I've been accidentally swept up in trading card mania, says LEE BOYCE - do we now own a piece of card worth £2,500?

'Holy moly, did you really just pull that card from that pack?'That line from a staff member in a trading card shop recently confirmed my hunch. My seven-year-old daughter Brooke had just struck gold in the form of a piece of card measuring 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches.When we confirmed we had indeed pulled the card from the packet he was pointing to, he raced off and returned with a plastic protective sleeve. It was quite dramatic.He then carefully slid the card in silently to the sleeve, concentrating hard, like a brain surgeon with steady hands and total cool precision.'The odds of pulling a one-of-one from one hobby pack like that are tiny. That card is worth a small fortune. Congratulations.'Now naturally, being a money editor and occasional flipper of items from charity shops and the like, my ears pricked up.Small fortune as in future retirement plan for my daughter – or small fortune as in it would cover lunch in central London… the cogs were turning. Trading card mania: Pokémon dominates the market - but sports and Disney are two very strong categories'Any idea of how much?' I asked.'Impossible to say. You own the only version of this card in the world. You set the market price.'To rewind a little here, I have written this newsletter column about trading cards before. Two years ago I went to the Essex Card Show with my nephew and saw first-hand how crazy people are over Pokémon, Disney and the like.Thousands of people were buying and selling, and some of the prices for individual cards were astronomical. And it seems the upward trend has continued.Earlier in the summer, a one-of-one baseball card in the US sold for $11million. The Shohei Ohtani Topps Chrome 'Back-to-Back Gold Logoman' autographed card was pulled from a hobby box in Florida.It was then purchased for the huge sum by an investment collective called Secure Collectibles, of which Shark Tank (US version of Dragons' Den) star Kevin O'Leary is a partner.Businessman Mr O'Leary (who also starred in recent Hollywood movie Marty Supreme) is treating ultra-rare collectibles as an institutional asset class comparable to fine art, gold, or bitcoin.Put bluntly, it's become a modern-day boom area, and some serious people are heavily investing.To continue our tale, the shop we were in was Topps Fanatics in Regent Street, London.Topps is almost 80 years old and now dominates the sports card market. It was bought by Fanatics, a sports platform, in 2022.Inside the shop is an array of characters, some of whom spend thousands of pounds buying boxes of cards of all sorts of genres. One-of-one: Here's the little gold 1/1 on the corner of the cardMany then open packets live on social media – hoping to find a needle in a haystack card worth far more than they paid for.We were having a three-night stay nearby, a summer holiday treat, being tourists in the capital.I'd told her about the shop before – I've been in a couple of times with different friends. Mainly, it specialises in sports cards.I'd given her £10 to spend. She went to the till and picked a pack of Disney Neon cards from the shelf. Price? £10.Spicy price for a pack of five cards and Millennials like me who grew up in an era of paying 25p a packet for Merlin Premier League football stickers.Nevertheless, it was her money, her pick, and for the first time we bought Disney cards.She took them over to a little table where you can open packets and flicked through them. That's when I spotted the little embossed gold '1/1' in the bottom right corner of one of the cards.The card in question is number 63 from the 2026 collection of 200 Disney characters and ours stars Flash from Zootopia.While a relatively fringe character, he is popular for one big reason… he is often used as a meme.People use images, GIFs, and video clips of Flash to joke about slow responses, delayed customer service, and general sluggish behaviour, I have since found out.This lovable little sloth travelled with us to the grading desk in store. The staff member enthusiastically told us it doesn't need to be graded as it's a one-of-one. That is, there is no other card to compare its condition with.They could give us a steer there on the price.The man at the counter said it was hard to give a value but would place it between £1,500 to £2,500.I've since infiltrated a few specialist Disney trading card Facebook groups to get more opinions.Roughly in the same ballpark and some people have made offers there varying between £500 and £1,000.However, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay – and whether we want to sell it.Which is the last part of the story. While swept up in the mania of the price in the shop, I looked at my daughter. I realised I'd been a bad parent. I was infatuated by value, rather than just enjoying the fun moment.'Daddy,' she whispered. 'I don't want to sell it. I love the sloth.''It'll hold its value – and could go up in price. Disney cards are rocketing currently,' said the helpful man, overhearing her pleas.So, dear reader, the sloth card travelled back with us and is now under lock and key (mainly to make sure my two-year-old doesn't get her mitts on it!). I better tell our insurer.From time-to-time since, Brooke and I have looked at it and giggled. And you can't put a price on that.This was first published as our weekly newsletter message, which goes out at 6am on a Thursday morning. Sign-up below for all the best money stories from the week: