Let's do something silly

News

By Resell Calendar

05 September 2025

About 2 and a half years ago I wrote a fairly popular article about what I thought was one of the best long-term rookie card plays of all time.

The player’s name is Ben Johns.

And you probably haven’t heard the name because he isn’t a basketball or NFL player. He’s not a soccer star. He isn’t even a golfer.

Ben Johns is known for being the #1 Pickleball player in the world.

Yeah yeah, I get it. But go give the article a read, and you’ll get one concrete conclusion:
Ben Johns’ 2023 Leaf Card is Pickleball’s equivalent of a Jordan/Tiger Woods/Tom Brady rookie card.

Whether or not Pickleball cards will ever catch on to the degree of collectability that other sports cards garner is up in the air for sure, but there’s no denying the sports’ meteoric ongoing growth.

Anyways – this article isn’t about why I think the card undervalued. It’s about what I’m going to do about it.

$PICKLEVAULT. 

A token backed by grail Pickleball cards.

Over the past few years, I have spent thousands of my own money acquiring the aforementioned Ben Johns rookie cards.

I have… a lot. Yeah, probably got a little overzealous.So, here’s what I’m going to do with them: 520 Ben Johns Rookie cards are going in the Picklevault.

The total print run is 3,935 and the total PSA population is 662. By starting with 520 cards, Picklevault will have a ludicrous amount of supply control right off the bat.

From there, money earned from creator fees on $PICKLE will go towards purchasing more and more cards on the open market.

More funds raised -> more cards purchased -> lower float -> higher vault value

This is all a really silly experiment in market mechanics. But I truly do think it can work, and I’ll explain the core reasons.

1. It is the crown jewel of something

Price squeezes from supply control never hold on random BS – because people will just decide not the buy the thing. But a price squeeze on the asset in a given category can work. There will always be X amount of people that want the “ultimate” Pickleball card, for any amount of money.

2. The float is comically low

There are under 4,000 cards in existence, and majority of them were purchased by Ben Johns/Pickleball fans, rather than sports card collectors. Because ‘Pickleball cards’ were/are viewed as a novelty by the sports card market, it is entirely likely that as much as 75-80% of supply is locked in the hands of Pickleball people, rather than card resellers. Essentially, the real amount of cards we will have to purchase to pump prices is a small fraction of the total supply. I anticipate we will see very little selling pressure.

3. The Viral self-fulfilling prophecy

If a Pickleball card is pumped to tens of thousands of dollars, some very funny things will happen. First and foremost, it’ll piss off a ton of boomer sports card fudds. Secondly, it’ll probably go viral in the main stream. Attention will fuel more outside purchases, and owning a rookie Ben Johns will become the new gigaflex.

My immediate plans for PickleVault:

I’m going to play this one by ear, and leave the next part to you. It works out, I have some very silly ideas for the thing.