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AnonymousHi Marc! In this particular case, according to the family, there were additional cards, but they were thrown out 20 years ago. They said that the cards were glued into an album (by a family member) and they couldn't get them out, then after a while they threw the album out. In fact, here's a quote of a portion of a letter from the consignor about this:
"After my Dad's mother died, he found that "booklet" of cards --and the Ruth card, which was separate-- in her personal effects. At some point (about 35-40 years ago?), my family had apparently tried to remove the other cards from the pages in that book, but could not do so without destroying or tearing the cards, so they just left them there. About 20 years ago, that compilation book of cards was literally disintegrating, so it was just thrown out.
How the Ruth card missed inclusion in the "deadly" display book, we don't honestly know -- however, I find it extremely interesting that SGC found glue on the back of that card."
End of quote.
The Ruth card has a hint of glue on the reverse (and this is why the card was graded VG by SGC - it actually looks nicer).
The Ruth example REA sold in April 2007, also from a noncollecting family, was accompanied by one additional common card. This card was auctioned elsewhere in the catalog (separate from the Ruth), but the writeup noted that that card came with the Ruth.
When several Ruth rookie cards were found all at the same time in Baltimore in the 1990s, they were accompanied by dozens of additional cards. A newspaper story on the find at the time even noted that the cards were strewn all over the attic. When the cards were found, the owner only made it known that he had one card, which he consigned to REA's 1997 auction. He sold the additional Ruths privately. Everyone wanted the Ruths but no attention was paid to the common cards and at that time they really were not thought of as all that valuable (hard to believe in light of the fact that they are worth a fortune today but that just how it was). Dan McKee tried to track down the common (non-Ruth) cards years later, as they never surfaced, and I was even able to provide him with the owner's name and address to help him track the guy down, but too many years had passed and there was no trace of him - or the dozens of additional cards which were clearly described in the newspaper articles at the time. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, and these stories may provide some insight.