The Evan Longoria Charizard Bat Knob Card: When Baseball Cards and Pokémon Collided

Quick answer: This is a one-of-one card from 2025 Topps Tier One Baseball. It holds the knob from one of Evan Longoria’s game-used bats, which carries a Charizard sticker his son picked in 2019, and it’s signed by Longoria. Hobby press calls it the first MLB-licensed card to feature a Pokémon character, and we haven’t found an earlier one. We found no sign that Pokémon or Nintendo licensed it. The Charizard is there because of a sticker on a bat, not because of a collaboration. The card was publicly revealed in February 2026 by a Florida card shop, which says it bought it from the anonymous collector who pulled it (FOX 35).

What it is

Product: 2025 Topps Tier One Baseball, released in September 2025. Each hobby box has one pack of four cards: two autographs, one relic, and one base card (Topps Ripped).
Card: Evan Longoria, autographed bat knob, 1/1. It shows the knob of a game-used bat with a Charizard sticker bearing Longoria’s No. 10.
Checklist: Checklistcenter’s checklist lists “ABK-EL Evan Longoria – San Francisco Giants” in Tier One Auto Bat Knobs, which has 92 cards at 1:612 packs. The Charizard bats date from his 2019 Giants season, so that entry fits. A checklist code alone doesn’t prove which knob is in the card (Checklistcenter).
How Topps sold it: Topps calls its bat knob cards “true 1/1 grails featuring the ends of game-used bats.” Checklistcenter writes that Topps “has been hyping up the release for months, advertising the Bat Knob Auto featuring Evan Longoria’s Charizard bat knob.”

Why Charizard is on the bat

In 2019, his first season with the Giants, Longoria let his two kids choose his bat-knob decals. His daughter Elle picked a dabbing unicorn. His son Nash picked Charizard, “his current favorite.” Both designs carried Longoria’s No. 10. “I thought it would be pretty special to be able to look at the end of my bat and think about my kids,” Longoria told MLB.com (MLB.com Cut4, NBC Sports Bay Area).

What it is physically: a sticker. An auction listing for a different 2019 Longoria bat describes a “Charizard Pokemon Schutt Sticker” on the knob (SCP Auctions). Schutt is a sports equipment company.
More than one bat had it: Longoria used several Charizard-knob bats. One full bat graded PSA/DNA GU 10 was auctioned by SCP in November 2025. Another was listed on eBay for under $1,000 and bought for $700 by Doug Caskey, co-founder of the breaking company Mojobreak (Yahoo Sports).

Was this specific bat used in a game?

Topps and the hobby press describe the knob as game-used. We haven’t found a game log, photo, or video tying this particular knob to a specific game. MLB.com’s 2019 story confirms that Longoria used the kids’ decals on his bats during that season.

Longoria’s reaction

Longoria revealed the card on Instagram while signing cards for the set. He wished collectors “Happy Hunting” and added: “Whoever finds the Charizard bat knob please hit me up!” (Sports Illustrated).

The bounties

These are public offers to buy the card, not sales.

Big League Cards (Casselberry, Florida): owner Alan Narz announced a $100,000 bounty after the reveal (Yahoo Sports).
WeTheHobby: announced a $125,000 bounty on Sept 12, 2025, alongside its live breaks on Fanatics Live (r/baseballcards).

We have found no verified sale price for the card. The price of the later deal wasn’t disclosed.

Did Pokémon license it?

We found no evidence that it did. The Charizard appears because it’s on a sticker on Longoria’s bat, and Topps embedded the knob. It’s an MLB-licensed Topps card. The Pokémon Company and Nintendo aren’t credited anywhere we’ve seen. The most accurate description is “a Topps baseball card containing a game-used bat knob that carries a Charizard sticker,” not an official Topps x Pokémon collaboration.

Is it the first baseball x Pokémon card?

Here’s what we can and can’t say, question by question:

Question	What we found
First MLB-licensed card showing a Pokémon character?	Hobby press says so, quoting Alan Narz, who now owns the card. We haven’t found an earlier example.
First official baseball x Pokémon collaboration?	No. It isn’t a licensed collaboration at all.
First Topps card with Pokémon imagery?	No. In 1999 Topps made licensed Pokémon sets, including Pokémon TV Animation Edition and Pokémon the First Movie (Bulbapedia). Those are Pokémon products, not baseball cards.
First MLB card physically containing a Pokémon-related object?	We found no earlier one.
Custom, fan-made, or unlicensed cards?	We haven’t fully surveyed these, and they wouldn’t count as licensed MLB cards anyway.

Our wording: it’s the first MLB-licensed card featuring a Pokémon character that we’ve been able to find, and it got there by accident of family history rather than by licensing.

Was it actually in packs?

Tier One released in September 2025. The card didn’t surface publicly for about five months. On Feb 25, 2026, Alan Narz revealed it on FOX 35 Orlando’s The 407. Big League Cards then displayed it on National Pokémon Day, Feb 27, 2026, in the 30th-anniversary year of Pokémon (FOX 35, Blowout Buzz).

Fanatics Collect reported that Narz “made contact with an anonymous collector who had pulled the card” and that the two reached a deal. Some commenters on that post claimed the card never went into packs and came from Topps directly. We’ve seen no evidence for that claim and no statement from Topps either way. The collector’s identity and the pack it came from haven’t been made public.

The Superfractor connection

Longoria is already part of one of the hobby’s best-known mysteries. His 2006 Bowman Chrome Draft Superfractor autograph, a 1/1, has never publicly surfaced. Breakers chased it for years. “We were always chasing that Longoria Superfractor… it still hasn’t shown up,” Caskey told SportsCardPortal (SportsCardPortal). Almost twenty years later, another Longoria 1/1 became a public hunt. The difference is that this one turned up.

Why it matters to both hobbies

Charizard: the card the Pokémon side cares about is the Base Set Charizard, the defining chase of the original 1999 English set. See our Charizard value guide. Charizard is one of the original Pokémon (#006), and it’s widely recognized even by people who don’t collect.
The baseball side: game-used relic and 1/1 collectors know bat knobs as one of the most direct links to a player’s equipment.
The overlap: card shops like Big League Cards now sell both sports cards and Pokémon. Its owner called this card “a 1/1 crossover of the two greatest collectible properties ever, MLB and Pokémon.”
The cause: it didn’t come out of a marketing deal. A father put his son’s favorite Pokémon on his bat.