FLOAT 100 · Trading cards · No. 88
2000 Bowman Chrome Tom Brady #236 RC
Topps put a sixth-round backup quarterback on a chrome card nobody was chasing in 2000, and the picture of him rolling out of the pocket became the most recognizable football rookie image of the modern era.
- Year
- 2000
- Maker
- Bowman Chrome
- By price in trading cards
- 58 of 100
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- 2000, card #236 in Bowman Chrome football
- Maker
- Topps, under its Bowman brand
- Subject
- Tom Brady, New England Patriots, drafted 199th overall in April 2000
- This entry
- The base card (not the Refractor parallel) graded PSA 10 Gem Mint
- PSA 10 population
- 1,228, as shown on 2025-2026 sale listings
- Front image
- Brady in full Patriots uniform, rolling out of the pocket
- Rookie class
- About 105 rookies on the checklist; 20 top prospects were serial-numbered to 99, and Brady was not one of them
- Recent PSA 10 sales
- $9,000 (February 2025) and $15,600 (April 2026), both at auction with buyer's premium
A chrome card for a long shot
Topps made 12 football sets in 2000 but included Tom Brady in only two of them, the paper Bowman set and its glossier twin, Bowman Chrome. Both number him #236, and the two cards look alike, but they come from different products. The Chrome version has a glossy chromium finish, and it is the one collectors treat as his flagship base rookie.
Brady was a nobody on that checklist. Topps serial-numbered the base cards of 20 top prospects to 99 copies each, a mark of who it expected to matter. Brady was left among the unnumbered draftees. One catalog counts 105 rookies on the Bowman Chrome checklist; another describes a 115-player rookie class. The sources differ, but both put Brady far from the front of the line.
The image did him a favor. Of Brady's rookie cards showing him with the Patriots, only a handful picture him in full uniform rather than at practice. The Bowman card catches him rolling out of the pocket, and the 'Bowman Briefing' on the back walks through his baseball background and college big-game record. One auction catalog calls the front perhaps the most recognizable first-year image in football card collecting.
Pick 199
Tom Brady was born August 3, 1977, and played at Michigan. Scouts were unimpressed. One evaluation quoted in a sale catalog called him 'Awful. Not even on my board.' At the 2000 NFL Draft, held April 15-16 at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, six quarterbacks went before him, starting with Chad Pennington at No. 18. New England took Brady in the sixth round, 199th overall, with a compensatory pick it had received when punter Tom Tupa left.
He began his rookie season fourth on the depth chart and finished it as Drew Bledsoe's backup. His entire 2000 season was one appearance in a 34-9 loss at Detroit: 1 of 3 passes for 6 yards.
On September 23, 2001, Jets linebacker Mo Lewis hit Bledsoe in the home opener, and Brady took over. He went 11-3 as a starter, made the Pro Bowl, and on February 3, 2002, beat the 14-point-favorite St. Louis Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI at the Louisiana Superdome, earning the game's MVP award.
He won six Super Bowls with New England and a seventh with Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV, more than any other player or franchise. He retired after the 2022 season with 89,214 passing yards and 649 touchdown passes, and he is the only starting quarterback to win 200 regular-season games.
America, 2000
Brady's cards were printed in a year of peaks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 11,722.98 on January 14, and on March 10 the Nasdaq reached an all-time high of 5,048 before the dot-com bubble burst. AOL had announced a $162 billion deal to buy Time Warner in January.
In sports, the St. Louis Rams won Super Bowl XXXIV in January, the same franchise Brady would upset two years later. In October the Yankees beat the Mets in the first Subway Series between the two teams. The presidential election on November 7 stayed undecided until the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount on December 12.
From pack filler to benchmark
Because the base card is not numbered and was not a short print, top-grade copies are plentiful by the standards of famous rookies: sale listings in 2025 and 2026 show a PSA 10 population of 1,228. That supply makes the base Chrome card the accessible entry point among Brady's major rookies, and its price tracks his reputation closely.
A record of public offers on one 2019 lot shows how quickly that reputation moved in early 2021, the season Brady won his seventh title: offers on a PSA 10 rose from $3,000 in May 2020 to $25,000 in February 2021. Those were offers, not sales.
Recent PSA 10 auction results are more modest. A copy sold for $9,000 with buyer's premium in a weekly online auction closing February 23, 2025, after 33 bids. Another brought $15,600 with premium after 31 bids in a weekly auction closing April 5, 2026. Other PSA 10 copies sold at auction in May, June and December 2025, but their prices are not public.
The Refractor parallel of the same card is a different object and a different market. Rookie Refractors fell about one in 281 packs, and only seven of 140 examples PSA had graded were Gem Mint as of 2023. A PSA 10 Refractor sold for $336,000 with premium in February 2023; a 2026 sales report cites a Refractor record of $498,000 set in 2022.
How to identify it
The card is numbered 236 and carries the Bowman Chrome name and chromium finish. The paper 2000 Bowman #236 looks similar but comes from a different set. The Refractor parallel, a style that has helped define the hobby since 1993, is identified as a Refractor on its grading label.
Watch for the Bowman Gold parallel too: it comes from the paper Bowman set, not Chrome, and is limited to 99 copies. A PSA 10 Bowman Gold sold for $675,000 in a fixed-price sale in January 2026, a record for any Brady Bowman rookie.
The numbers
- 2000 rookie season
- 1 G, 0 starts, 1 of 3 passing, 6 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 42.4 passer rating. Age 23.
- 2001 season
- 15 G, 14 starts, 11-3 record, 264 of 413, 2,843 yards, 18 TD, 12 INT, 86.5 rating. Pro Bowl
- Super Bowl XXXVI (Feb. 3, 2002)
- 16 of 27, 145 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT. Patriots 20, Rams 17. Super Bowl MVP
- 2007 season
- 16-0 record, 398 of 578, 4,806 yards, 50 TD, 8 INT, 117.2 rating. AP MVP
- Career (23 seasons)
- 335 G, 333 starts, 251-82 record, 7,753 of 12,050, 89,214 yards, 649 TD, 212 INT, 97.2 rating
- Draft
- 2000, 6th round, 199th overall, New England Patriots
- Titles
- 7 Super Bowl wins (6 New England, 1 Tampa Bay)
Timeline
Tom Brady is born.
New England drafts Brady 199th overall at the April 15-16 draft in New York.
Topps issues Bowman Chrome football with Brady as unnumbered rookie #236.
Brady's only rookie action: 1 of 3 for 6 yards in a 34-9 loss at Detroit.
Drew Bledsoe is injured; Brady takes over the Patriots.
Brady beats the Rams 20-17 in Super Bowl XXXVI and is named MVP.
Brady throws 50 touchdowns in a 16-0 regular season and wins MVP.
After Brady's seventh Super Bowl win, with Tampa Bay, offers on a PSA 10 copy reach $25,000.
Brady announces his retirement.
A PSA 10 Refractor of the card sells at auction for $336,000.
A PSA 10 base copy sells at online auction for $9,000.
A PSA 10 2000 Bowman Gold (paper set) sells for $675,000, a record for a Brady Bowman rookie.
A PSA 10 base copy sells at online auction for $15,600.
The world in 2000
AOL announces a $162 billion deal to buy Time Warner.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaks at 11,722.98.
The St. Louis Rams win Super Bowl XXXIV, 23-16, over Tennessee.
The Nasdaq Composite hits an all-time high of 5,048.
The Yankees beat the Mets to win the first Subway Series between them.
The presidential election is too close to call.
Bush v. Gore ends the Florida recount.
Daily price data
FLOAT reprices this card every day from completed sales. Last updated November 12, 2026.
No completed sale at PSA 10 is on record yet. The same card at other grades:
| Grade | Value | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| PSA 9 | $4,418 | Most recent realized saleFebruary 12, 2026 |
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 23, 2025 | $9,000 | Sold at auctionPSA 10, base #236. Weekly online auction, with buyer's premium; 33 bids. |
| Apr 5, 2026 | $15,600 | Sold at auctionPSA 10, base #236. Weekly online auction, with buyer's premium; 31 bids. |
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, 2000 Bowman Chrome Tom Brady #236 RC is number 58 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (88 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Brady appears in only two of the 12 football sets Topps made in 2000: Bowman and Bowman Chrome.
- Topps numbered the cards of 20 rookies it considered top prospects; Brady was not among them.
- A scout's report quoted in a sale catalog said Brady would make somebody 'a good husband or a good medical salesman.'
- Brady's entire 2000 season consisted of three passes.
- More than 1,200 copies of the base card have graded PSA 10, yet a PSA 10 Refractor of the same card has sold for more than 20 times as much.
- Brady spent two college summers interning at a brokerage office in Ann Arbor.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026