Ruth. Gehrig. Mantle. DiMaggio. Costanza?
Against all odds, George Louis Costanza has become one of the most famous members of the New York Yankees organization. The real-life Yankees even gave away George bobbleheads at a game earlier this year. And a wax sculpture of George currently sits in Cooperstown — well, a museum in Cooperstown. The Heroes of Baseball Wax Museum features a replica of George being aggressively talked at by a George Steinbrenner dummy.
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Naturally, George also has his own baseball card. One Seinfeld fan was able to score a Costanza rookie card for a measly $10, and recently posted pictures of their find on the “Genius Seinfeld Quotes” Facebook page.
So how much is it worth? While Babe Ruth’s rookie card sold for $7.2 million, unfortunately George’s rookie card value isn’t quite that high.
For starters, it’s not an official baseball card. While the professional baseball world may have embraced George in recent years, that wasn’t always the case. And there definitely wouldn’t have been a Costanza card in 1993 when the Donruss ‘93 set (which this card is patterned off of) was released. In fact, George didn’t land his job with the Yankees until the following year, in the fifth season finale “The Opposite,” which aired on May 19, 1994.
The same card, seemingly produced by “Custom Card Inc.,” can be found on eBay for as low as $4.99. And there are tons of other custom-made George Costanza baseball cards for sale all over the internet.. These cards are apparently somewhat valuable when they’ve been autographed by actor Jason Alexander. One signed faux ‘90s Topps card is currently listed on eBay with a starting bid of $900. (As of this writing, there have been zero bids.)
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As far as I can tell, there have only been two officially-licensed George Costanza-themed baseball cards. In 2019, Seinfeld cards, including one featuring George, were given away at a game hosted, not by the Yankees, but by the New York Mets, which just feels wrong. A signed copy of this card is currently available for $950.
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But most importantly, in 2003, Upper Deck produced a set called the “Yankees Signature Series” featuring autographed cards of notable “Yankee greats” including Paul O’Neill and Wade Boggs. One of the cards depicted “Jason Alexander,” but it was limited to “just 50 copies,” thus making it the rarest and most valuable card in the entire set.
The only known public sale of this card was in 2018, and it went for a whopping $1,525. According to a 2019 Reddit thread, somebody was trying to sell the same card for $8,000 on eBay at the time.
So, if you ever stumble upon a cheap baseball card featuring the Yankees’ one-time assistant to the traveling secretary, it might be worth picking up.
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