Before He Was Kobe: Creating a One-of-a-Kind Card From a High School Autograph
There are certain projects that mean more to me than others.
I've been fortunate to work with some incredible pieces of sports history through Reclaim Customs. I've held autographs from legends. I've cut into game-used memorabilia. I've had the opportunity to create pieces around athletes and moments that I grew up watching.
But this one was different.
This was Kobe.
More specifically, this was Kobe before he became KOBE.
The autograph we were entrusted with for this project dates back to Kobe Bryant's days at Lower Merion High School. He signed it with the number #33, the number he wore before the Lakers, before the championships, before the MVPs, before the Mamba Mentality became part of basketball culture.
Before most of the world knew his name.
And now I had the responsibility of turning that signature into something worthy of the story that followed it.
▶ WATCH THE FULL BEHIND-THE-SCENES VIDEO:https://youtu.be/nn7lkHByVfA?si=xzHSjzY6Rft9M35R
This One Hit Differently
When Kobe Bryant died on January 26, 2020, his death affected me in a way I wasn't expecting.
I didn't know Kobe. I had never met him. Like millions of other basketball fans, I simply watched him.
I watched the iconic moments. I watched the championships. I watched the impossible shots. I watched the intensity and confidence with which he approached the game.
And then, after basketball, I watched what appeared to be the beginning of something completely different.
A few days after his death, I wrote about what I was struggling to process. At the time, the best way I could describe it was that Superman wasn't supposed to die.
That's what made it feel so impossible.
Kobe had occupied this almost permanent place in basketball history. Legends like that aren't supposed to disappear. And yet what made his death especially devastating wasn't simply losing Kobe Bryant the basketball player.
It was everything that seemed like it was still ahead of him.
He was a husband and the father of four daughters. He was becoming a teacher, storyteller, coach and mentor. His daughter Gianna was developing into a talented basketball player herself, and watching Kobe become so invested in her dreams gave people an entirely different window into who he was.
Then, suddenly, Kobe and Gianna were gone, along with seven others.
I remember being consumed by the tragedy. It forced me to think about how fragile life really is, how quickly everything can change, and how much time we waste assuming there will always be more of it.
Those thoughts have stayed with me.
And years later, they unexpectedly came rushing back while working on a trading card.
An Autograph From Before the Legend
There's something fascinating about an early autograph.
We see Kobe Bryant's signature today knowing how the story unfolded.
But when Kobe signed this particular autograph, he didn't know any of that yet.
He was still #33 at Lower Merion.
There were no five NBA championships.
No league MVP.
No 18 All-Star selections.
No 81-point game.
No Olympic gold medals.
No jerseys hanging in the rafters at Crypto.com Arena.
He was an extraordinarily talented high school basketball player with enormous dreams and an unbelievable amount of work ahead of him.
That's what made the #33 inscription so important to this project.
We didn't want to create another Kobe Lakers card.
We wanted the card to live in the moment when the autograph was actually signed.
So we went back to Lower Merion.
Building the Card Around the Story
That's one of the things I love most about what we get to do at Reclaim Customs.
The artifact gets to tell us what the card should become.
For this piece, the high school autograph dictated the entire direction. The imagery, colors, design and presentation were built around a young Kobe Bryant and his time at Lower Merion.
The result is a one-of-a-kind cut autograph booklet that doesn't simply preserve Kobe Bryant's signature.
It preserves a specific chapter of his story.
In the video, we're taking you behind the scenes of that process and showing how this project came together inside Reclaim Customs.
We obviously can't show every technique or process we've developed over the years, but you'll get a much closer look at how we approach a piece like this, from the original autograph and creative concept through construction and final assembly.
▶ WATCH: THE MAKING OF A KOBE BRYANT CUT AUTOGRAPH CARDhttps://youtu.be/nn7lkHByVfA?si=xzHSjzY6Rft9M35R
More Than a Trading Card
I realize that, at the end of the day, we're making trading cards.
But every once in a while, I work on something that reminds me why I've become so passionate about this.
Objects can carry stories.
An old autograph can transport you back to a high school gymnasium before one of the greatest basketball careers of all time had even begun.
A handwritten #33 can remind you that every legend was once just a kid trying to figure out how far his talent and determination might take him.
And sometimes a project can remind you of something much bigger.
When Kobe died, I wrote three things that I couldn't stop thinking about:
Life isn't fair.
Life is fragile.
Life is precious.
I still don't have answers for the first one.
But I understand the other two a little better today than I did before January 26, 2020.
Maybe that's also why preserving history matters so much to me.
The people, moments and stories we assume will always be there eventually become memories. The things they touched, wore and signed become physical connections to those memories.
For a brief period of time, this little piece of Kobe Bryant's story was entrusted to us.
I'm grateful we had the opportunity to preserve it.
And I'm incredibly proud of what we created.
Watch the full behind-the-scenes story and see this Kobe Bryant #33 high school autograph become a one-of-a-kind Reclaim Customs card:
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