Mickey Mantle’s 1964 salary highest in baseball equates to $674,000 dollars today.
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!