Tom Brady was once the greatest quarterback in the NFL. He won seven Super Bowls and has thrown for 89,214 yards and 649 touchdowns, all of which are NFL records. He may be the GOAT on the field, but now he’s one of the greatest businessmen off the field.

Off the field, Brady has found just as much success as on the field. He’s an incredible businessman, and one of his most successful ventures thus far is CardVault by Tom Brady, which was founded in 2020 and is one of the fastest-growing retailers for trading cards and memorabilia. They have 12 physical stores across the country, but that number is rising rapidly. Soon, they’ll be the biggest physical retailer of trading cards, more specifically sports cards, in the United States.

CardVault opened its newest location in San Francisco on February 7th, just one day before the Super Bowl. CardVault co-founder Chris Costa was in San Francisco for the grand opening, and he sat down with EssentiallySports for an exclusive interview to talk about how CardVault began and what it’s like to work with Tom Brady.

How CardVault by Tom Brady Began

In his exclusive with EssentiallySports, Costa, who grew up collecting cards, explained how the business came to be. Just like pretty much every football fan around the world, Costa grew up buying packs at the store, hoping to pull his favorite player and trading with his friends. Little did he know back then that his childhood hobby would become his career.

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“I’ve collected since I was a young kid,” Costa explained to EssentiallySports. “I got back in around 2017, and I was looking for specific baseball players. It was always baseball for me, at least when I got back in…When I went from chasing for my own collection, and I started looking at this thing as an investment, it was the Tom Brady market. And that’s what’s so crazy about this whole thing is, when I started really buying, selling, and trading Tom’s rookie [cards], and it was specifically the 2000 Bowman Chrome Refractor, we realized that this was a business…Tom is a big reason this turned into a business for me as a collector.”

Ironically enough, Costa ended up founding CardVault with the very guy whose rookie card he was buying and selling early in his career. Costa grew up a New England Patriots fan, so to work with Brady has been a dream come true.

Tom Brady’s Attention to Detail

In the exclusive interview with EssentiallySports, Costa was asked what has shocked him the most about working with Brady, and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that it’s the level of detail he puts in every day.

“His level of involvement in our business and how much he cares and how dialed in he is to our day-to-day operation is the biggest shock to all of us,” Costa explained. “It’s not that we didn’t expect it. We knew, and Tom has had a reputation for being 100 percent in on anything he commits to, but we’re talking every day. I grew up in New England as a Patriots fan. I grew up the biggest Tom Brady fan on Earth, and here I am pinching myself that I’m Tom Brady’s business partner.”

Despite being involved in so many things, including owning an NFL team and broadcasting games for FOX every weekend, Brady finds time to be heavily involved with CardVault. There are a ton of former players who invest in businesses and put their names on things and never really care about it. But for Brady, he can never do anything unless he gives it 100 percent.