Posted on 10/29/2010 11:49:30 AM PDT by kayemmbee
The baseball card is in horrible shape -- it has a big crease in the upper right-hand corner, three of its white borders have been cut off and it has been laminated.
But collectors still are likely to go nuts over a rare century-old Honus Wagner baseball card from the T206 series, recently found in a safe deposit box of a man who left all his possessions to a group of nuns, the Baltimore-based School Sisters of Notre Dame.
The sisters have decided to auction off the card, which is expected to sell for $150,000 to $200,000, with the proceeds going to their ministries in 35 countries around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Wow....what a neat find and I bet the money will actually be used for good....nice story...thanks for the post
Earlier this year, I attended a personal appearance for Vernon Law, Cy Young Award winner of the 1960 Pirates. Even back in his day (more than a half century after Honus), he told us that just about every MLB player had an off-season job to make ends meet. He did deliveries for a dairy. ElRoy Face was a carpenter and everyone else on that great team had similar working class jobs. No wonder the fans related so much better to them back in the day!
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If I’m not mistaken, this is from the time when baseball cards were sold in cigarette packs. The government will probably try to gather some type of sin-tax on the auction revenues.
When I lived in Baltimore, I heard many stories of how the great Orioles and Colts would live in city neighborhoods and were "regular joes" even during the season. And I'm not talking about scrubs. I'm talking Brooksie and Johnny U.
I remember reading that the Dodgers top pitcher in the '60s, Sandy Koufax, made around $25,000 per year.
Current bid is $180,000 (with buyer’s premium $215,100)
http://sports.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=7028&Lot_No=80079
Mickey Mantle’s 1964 salary highest in baseball equates to $674,000 dollars today.
I really want to buy this card, it’ll be a great addition to the shop but I gotta call my buddy first and have him take a look at it.
Back around 1961 our old neighbor in Detroit who was a Jack of all Trades, gave me a white pillow case stuffed full to the top with old baseball cards. When I got them home, I dumped them all on the kitchen table to check them out. They were all early, most from the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s. With multiples of the greats like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, ect. I put them in the attic and forgot about them. Many years later when I heard they had substantial collectors value, I asked my dad for my old baseball cards only to find out that he had thrown them out in the trash years before.
I can proudly say that if it wasn’t for the keen intuition of long term investment “helpers” in the collecting field, like the moms and dads all over the country who threw away their kids comic book and baseball card collections, these things wouldn’t be worth half as much as they are today!
Yeah, my Mom was great like that. She threw out my entire collection of baseball cards and Superman comic books from the 1950s.
I didn’t know nuns were big collectors.
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