Hundreds of rare vintage baseball cards found tucked inside a California home’s closet have now been acquired by auctioneers, Newsweek reported Sunday.
The collection of 600 cards includes several of Babe Ruth, one of Shoeless Joe Jackson, and numerous Hall of Famers, according to Newsweek.
Auction Monthly in Granite Bay, California, said the company received a call from a man named John in Tracy who said his father, Ed, began collecting sports cards in the 1920s.
“He would store every card securely in a 1900s Pedro Tobacco tin and had names like Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb and many more,” Brandon of Auction Monthly told Newsweek.
An image shows many of the cards stacked neatly in the box:
The cards had been stored in a cigarette tin box for decades. https://t.co/ZxY7IgZF9s
— KIRO 7 (@KIRO7Seattle) December 26, 2023
When John’s father passed away, he was going through his belongings and found the collection he had been introduced to years ago.
“Like many of those who grew up in the Depression, my father and members of his family did not discard anything. When I was young, elementary school age, I remember my father showing me the cards and the tin they were in,” he said, according to the auction house’s press release.
The collection also features cards of Walter Johnson, Casey Stengel, and others from the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” team, Brandon told Newsweek.
A similar discovery happened in 2020 when a family in New Jersey found tons of valuable baseball memorabilia in their uncle’s attic after he died, CBS Mornings reported at the time:
According to Brandon, his team is still evaluating what price the cards might fetch, “but we estimate it will likely be in the high six figures.”
It is interesting to note that a Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card from 1914 recently sold for $7.2 million, ESPN reported December 4.
“It narrowly missed the $7.25 million paid for a T206 Sweet Caporal Honus Wagner card in August 2022. It’s the most expensive Ruth item of all time,” the outlet said.