Last year, we began tracking an anonymous seller who seemed to be offloading rare playing cards at an alarming rate.
In the first two weeks of monitoring them, they sold $1,829 worth of Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards amongst listings for generic DVDs and books. If the pattern continued, they might stand to make $47,554 over one year.
We believed the anonymous seller was a magician; reviews had been left on their account for magic products. We also knew where they were located—a small town was listed on their selling page.
Beyond that, we were in the dark.
So, since we discovered the seller last year, we have been trying to understand how these playing cards became so expensive. Has anyone ever verified their backstory? At the same time, we monitored the mysterious seller; we wanted to see how much money they'd make offloading the decks.
Our team delved into forum threads and video archives. We spoke to key players involved in building the cards' hype status, as well as playing card and collectibles experts.
We even examined the conspiracy theories surrounding 40,000 missing Jerry's Nugget Playing Cards. Two years ago, the organizers of Cardistry Con valued the decks at $300 a piece–which would potentially make the rumored missing decks worth $12,000,000. Did the cards really go missing? Was it really 40,000 decks, and who ended up with them? We tracked down these answers.
How many decks were ever produced? Could one person have stockpiled enough to manipulate the market? And how would a so-called Jerry's Nugget "whale" offload the decks without causing the house of cards to come tumbling down? These questions were more challenging to answer, but we'll share our findings.
This story deserves to be told in three parts, with space between them to allow new information to emerge. We'll roll this story out week by week, starting this Thursday. Please email tips@oneahead.com if you have relevant information.
