{"id":166881,"date":"2026-03-18T01:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/166881\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T01:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:54:14","slug":"tom-brady-surprises-hooky-playing-superfans-at-grand-opening-of-second-nyc-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/166881\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Brady surprises hooky-playing superfans at grand opening of second NYC store"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He moved the chains.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/10\/sports\/nfl-stars-with-tom-brady-in-fanatics-flag-football-classic\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Football legend Tom Brady <\/a>surprised a crowd of fans who flocked to his new Brooklyn collection shop Tuesday \u2014 including dozens of kids who skipped school for the chance to meet their idol. <\/p>\n<p>The GOAT signed cards, footballs and jerseys before cutting the ribbon at the newest CardVault shop near the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, marking the latest expansion in his trading-card empire.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Brady attended the grand opening of CardVault in Brooklyn on March 17, 2026. CardVault by Tom Brady<\/p>\n<p>Brady surprised the crowd of fans \u2014 many of them kids who skipped school for the chance to meet him. CardVault by Tom Brady<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel amazing because that\u2019s probably once in a lifetime opportunity to ever meet Tom Brady and to get his signature and have it actually addressed to me,\u201d Lucas Bonhomme, 13, told The Post, adding that he was first in line to get his New England Patriots jersey signed by the retired quarterback.<\/p>\n<p>The Orange County seventh grader took the trip in to the city with both his parents, who let him skip out on class for the chance to meet Brady.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy parents knew if I didn\u2019t come, it would make me upset,\u201d he said of Brady, who spent 23 seasons in the NFL with the Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers before hanging up his cleats in 2023 as a member of the Buccaneers.<\/p>\n<p>Brady\u2019s presence at the newest CardVault store wasn\u2019t confirmed ahead of time, but even the potential that the seven-time Super Bowl champ would show up in the flesh was enough to draw a crowd.<\/p>\n<p>Lucas Bonhomme, here with his parents, skipped school for the chance to meet Tom Brady. Georgett Roberts \/nypost<\/p>\n<p>Liam Athas, 10, his brother Alex, 12, and friend Ben Berger, 11, missed their entire morning of classes \u2014 and were willing to skip the rest of the day if it meant meeting their hero. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so excited. I really wanted to be here,\u201d said Liam, who lives near the card shop.  \u201cHe\u2019s good at football. He is confident in the playoffs, and that\u2019s why he won so many times. He never gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ben, a fifth-grader, agreed, saying that he admired Brady\u2019s palpable confidence. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so excited. I really wanted to be here,\u201d said Liam Athas or Brooklyn. Georgett Roberts\/NY Post<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think he has all those rings because pretty much almost every Super Bowl he\u2019s played,\u00a0all the time he was confident. There\u2019s not one time he wasn\u2019t confident.\u00a0If you go for the Super Bowl not confident \u2014 you\u2019re going to lose,\u201d Ben said.<\/p>\n<p>Not all the super fans were school-skipping kids, however.<\/p>\n<p>Cynthia Valdez, 61, braved the chilly weather to cross off her bucket-list wish to catch a pass from Brady \u2014 a request the three-time league MVP happily obliged.<\/p>\n<p>Cynthia Valdez, right, with Vincent Lanci, caught a pass by Brady at the shop. Georgett Roberts \/nypost<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTom Brady signed my football cards and both of my hats and on my bucket list was to catch a pass from Tom Brady and I did!\u201d said Valdez, a Patriots fan since the 1980s. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a beautiful boy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The CardVault store is the second location in the Big Apple, usually the turf of one of Brady\u2019s favorite punching bags \u2014 AFC East rivals the New York Jets \u2014 and the NFC\u2019s New York Giants, who handed the quarterback two of his three Super Bowl losses.<\/p>\n<p>Brady signing a football for a fan at CardVault. CardVault by Tom Brady<\/p>\n<p>Sports cards and memorabilia for sale inside the shop. CardVault by Tom Brady<\/p>\n<p>The grand opening came just months after burglars<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/11\/13\/us-news\/tom-bradys-nyc-card-shop-robbed-of-nearly-10k-of-baseball-pokemon-cards\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> stole\u00a0nearly $10,000 in baseball and Pok\u00e9mon cards<\/a> from his SoHo shop.<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees hat-wearing thief tricked the store\u2019s staff by fudging with the tap-to-pay system\u00a0to make it seem like his declined credit card transaction had actually gone through. The crook is still at large.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShoplifting happens. We deal with it, and we move on,\u201d Chris Costa, co-founder of CardVault, told The Post, adding that the widely covered robbery was \u201ca little bit blown out of proportion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Brady tossing a football to a fan in his card shop. CardVault by Tom Brady<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it was kind of like a minor little situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Costa said the store has beefed up its security since the incident, though didn\u2019t share what exact changes the new Brooklyn store might implement after the SoHo bust.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re super, super proud and super confident in our team, as any retailer should be. We\u2019ve got an amazing process, amazing controls around security and product security and inventory security and loss prevention, and all those things,\u201d Costa said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are excited to open a new store and serve new customers, and have an opportunity to engage with new collectors and bring CardVault \u00a0by Tom Brady to Brooklyn, which we think is an amazing, amazing neighborhood, and an amazing customer base for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He moved the chains. Football legend Tom Brady surprised a crowd of fans who flocked to his new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98,24547,57,9,197,56,63,65,64,2381,19869,58],"class_list":["post-166881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-brooklyn","tag-collectors","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-life","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-tom-brady","tag-trading","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}