Fan buys Tom Brady’s “last” touchdown football for $518,628 — then Brady unretires

An unknown fan paid more than half a million dollars for the last football Tom Brady threw at an NFL game before retiring last season. But now the ball has lost much of its value after the 44-year-old athlete announced on Sunday that it is return to professional footballexperts said.

The football was sold on Saturday for $ 518,628 through New Jersey auction company Lelands, with the high price driven in part by the belief it was used for what would be the last touchdown pass ever launched by one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history. About 24 hours after the auction closed, Brady announced via Twitter that he would return to the NFL, marking a difficult break for the winning contestant.

“The ball is worth a lot less now,” sports record expert David Kohler told CBS MoneyWatch, adding that once Brady throws another touchdown, the value of the ball will be “a fraction of what it was worth.”

It is unclear whether the winner of the auction intended to keep the football or sell it for a higher price later. Lelands refused to identify the winning bidder.

“I just hate being the guy who paid $ 500,000 for Tom Brady’s last touchdown pass,” CBS Sports host Adam Zucker told CBS News.

Brady is the only quarterback in history to have won a 40-year-old championship with two different NFL teams. He has won seven NFL championships and appeared in 10 Super Bowls over a 22-season period. Brady has also thrown the most touchdown passes of any player in league history and has been selected Super Bowl MVP five times.

Brady used the football sold at auction on Jan. 23 in Tampa, Florida, to throw a 55-yard touchdown pass to teammate Mike Evans during a playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams. After scoring, Evans threw the ball into the stands at Raymond James Stadium. One of the crowd grabbed the ball and decided to auction it off.

“If Evans hadn’t thrown him in the stands, he would still be in the possession of the Buccaneers and would never be offered publicly,” Lelands wrote on his football list.

Brady’s sports memorabilia has a history of selling at high prices. For example, an autographed debut card from Brady was sold at an auction last June for $ 3.1 million. Football used to complete its first touchdown of its career sold for more than $ 400,000 last May.