand over the sealed boxes. Her fiancé, Cody John, an actor, hovered. “I’ve been letting her pick,” he said. “Emma’s got a hot hand right now.”
“Cody’s ice,” Roberts said, laughing.
“This is the one,” she said, touching a box. “I can feel it.” Malabre rang her up: five hundred and seventy dollars.
Next, the couple brought their new purchases to a back room with gray leather sofas, lined with autographed Tom Brady photos, a private setting for shoppers to “rip” their cards. They tore into their Allen & Ginter.
“What we’re looking for is a hot box,” Roberts explained. That means one in which all the cards are “foils,” premium cards with colorful reflective surfaces—the baseball equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. Roberts had a special card she was hoping to find: Aaron Judge as a rookie.
She ripped opened the first box. Gold foil. Score. “It’s a hot box, people!” she hollered, skipping around the room. “My hands are sweating. I’m gonna cry. What are the chances?” About eight per cent. They went on ripping. “You guys! This can’t be real. It’s Aaron Judge!”
John Googled how much the card is worth: five hundred dollars.“We’ll just about break even!” he said.
They kept going. Some cards feature nonathletes (William Shatner or Sarah Michelle Gellar) and have no market value, but Roberts doesn’t mind. (“They’re silly, fun, and make great bookmarks.” )
John pulled a Nick Jonas card:“That’s some Big Nick Energy right there.”
Roberts pulled a Jon Lester, then of the Chicago Cubs, which had a sliver of a sports jersey embedded in it. “It’s more valuable if it’s been worn,” she said. “Cody, check.” It hadn’t.
“One time, we got part of Ronald Acuña, Jr.,’s cleat,” she said, wistfully.“It still had mud in it from a game.” She was holding out for a holy grail. “We’re chasing Tom,” she said. She meant a specific Tom Brady fantasy baseball card, released in 2023, showing Brady having been drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1995. It’s inscribed with a note from him: “If baseball doesn’t work out, there’s always football.” A collector has placed a half-million-dollar bounty on the card, but it has yet to surface. So far, Roberts and John have spent ten thousand dollars looking for it. (Each box that may contain one goes for upward of a thousand dollars.)
At their Sag Harbor house, the couple put choice cards on rotation, on a stand. “We have our coffee in the mornings and look at them,” Roberts said. The rest are stored in a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk in the attic.
Some people think ripping cards is just gambling, but Roberts disagrees. “How many times a day are we genuinely surprised anymore?” she asked. “The phone rings, and we know exactly who’s calling. We’re all algorithmed within an inch of our lives. But chasing cards feels genuinely random. And that just feels so rare.”
What happens when the Tom card is finally found? Will the chase end?
“No way,” Roberts said. “We’ll just find the next hunt.” ♦
