Dylan Abruscato recalls the feeling of opening his first box of 2015 Topps Opening Day baseball cards and finding not one, but two cards from the biggest hit in the set.
At least, it was the most important card to him, specifically, if nobody else.
In May 2014 Topps announced a contest: Any fan who posted a photo from a baseball game on Instagram with the hashtag #ToppsLive would have a chance of seeing their photo in 2015 Topps Opening Day, along with their name as the photographer.
Abruscato submitted a photo he had taken at Citi Field a few weeks prior at Mets opening day. Then he forgot about the contest. Around six months later, he received an email telling him congratulations, requesting a high resolution copy of the photo and confirmation of the correct spelling of his name.
The photo was included in the 2015 release as part of the Stadium Scenes insert, which Abruscato eagerly chased upon its release the following year. That explains his reaction when he pulled two of his own cards from his first box.
“It was just like the most insane, coolest moment. I remember my sister was in the room with me. We were like cheering,” Abruscato said. “It was a full-blown breaker moment for a card that's worth 9 cents.”
Abruscato and his fellow amateur card photographers also received a special rainbow foil variation of all the Stadium Scenes inserts.
“Every collector's dream is to pull a card of their own,” Abruscato said, recalling the moment a decade later.
He has since picked up “a couple dozen” of his cards from the set over the years, including some which he has had graded by PSA (he owns all 16 of the graded population). Originally, PSA slabbed the card as a Mets team card, rather than including Abruscato’s name on the label.
Can anyone on here intro me to someone @PSAcard?
— Dylan Abruscato (@DylanAbruscato) December 19, 2023
I have a card in 2015 Topps Opening Day & sent a few in to get slabbed (thinking my name would be on the slab bc my name's on the set checklist), but they came back with just “New York Mets” ???? pic.twitter.com/7OVPlyPCtg
He went to Twitter for help, eventually connecting with the team at PSA, which helped sort it out, including his name on the label on subsequent submissions.
Abruscato, who founded Crypto: The Game and has worked in various roles in the entertainment industry, even successfully got his signature added to the PSA/DNA database as an entertainment figure so he could have a signed copy of the card slabbed.
A decade after having a card in 2015 Topps (and years of badgering to get into PSA’s autograph database), I finally have a slabbed, signed card of myself.
— Dylan Abruscato (@DylanAbruscato) February 12, 2025
Low TAM tweet, but as a lifelong card nerd and autograph collector, this might just be the peak. pic.twitter.com/athdwgcWah
Abruscato has connected with a few of the other photographers featured in the set, with whom he jokes that they are the only ones buying up the mostly forgotten decade-old product.
“It’s just like these 30 collectors all trying to have the dopamine hit of pulling their own card from a pack,” Abruscato said.
But even better than pulling his own card from a pack, are the roughly 10 autograph requests he has received through the mail over the year from set collectors looking to complete the full run.
“As someone that grew up sending TTM autograph requests, like to spring training and stadiums and old players' homes, it was honestly the peak — getting a TTM request with a self-addressed envelope,” Abruscato said. He even added inscriptions on the cards that he would want as a collector, joking that he has written “1/1” on multiple copies of the cards.
Though the card is not exactly valuable monetarily, it is certainly priceless to Abruscato.
“They just sit in a box next to my bed, and I look at them and they bring me joy. The amount of effort and work that went into it has nothing to do with the value.”
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.