Everyone who has ever played football as a kid always dreams of being in the Super Bowl.
Getting a coveted Super Bowl ring is the icing on the cake as the ultimate reward for a hard season.
But when Travis Kelce took one look at his Super Bowl ring and spotted this mistake, he was instantly stunned and realized this probably makes his ring more valuable.
Chiefs’ Super Bowl ring error
The Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in five seasons this past February, cementing themselves as an NFL dynasty.
The Chiefs outlasted the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in an overtime thriller to take home the Lombardi Trophy.
The Chiefs organization ordered 400 Super Bowl rings for players and team personnel to commemorate the accomplishment.
But when Travis Kelce talked about the Super Bowl ring on a recent episode of his New Heights podcast, his brother Jason pointed out the ring contained an error.
The inside of each ring featured an inscription of the score of each of Kansas City’s four playoff games along with the seed of the opponent.
Kansas City’s first round opponent, the Miami Dolphins, was listed as the seventh seed when they were in fact the sixth seed; the Pittsburgh Steelers were actually the seventh seed.
In response to his brother pointing out the mistake, Travis Kelce said, “I don’t give a s***.”
Kelce said that the seeding of the teams the Chiefs played was totally irrelevant to the Super Bowl run.
The Chiefs tight end explained, “No, I like it that we didn’t give a f— about what seed Miami is. They were the seventh. Who cares? They could’ve done no seeds on the side of them. I would’ve been fine.”
Kelce then told his brother he had no intention of getting the ring fixed because the mistake made it even more of a collectible.
“Like, oh yeah, we made it really detailed, and oops we screwed up. Just makes it more exclusive. We screwed up about something that means nothing,” Kelce added.
What people remember about the Dolphins playoff game
The Chiefs-Dolphins wild card round game would have been a forgettable matchup if not for two factors.
First, the NFL put the game behind a paywall and forced fans to subscribe to the Peacock streaming service in order to watch it.
Second, the game was played in frigid subzero temperatures.
It was -4 degrees at kickoff, and -27 degrees with windchill.
The weather was so perilous that doctors had to perform at least a dozen amputations on fans as a result of frostbite.
ESPN reported, “Research Medical Center didn’t provide exact numbers but said in a statement that it treated dozens of people who had experienced frostbite during an 11-day cold snap in January.”
“Twelve of those people — including some who were at the Jan. 13 game — had to undergo amputations involving mostly fingers and toes. The hospital said more surgeries are expected over the next two to four weeks as “injuries evolve,” ESPN added.
Mistakes in sports memorabilia
Kelce was not wrong when he said that a flaw makes a sports collectible more valuable.
When baseball trading cards were at the peak of their popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, fans searched far and wide for what were called “error cards.”
These were cards where the manufacturer misspelled a player’s name, included wrong information, or sometimes put the wrong picture on the card.
The most famous error card ever was the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card.
Billy Ripken was an unremarkable player for the Baltimore Orioles who was best known for being the brother of Hall of Fame shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr.—the man who broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games played streak.
Billy’s most famous—or infamous—moment in baseball came on the 1989 card where Fleer initially published a picture of Ripken holding a bat that read “f*** face” on the handle.
The card instantly became a collector’s item.
A corrected version of the card sells for $8.99 on Amazon, but the original goes for $160.
So, Travis Kelce is sitting on a true gem of sports memorabilia.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
