NFL players work their whole lives to win a Super Bowl ring.
Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce got some bad news.
And that’s because Travis Kelce got his Super Bowl ring and quickly realized there was something very wrong.
Chiefs Super Bowl ring contains an error
The Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in five years this past February.
Kansas City defeated 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.
But when Travis Kelce discussed the ring on a recent episode of his New Heights podcast, his brother Jason pointed out the ring contained an error.
The inside of the ring featured an inscription of the score of each of the Chiefs four playoff games, as well as the seed of the opponent.
Kansas City’s first round opponent, the Miami Dolphins, were listed as the seventh seed when they were in fact the sixth seed.
“I don’t give a s—,” Travis Kelce said in response to his brother pointing out the mistake.
Kelce said the seeding of the teams the Chiefs played was completely irrelevant to the playoff run, as fans and players don’t pay that any mind.
“’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 added.
Kelce then told his brother he wouldn’t get the ring fixed because an error made it even more exclusive.
“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 continued.
What the Dolphins playoff game is most famous for
The Chiefs-Dolphins wild card round game would have been a nondescript matchup but for two factors.
First, the NFL put the game behind a paywall and forced fans to subscribe to the Peacock streaming service if they wanted to watch.
Second, the game was played in subzero temperatures.
It was -4 degrees at kickoff, and windchill brought the temperature down to -27 degrees.
The weather was so dangerous that doctors had to perform at least a dozen amputations on fans due to frostbite.
“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,” ESPN reported.
“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 also reported.
Errors on memorabilia
There is something to Kelce’s idea that a flaw makes a sports collectible more valuable.
When baseball trading cards were at their peak of their popularity in the late 80s and early 1990s, fans searched far and wide for what were known as “error cards.”
These were cards where the manufacturer misspelled someone’s name, included wrong information or sometimes even put the wrong picture on the card.
The most famous error card of all time was the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card.
Billy Ripken was a nondescript player for the Baltimore Orioles who was best known for being the brother of Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. – the player who broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game streak.
Billy’s most famous – or infamous – moment in baseball came on that 1989 card where Fleer initially published a picture of Ripken holding a bat with “f*** face” clearly written on the handle.
The card became an instant collector’s item.
A corrected version of the card sells for $8.99 on Amazon.
The “f*** face” error card goes for $160.
So Travis Kelce is likely to keep that “error card” version of the Chiefs Super Bowl ring, knowing it could be a much more highly sought after piece of memorabilia.
