My answer is somewhat off beat (people who know me would say, "what else is new?").
With that much money, instead of buying one card, I would try to buy one collection.
I would fly to London and try to buy the Edgar Wharton Tigar baseball card collection from the museum that currently has it. I mean, what good are old American issued baseball cards in England anyway? How many over there really know about them or appreciate them?
Anyway, once I owned them, I would have them all scanned and put on a website so that people could enjoy them and study them. I would then have them all graded and hide them away in safe deposit boxes.
The main condition for the purchase, I would tell the museum, is that I would do what I just said I would do and that none of the cards would be sold individually. If I ever did sell the cards, the museum would get the first shot at buying them back and at the same price I paid for them.
Doing this would allow the museum to have some funds to do other things with, would allow MORE baseball card enthusiasts to see some rare cards and would give the museum comfort in knowing that I wasn't going to just buy the collection and then sell it off piecemeal for a huge profit.
David
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