Mike Trout Is Getting Into the Breaking Business With Gen One
Mike Trout will be ripping packs live on Whatnot and Fanatics Live in December. Trout's Gen One Collect is powering the experience. Wait list is open!
When Mike Trout told Jason Neuman of Sports Illustrated Collectibles that he's starting a card company called Generation One Collect, my first thought was Tom Brady.1 Trout says he wants to be on the breaks himself, ripping wax and packs with his future customers.1 Neuman's interview has Trout's whole collecting story, from flea markets with his parents to pulling his 2009 Bowman 1st with his son Beckham.
Brady has been down this road twice, and so have a handful of other athletes. I went back through recent history to see how each of them did.
Brady did it twice
Brady co-founded Autograph in 2021 to sell NFTs of himself and other stars. It raised a $170 million Series B in January 2022.2 Then the sports NFT market fell apart. Autograph laid off more than 50 people in 2023 and relaunched in September 2024 as a fan rewards app with no NFTs at all. A few months later, Autograph folded and merged its app into a fitness app called Future in January 2025.34
A month after that merger, Brady bought half of CardVault, a chain of card shops that started inside Gillette Stadium.5 CardVault by Tom Brady was up to 17 stores by August 2026. The company says its revenue grew 400 percent over the course of the next 12 months.6 I was in line for the Los Angeles store's opening at Westfield Century City in September.
It's the same guy with the same name on the door, but Autograph asked collectors to buy sports NFTs with rewards and experiences attached, while CardVault sells cardboard to a hobby that was already buying.
Shops or software
The other athletes I researched either opened a shop or built an app. Cooper Flagg opened Flagg Trading Co. on Main Street in Bangor on Sept. 12, and collectors lined up down the block for it.7 The day before, Mo Bamba opened Mo Bamba Cards & Collectibles across from the University of Texas in Austin, with grading, consignment, trade nights and live breaks under one roof.8
Derek Jeter took the app route, co-founding Arena Club with Brian Lee in 2022.9 It raised $20 million that year to grade real cards with computer vision, hold them in a vault and sell them in digital packs.10 It has since signed multi-year deals with the Spurs, Eagles and 76ers and run a promotion with the Jaguars.11
Cardboard or something new
| Athlete | Business | What it sold | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Brady | Autograph, 2021 | NFTs | It dropped NFTs in 2024 and merged into a fitness app in 2025. |
| Shaquille O'Neal | Astrals, 2021 | NFTs | It paid $11 million to settle its buyers' lawsuit in 2024. |
| Tom Brady | CardVault, 2025 | Card shop | It grew from 3 stores to 17 by August 2026. |
| Derek Jeter | Arena Club, 2022 | Packs | It has signed the Spurs, Eagles and 76ers as of October 2026. |
| Cooper Flagg | Flagg Trading Co., 2026 | Card shop | It opened Sept. 12, 2026. |
| Mo Bamba | Mo Bamba Cards & Collectibles, 2026 | Card shop | It opened Sept. 11, 2026. |
Every athlete I looked at who sold real cardboard, or built something that sells the underlying card, is still open and growing. Every one who sold a brand-new kind of collectible ended up in a pivot or a settlement, like the $11 million Shaq's Astrals NFT project paid to settle its buyers' lawsuit in 2024,12 or Cristiano Ronaldo, whose NFT promotions with Binance got him sued in a Florida class action seeking more than $1 billion. In May 2024 a judge denied his motion to dismiss and paused the case.13
Where Gen One lands
Gen One could go either way and it depends on the direction it goes after launch. The timing is right, the card market is booming, and there are more people entering the hobby every day. If Gen One is going head to head with Whatnot, that's a tough fight. Every serious breaker is already established and there must be real incentive (e.g., lots of money) to switch platforms and offset the risk. It didn't work for Microsoft's Mixer when it paid Ninja and Shroud to leave Twitch in 2019. Mixer shut down in July 2020, and both of them went straight back to Twitch.14 Facebook Gaming paid Disguised Toast what he said was about 30 times Twitch's offer. He was back on Twitch two years later.15
If it's Whatnot with athlete promos, that sounds a lot more like Autograph to me. And we know how that turned out.
But if Gen One comes up with a new way to break, or rewards big enough to make its breaks the obvious place to buy a spot, collectors will flock to it. Jeter's Arena Club is already chasing the rewards idea, hiding 40 Golden Slabs in its packs from September through December.16 Ripmart, the live-shopping app that signed up collectors at New York Comic Con last week, is betting on instant buybacks for the same reason.
What I'll be watching in December
- Who's on camera. Trout told SI he wants to be on the breaks and in the chat.1 I'll be counting how many of the first shows he's actually on.
- Spot prices. I'll compare Gen One's spots with other breakers running the same product the same week.
- Anything new. I'll be looking for a break format or a reward I can't already get on Whatnot.
- Second-week buyers. I'll be checking whether the second week's breaks still sell out their spots, because launch week will be busy on Trout's name alone.
Notes
- Jason Neuman, "From the Diamond to the Hobby: Mike Trout Introduces Gen One Collect," Sports Illustrated Collectibles, Oct. 11, 2026. ↩
- Ledger Insights, on Autograph's $170 million round, Jan. 20, 2022. ↩
- Sportico, on Autograph's relaunch without NFTs, 2024. ↩
- TechCrunch, on Autograph's merger with Future, Jan. 23, 2025. ↩
- Front Office Sports, interview on CardVault by Tom Brady, Aug. 6, 2026. ↩
- Heavy, on CardVault's new investors and 17 locations, Aug. 13, 2026. The 400 percent figure is CardVault's own. ↩
- Bangor Daily News, on Flagg Trading Co., Sept. 11, 2026. ↩
- CultureMap Austin, on Mo Bamba Cards & Collectibles, Sept. 8, 2026. ↩
- TechCrunch, on Brian Lee and Derek Jeter's Arena Club, Sept. 8, 2022. ↩
- dot.LA, on Arena Club's Series A, Dec. 7, 2022. ↩
- Heavy, on the 76ers partnership and Arena Club's other team deals, Oct. 7, 2026. ↩
- Decrypt, on Shaq's $11 million Astrals settlement, Nov. 19, 2024. ↩
- Finance Magnates, on the ruling in the Ronaldo Binance class action, May 8, 2024. ↩
- PC Gamer, on Mixer shutting down and moving its partners to Facebook Gaming, June 2020. ↩
- Inven Global, on Disguised Toast's return to Twitch after two years, Nov. 2021. ↩
- Arena Club via PR Newswire, on The Chase and its 40 Golden Slabs, Aug. 6, 2026. ↩