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How passionate collector, industry CEO Nat Turner assembled one of hobby’s largest, most valuable card collections
Nat Turner didn’t have a lot of money growing up to purchase high-end sports cards.
He enjoyed heading to local card shops around The Woodlands, Texas to pick up packs of basketball and baseball cards. Turner found enjoyment in collecting base and insert cards of NBA greats Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
It wasn’t until the upstart entrepreneur sold his first company, Invite Media, when he was in his early 20s that he had some money to play with. Turner co-founded the company that Google purchased for a reported $70 million in 2010.
“Without thinking, I literally just started buying one of every Jordan and Kobe card because I couldn’t afford them as a kid,” Turner told Sports Collectors Digest. “It was this weird like release where I was buying things I could never have.”
It didn’t take long for the startup mogul to co-found another successful venture. He sold Flatiron Health in 2018 for a reported $1.9 billion.
At this point, Turner could afford to purchase any sports card in the world.
Instead, he did the next best thing. Turner, along with an investor group, purchased Collectors Universe, which owns third-party grading giant Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA). The investor group finalized the deal in February 2021 for $853 million.
Turner’s rise in the sports card hobby is nothing short of amazing. Now he’s one of the giants in the industry as his impressive personal collection grows daily.
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Turner, who lives in New York City with his wife and two boys, has an extreme passion for collecting.
“It’s always something to do and there’s something to chase,” said Turner, who is CEO and Executive Chairman at Collectors. “I love organizing things and completing things. Having a checklist of 100 things and it being hard to find all 100. I don’t know, I just love that process. I really love the art and the history behind it. I think it’s very much an art form, sports cards.
“I love the fact that condition matters. I’m so mystified by the fact that there can be like a ’52 Topps card of Mickey Mantle that’s perfect. Of any card from that era that like gets a 10, I just find that so cool. It’s a little piece of history. I love sports, so I have an affinity to players like Nolan [Ryan] and Hank Aaron and all these guys and owning something that represents them.
“It’s a way to bet on a player, that’s why I bought LeBron cards in 2003. I thought he was the next Jordan, he’s the next best thing. But I’ve thought some other people would be the next best and have been wrong about those.”
Turner, 36, has registered over 13,000 slabs in his PSA registry. However, that’s not all the PSA cards he owns. He figures his PSA-graded cards total between 15,000-20,000.
He estimates he has another 5,000 slabbed Beckett Grading Services (BGS) cards and around 5,000 boxes of unopened packs. Yes, five thousand.
“I have a storage unit filled with base cards from all the boxes I’ve opened,” Turner said. “There’s probably hundreds of thousands of cards in there.”
COLLECTING EARLY ON
Turner got into card collecting as a youngster.
Growing up, he was a fan of his hometown Houston Astros and his dad was an Atlanta Braves fan. Turner’s dad returned home from a work trip in 1992 when Turner was in first grade with some gifts. He had stopped at a card shop and purchased three cards.
“I can still remember when he handed them to me, that’s how important it was to the story,” Turner said. “He handed me a ’75 Topps Hank Aaron, last card in the set, number 660, and I still have it in the original screw down. It is really beat up, off-centered. He handed me a ’76 Hank Aaron All-Star card and then a ’78 Nolan, the All-Star card.”
That kick-started Turner’s interest in collecting cards, especially baseball.
With cards being mass produced in the 1990s, Turner had ample opportunities to purchase packs.
“I got into like Leaf Limited in ’94 with Jeff Bagwell and Alex Rodriguez. I had some ’93 Finest, a couple common refractors. I’m just thinking of all the cards I had as a kid,” Turner said. “We didn’t have a ton of money, so I couldn’t afford to buy like Topps Chrome or any of those. I remember I had like one pack of Leaf Limited, it was like $10. I thought it was like the craziest thing ever to be able to buy one of those packs.”
Turner collected baseball cards for four years until the Rockets became all the rave around Houston, winning NBA titles in 1994 and ’95. By 1996, Turner was big into basketball cards.
“The ’96 rookie class, I remember vividly,” Turner said. “I got a pack of Topps and pulled an [Allen] Iverson rookie, and then I really started diving into basketball that year. Not because of Iverson, but because of that rookie class. The products were so cool. I remember Flair Showcase — I opened a pack of that. I had a few packs of Bowman’s Best I remember that year were given to me for my birthday.
“I remember the jersey cards in ’97 Metal, that was probably my favorite set when it came out. It came out in ’95, but the ’97 Metal set was probably the most important set to me as a kid. I probably opened 30 to 50 packs of that. Any money that I had, I would buy a pack of that at the local card shop.”
Turner remembers pulling a Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems (PMG) green card of Kerry Kittles. For PMG cards in the 1997 product, there are 100 cards of each player — the first 10 are green foil and the next 90 are red.
Turner didn’t realize just how rare his Kittles pull was and he traded it to the shop for store credit.
“I collect that set now for that reason,” Turner said. “The PMG green and red sets, those are the most important sets I collect, personally.”
Around 1997, Turner created an eBay account and was setting up at local card shows around Houston. He was big into wheeling-and-dealing before he was even a teenager.
Turner didn’t have many cards worth too much money back then.
“I wasn’t buying lots of packs; friends of mine, we would trade,” Turner said. “We buy a bunch of base cards and we’d do sets. But I started getting into inserts when Vince Carter was a rookie in ’98. I really liked him and Steve Francis the year after that.”
As a freshman in high school, Turner remembers autographed and jersey cards started to be released, and he tried to pick up numbered inserts and parallels.
A couple years later, he halted collecting for a year, mostly because there weren’t any good rookies in basketball. He also got burned out by the steroid scandal in baseball and stopped collecting baseball cards.
“The very major thing that happened in my collecting is LeBron James came on the scene,” Turner said. “I was a junior in high school when I learned about him, and then senior year of high school, he was a rookie. I made a decision that I wanted one of every LeBron James rookie card. At the time, it did not include parallels. I ended up about three years later to also do the parallels.”
James joined Jordan and Bryant as Turner’s favorite players to collect. Turner was into the biggest and brightest hoops stars.
“Most of the LeBron stuff I bought in 2003 to 2006 — like 90 percent,” he said. “That was except for the RPA [rookie patch auto] Exquisite, because I couldn’t afford it. So, I bought the RPA in 2010.”
Turner foresaw the vast potential of 1-of-1 cards and went after James. During his senior year in college, Turner bought the 2003-04 Bowman Signature Edition Blue 1/1 James (PSA authentic) and James’ Hoops Prospects 1/1. He remembers spending half the money he had saved in his bank account on those two cards alone.
Turner’s favorite 1/1 James he owns is the 2003-04 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection All-NBA Access Dual Logoman with Michael Jordan. He bought the BGS 8.5 card in February 2020. It made headlines at the time since it was the third-highest sports card ever sold at $900,000.
What does Turner think that card is worth now?
“I’ll never sell it, so it doesn’t matter,” he said laughing.
COMPETING GRADING COMPANIES
Turner has never been picky when it comes to which third-party grading company he uses, especially as a younger collector.
“Grading wasn’t a big deal to me,” he said. “I would grade with Beckett. My first submission was to Beckett in 1999. It was a Steve Francis Finest rookie. I pulled a jersey card, which I just submitted to PSA recently and got a 5. But my first submission to Beckett was a 9.5 Steve Francis serial numbered Finest rookie that I pulled.”
Even though Turner now owns PSA, he doesn’t have a problem with his competition.
“I like BGS,” Turner said. “I still have frankly thousands of BGS cards. When I wanted to buy one of every Jordan card and Kobe card, I wanted a BGS 9.5 of every card. And, by the way, my LeBron collection back then, I wanted a BGS 9.5 of every LeBron rookie. So, I still have thousands of BGS cards. I like them. I think sub-grades are cool. I prefer PSA, not just because I own the company now, but I don’t mind BGS at all. I’ll still submit to them, too.”
COLLECTING KEEPS HIM BUSY
Turner’s focus as a collector prior to 2010 was modern day cards.
He didn’t start collecting vintage cards until after he had sold his first business.
“One of the first things I did was started buying Nolan Ryan and Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle,” Turner said. “I wasn’t doing the sets, I was doing players. I started doing a couple sets a few years later, like five years later. My first real vintage cards of any significance I bought starting in 2010, and I was 24 at the time.”
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Now, Turner’s collecting habits are a mix between modern and vintage.
Turner’s big into making sets. At the moment, he figures he’s piecing together between 60-70 sets.
“I spend two hours a day on it, three hours, probably,” said Turner, who has his home office designed to resemble a card shop. “Every night I’m scanning cards, I’m making submission forms, organizing cards. I actually pay my son a dollar for every duplicate card he finds. I’ll give him like 400 Gold Prizm cards and say, ‘Hey, sort through these and if you find two of the same one, I’ll give you a dollar.’ It takes him damn near a week to find one of them. It’s like a goose chase.”
A couple of the big sets Turner is working on are 1952 and ’59 Topps baseball.
His ’52 set consists of cards graded PSA 9 or better. That’s making his quest to finish it pretty difficult.
“It’s impossible,” Turner said. “It will probably take me the rest of my life. But I’ve got a Jackie 9. I don’t have a Mantle 9, I have a 7.5.”
Keep in mind, there are only six PSA 9 and three PSA 10 Mantles that exist.
“I’m doing sets in the ’90s and 2000s now, no one else is,” Turner said. “I’m doing the ’97 Metal set, PSA 10. I’m doing all the Gold Prizm sets from 2012 to now in basketball. I’m doing 2002 Finest Gold. I’m doing all the ’03 stuff. I’m doing like ’03 Exquisite, ’03 Topps Chrome Refractors, ’03 Topps Chrome Gold, Bowman Chrome Gold, Finest Gold. So when any of those pop up raw on eBay, I’m buying them.”
When he first started collecting basketball cards, he enjoyed building the 1996 Topps set featuring Bryant’s rookie.
Turner’s favorite set he’s working on is the 1997 Metal Universe PMG basketball. He has completed the 1997-98 Championship PMG, with each in the 98-card set being numbered to 50. About five years ago, he finished the red foil set (out of 90) and he’s five cards away from wrapping up the green set (out of 10).
With the scarcity of the product, it’s been the ultimate challenge for Turner.
“It was like the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” he joked.
COLLECTING ADVENTURES
Turner has gone on many wild excursions to track down cards for his PMG sets.
“I would show up to the airport with a briefcase of cash, meeting someone from Asia,” Turner said. “Driving to the craziest places in the country with just cash, trying to like pry things from peoples’ collections.
“The green set, I may never finish it. Two of the greens, there’s 10 of them each, have never been seen. I don’t know that for sure, I have never seen a copy of two of them: Robert Pack and Brian Grant. What’s interesting is that list used to be three, but in [mid-May 2022], Dell Curry was on that list and out of nowhere a guy in Japan had one.”
Turner quickly bought that Curry card to add to his collection.
Another one of Turner’s crazy stories focusing around his PMG sets took place in a gym lobby. Turner was meeting a collector to purchase a Jordan red PSA 7.
“He’s like, ‘By the way, I have a lot of other Jordan and Kobe cards that I brought with me. Are you also interested?’” Turner recalled. “I was like, ‘What do you have?’ He opens his briefcase and it was like one of every major Jordan and Kobe card of all time, basically. I remember I had to get a lot more cash very quickly. I called my bank and bought every card from him, literally, sitting on a coffee table, people walking by in gym clothes. There were Player Theatre, Kobe Credentials numbered to 10. It was crazy.”
One of Turner’s most memorable transactions went down at an airport.
“I have two right now, but at one point I had three Jordan game jersey autos from ’97 (out of 23), but I needed some money and I needed to sell one of them. I sold it for 40 grand,” Turner said. “A guy flew into JFK from Korea, walked out of the terminal, handed me 40 grand from his backpack, took the card and then boarded a flight like two minutes later and flew back to Korea.”
Turner never got too involved in football cards. However, he’s picked up some of the game’s greats over the years.
He has some Tom Brady rookies, including a Championship Ticket auto in BGS 8.5, a 2000 Bowman Chrome Refractor PSA 8 and some rare Leaf and Donruss numbered to 10. Turner also has some Patrick Mahomes cards and a pair of Jim Brown 1959 Topps in PSA 10.
“I’ve got a bunch of boxes,” said Turner about his football collection. “I have a ’58 Topps box. I’d probably put up there with the best unopened that I own. I’ve got a bunch of ’60s and ’70s football boxes.”
UNOPENED KING
Turner loves collecting sets and single cards of his favorite athletes. However, picking up unopened material is what he enjoys most.
He started his unopened craze in 2010 and has obtained an impressive list of products that includes vintage basketball, baseball, football and hockey and modern basketball. Turner has a run of unopened packs from 1952-89.
“I probably have over a thousand boxes,” he said. “I collect boxes, I collect packs, I collect cases. I don’t collect rack packs or any of the funky stuff. I just do wax packs, foil packs — PSA graded and BBCE wrapped boxes and cases.”
Two of Turner’s favorite years and products to collect are 2003 basketball (James’ rookie year) and 2000 football (Brady’s rookie year).
“I’ve got hundreds of boxes in each and cases upon cases,” Turner said.
For basketball, Turner owns two cases of Exquisite and single cases of Ultimate, SP Authentic, SPX, Triple Dimensions and Topps Chrome.
For football, he has a case each of SP Authentic, Pacific, Donruss and Leaf Limited.
A couple of Turner’s favorite unopened products are a case of 1997 Metal Championship and a box of 1997 Metal.
About five years ago, he picked up his most valuable unopened item. He was in contact with a guy in his 80s from Kentucky about a few singles cards.
“I was like, ‘By the way, do you have any unopened boxes?’” Turner asked. “He’s like, ‘You know, I think I might have something in my safety deposit box. I’m in Florida for the winter. When I get home in a few months, let me check.’
“He emails me back and he’s like, ‘I actually found ’54 Bowman.’ In my head, I’m like, Oh, like it’s a pack. I said, ‘How many packs do you have?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, no, it’s the whole box.’ It was not wrapped and had been in there for whatever, 60 years. I was like, ‘I’d love to buy that, but I need to make sure it’s legit with Steve Hart. Let me fly to you, give you a deposit, take the box, bring it to Indiana and if it’s good, I’ll wire you the rest of the money.’”
Hart, the owner of Baseball Card Exchange (BBCE) — who Turner states, “I love the guy” — authenticated the ’54 Bowman baseball box. Turner quickly purchased the hidden treasure.
HIS NEXT VENTURE
Along with all his other collecting projects, Turner’s latest excursion is obtaining Type I photographs. Type I classification is a first generation photograph developed from the original negative within a two-year period of the photo being taken.
Turner got into this segment of the hobby with the help of iconic collectors Marshall Fogel and Henry Yee, who arguably have the two top Type I photo collections in the world.
Turner loves picking up Type I photos that were used for a player’s sports card.
“I got the ’51 Bowman Mantle, the photo that was used for that card,” said Turner, who purchased that privately earlier this year.
Turner figures he has between 30-40 Type I photos at this point. He owns the photos that were used for the 1954 Topps Ernie Banks rookie; 1933 Goudey World Wide Gum Co. Lou Gehrig; and 1965 Topps Joe Namath rookie.
“I’m just starting,” Turner said. “That’s just like within the last year.”
If Turner’s card collection is any indication, he will make it his mission to track down the best Type I photos to add to his eye-popping portfolio.
