The Kind Of Finds We All Hope To Find

Today I read a story about two brothers in New Jersey, ages 76 and 79 years old, had an attic find from their old baseball card collection that they had forgotten about.

It started with the younger brother seeing a story earlier this year about Heritage’s auction that included a PSA graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle selling for $3.5 million. He discounted the story as being an error but when he saw that NFL lineman Evan Mathis sold his PSA 9 Mantle for $2.88 million he decided to go searching for his and his brother’s old collection, which had been stored in their mother’s attic before she passed in 2006 and then moved to the older brother’s basement. 

Besides other cards from the early 1950s, they found five 1952 Mantle cards, that have since been graded and ranged from PSA 5 through an 8.5. They sold a PSA 5 and 7.5 last month ($72k and $200k respectively) and another PSA 5 plus a 7 and the 8.5 all go up to auction later this year. 

Car enthusiast have barn finds, we have attic/basement finds.

Seven Always Has Been Better Than One

How about this for an amazing find?

A family from South Carolina had gone out to California to help clean up the home of a recently deceased great-grandfather and in a crumpled up brown paper bag they found seven T206 Ty Cobb cards, all with Ty Cobb backs no less. They finished the work they were doing in the home and returned to South Carolina where they contacted a local dealer to find out if the cards were worth anything.

After being urged by the dealer to get them authenticated and graded the cards were sent to PSA where all seven of the cards graded from PSA 2.5-4.5 (One is 1.5 Poor, Four are 2.5 Good, one is 3.5 VG and one is 4.5 VG-EX). PSA is calling them “The Lucky 7 Find”.

Previously there were 15 known copies of the T206 Ty Cobb with Ty Cobb back so this find is unbelievable when you consider the rarity. I would keep the best 2.5, run a contest for the 1.5 (Talk about an insane contest) and sell the rest.