Pinch me I’m dreaming
 

Anyone been called upon to look at and evaluate a baseball card collection acquired by a deceased collector’s family member? Your heart races, you imagine what you’ll discover…what’s your pinch me I’m dreaming story?

Tonight I had that surreal experience. It happened hours after a phone call starting with, ‘I’m a relative of your neighbor and understand you know something about vintage baseball cards…my step-grandfather left our family a thousand cards including a bunch of Mickey Mantles.’

Below is a pic of just some of the treasure trove I assessed alongside my kids and wife who were in equal amazement as I went through each card and spoke to select one’s background and price ranges.

Next up is just what to do with the best of best…grading, selling platform, etc. And equally important to the family is what to do with ALL the rest (hundreds of 56 Topps commons, hundreds of modern patch and signed inserts), to honor the legacy of the family member collector.

that's sick.

i got a chance to look at a mostly early 1950s lot over the summer. tons of bowmans, whitey ford, yogi, scooter. no mantles or mays unfortunately.
but the kicker was a 1912 ty cobb and others. crazy stuff, although this lot definitely is way better - some incredibly high end items. good luck
getting all that figured out - you're gonna make them a lot of money.

Your story sounds amazing, too!! Per the collector’s directive to have the cards be a vehicle to fulfill the family’s dreams, their aim is to use the proceeds to fund rescue dog housing and care on their property.

I’m giving them my nights and weekends to develop a strategy mix of lot aggregation selling to fund grading costs of the high end cards (some shown), grading co selection and timing, then selling platforms, all with their time investment top of mind so this journey doesn’t take over their lives.

As a thanks, they might donate a couple hundred 56 Topps common duplicates to our local youth baseball/softball league to continue giving out (to-date from my PC) a vintage card to each aging out ball player to commemorate their youth career and share with them the love of our hobby.

they sound like pretty great people - and they are lucky to have your expertise to guide them. keep us posted on how it goes, some of those cards are insanely nice!

Nice collection! I'd be interested in the54 Bowman Mays and the 56 commons if some will be sold here! Thanks!

That is awesome and they are lucky to have your help as that is an amazing collection.

Mr hockeyhockey had a nice "find" also. I remember him emailing me when he was looking through it.

Back in the 80s-90s I got to see a few collections from the 50s-60s. For the last 20 years it seems to always be 80s-90s stuff I get asked about.

My once in a lifetime experience was not to assess, but to purchase. One of the guys on my softball team had a friend whose wife's uncle left her a bunch of T206 cards and they were looking to sell. My friend told them he would put them in touch with me, but nothing happened for months. Then, about a year ago, they reached out and we met after the game. Our mutual friend gave them a number of about $1000 for the lot of cards. When I saw them, my jaw dropped. Of course I offered them WAY MORE and they happily accepted my offer. I didn't know much about T206's at the time and now I'm trying to slay the monster and loving it! It would be unlikely that I would go down this road if not for the jump start provided by this purchase. Now I'm at 398 cards out of the 520.

Wow! That is a truly AMAZING T206 collection! Congrats. From what I see there are 10 major HOFer cards which would be around $20K, and the remaining 388 possibly $20K+.

There were about 100 cards in the collection with around 7 or so doubles including an extra Cy Young. I bought the rest of my 398 at shows, here on Net 54 or on ebay. Mostly lower grade stuff, but I sent the key cards from this collection to SGC and got 1.5 to 3's on the key HOF'ers.

Story follow up: Anyone on Net54 collect or want baseball history books? The family I’m helping out has hundreds of books read and collected by their grandfather over the years. They’re giving them away, or are willing to split shipping cost. Just don’t want good books to end up in landfill and to be enjoyed. PM if interested. Thanks!

There is a My Turn at Bat hardback I’d be happy to have. And, anything Senators??? I am also interested in.

PM me please.

Butch

Photo flipper to the rescue!

And don't send them to the landfill...at least donate what isn't taken to a thrift store, and some baseball nut will have a field day.


Brian

I forgot to say...dibs on the doll head.

Brian

I don't see anything of high value here. Not knocking the collection, it's certainly a fun hoard to discover, but if you're strategizing on what to do with them, I would just send the majority to Greg Morris. He will almost certainly net you the most. He grades them as well, and often gets as good or better than what they'd get if already graded by PSA anyhow. These are right in his wheelhouse.

Thanks so much!

Thanks for the photo flip assist and helping ‘turn things around’ for this family :) . Anything remaining will go to Savers or GW.

Wow everyone thanks for sharing love stores like that.

Love it when the family is passing it forward and taking care of rescue dogs and give the commons to kids

Thanks very much for those who have PM’d with interest. The family is parsing out the books per requests and once complete, I’ll coordinate back with those who have PM’d on address to ship to, and plan support of shipping costs (pmt to be sent to the family directly) once shipped and costs are known. Hang tight more to come. Thank you.

Brunswick = MVP!

Thanks!

I had one of those calls that didn't go quite how I envisioned. They call me because a mutual friend knows I am in to baseball cards. I meet with the widow (85ish), and she describes things and mentions there is a full set of garbage pail kids in there. I think, well that is an interesting sidelight we'll see what else. Turns out there is not a single sports card at all, just the GPK (it was a complete set, kind of interesting) and some 90's Marvel. I helped them sell, but I had visions of a stack of 52 Mantles!

Cool find, Brunswick...

Posted before but.............This is from around 20 yrs ago. A nice find it was...cut and pasted.
My first buy from this ebayer (with a -1 feedback) was the E90-2 Wags for 1k.....


I traded the Johnson in a monumental trade deal.....and kept only the Marsans...I believe there might only be 3-4 known Marsans Texas Tommys.....


Jeff- Through an ebay deal, and then many subsequent private deals, I got the following cards from a somewhat illiterate trucker in Northern CA.....I coined it "the trucker boy" find as that is what he did for a living...there's more to the story but only over beers at the National.....here's the story...................this was around late '03- and early '04
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aw...what the heck: ...cut and pasted from the original thread:

I believe I have seen the last small group of inherited cards from the gentleman in Northern California. It was a very informative situation
in that I got to see a nice PCL collection untainted by modern collectors/dealers. It looks like almost all of the cards have been put into a scrapbook at one time as a majority exhibit strong corners and
back damage, though many backs were spared too....... It was neat to see how they were really collected and in what type of numbers, relative to each other. I believe the only cards I missed out on were all 159 of the Colgans, Red Borders, and Tin Tops (if any), and about 5-7 M101-1/2's....Nothing I could do...they just got sold.......The total for all of the cards I got was about 732'ish. I will probably only sell these through ebay or to a large auction house. I am keeping everything I have an interest in, as utmost and foremost, I am still a collector. Including what I had posted before the grand total breakout is/was (several cards have been sold already to happy board/ebay members):

D310 (12) w/weaver fr....overall gd-vg
D311 (61) all different pr-ex
E90-1 (18) w/Jackson (pr-sold), Joss..overall pr-fr
E90-2 (1) Wagner - nice SGC 20....2 moderate creases
E90-3 (2) common and pr-
E101 (9) w/Evers, Jennings pr-fr....major back damage..
E136 Zeenut '11 (113) w/Weaver in fr...others vg'ish
E136 Zeenut '12 (36) gd-vg+/ex
E136 HR Kisses (2) gd
E136 Zeenut '13 (6) all with coupon
E136 Zeenut '14 (23) 6 with coupon 17 without coupon
E137 Zeenut '15 (67) 24 with coupon w/McMullen 43 w/o coup.w/Risberg, Lefty Williams
E137 Zeenut '16 (1) with coupon
E224 Texas Tommy (5) w/Marsans, w/uncatalogued
E-Unc Big Eater (3) w/ horizontal ex, 1 in gd-vg, 1 pr
H-unc Western Playground (40) complete set vg+
T4 Obak- (2) still unidentified but not Weaver.
T206 Old Mill- (23) w/Cobb, Evers, Chance, Willis.pr-fr
T206 Sweet Caporal ?(1) Cobb 350-460 series...pr.
T212-1 Obak (47) nice mix of framed/frameless
T212-2 Obak (116) about 25 different slogans.. pr-ex-mt
T212-3 Obak (131) w/Weaver pr-nrmt/mt
T217 Mono (8) 3 that don't have back damage......pr-gd
T222 Fatima- (7) all common, 1 high number in fr, 2 cut in half, pr....

wish I could find more of these "finds"...but will just go back to
whittling away like I have been for the past several years......
regards all

Wow Leon this must have been mind blowing and got the heart racing! What a trove and cool to be the next steward of these cards.

Unbelievable list of cards Leon.

Hi Net54 friends-happy to announce the cards I’ve been helping steward with the family of original deceased owner are back from SGC! Pretty solid grades IMHO.

I’ve agreed to sell them for the family (zero charge or incentive to me except joy of being part of this story adventure and getting the cards (as well as books from prior post) into the hobby to enjoy as the their Grandfather (Bill) did).

These cards will be listed as a lot in the 1950s BST section. I’m not initially posting a price, as I’ll be considering serious and trending offers in partnership with the family. Please PM if interested.

Thanks and happy collecting!

Personally I would not sell those cards as a group lot if you're trying to maximize. You're going to get lowball offers at best. List them individually at a fair price, or send them to a good ebay seller who takes consignments of this type of material, there are several.

Thanks, understood. Only entertaining serious offers for the lot here on Net54. Will put individually on eBay in next couple days if nothing materializes here at their high trending value.

As an update to this thread, over the winter was able to help the family sell all cards via Net54 (congrats to new owners) and the 55 Bowman Mick via eBay. Didn’t take a single dime (just happy to be part of getting these into the hobby), but was gifted some cool Willie Mays/Giants stuff attached.