Backstory - Morehouse Bakery Ruth, Jackson et al discovery in Mass

[Belfast1933]

Hello all

I’ve really been looking forward to sharing the full story here of the recent discovery of the Morehouse Bakery Ruth (2!), Joe Jackson, Jim Thorpe and several other HOFers, stars and commons which all happened at a garage sale in Danvers Mass, about 16 miles from Lawrence, the home of the Morehouse Bakery

Brian Dwyer and PJ Kinsella from REA have been fantastic partners on this and PJ wrote a great story which I’ll link below. But I wanted to also share the really fun back story to how we even got to this point.

As we were preparing to sell my wife’s childhood home in Danvers Mass, we decided to have a garage sale to help clear out some unneeded items (sidebar advice - don’t bother with garage sales anymore… Facebook marketplace is your friend here!). While I was managing a few yard sale customers, a neighbor came by on his bike to introduce himself and just be friendly and neighborly. When he began to discuss baseball cards, of course my antenna went up - when he said they were passed down to him from his father, I did some calendar math on my head and figured these cards may actually be going back quite a few years.

Turns out, I didn’t go back far enough - most of his 800+ collection of cards were pre-war, lots of nice T206’s, T205’s and all the way up to some beauties from late 40’s Bowman into the early 50’s Topps and Bowman.

I won’t repeat what PJ covered so nicely in the story about the multiple spreadsheets that “John” sent me but I will add some fun color - when I saw the spreadsheet with the Morehouse cards, the names (Jackson, Brown, Thorpe, Felsh, etc) were very familiar of course. But the issue itself wasn’t familiar to me. So I did what I always do when I am looking for expert help…

I reach out to Don Hontz (most of you know Don here) and to the Net54 experts here. And neither source disappointed! Lots of great advice and background on the Morehouse issue. Don specifically connected me with a pal who was super helpful…

“Jeff… that Jackson card has only been RUMORED to exist. It has never been graded or bought/sold publically”

[Insert blown mind here!]

My initial thoughts of buying the collection outright just flew out the window - I was not going to try and take advantage of John’s lack of hobby knowledge (he had a 20+ year old price guide with him when I first saw his collection). Instead, I hoped that John would agree to “hire” me to help him sell these treasures.

One more bit of fun backstory here that didn’t make PJ’s terrific story was when I called John to confirm that we were still on to meet and see the cards on an upcoming Sunday - he told me “… by the way, I found a few other cards that I didn’t add the the spreadsheets”

When he mentioned something about “…the better of the two Ruth cards” I had to ask my wife if I was reading this text message right!

[mind blown occurrence #2!]

Again, PJ’s story covers all of the efforts and joyful work that John and I put into the process of selecting REA to be our partners for this historic collection. And as many of you know, I’ve also been having a blast helping John to privately sell the rest of his collection of prewar cards (20 more just came back from PSA yesterday!)

It’s all been a crazy fun ride and many of YOU here were super helpful in making this a well-informed, joy ride.

John and his wife and my wife and I are actually planning to have an “Auction Watch Party” kick off next Friday when the REA auction goes live at noon (John’s idea - love it!)

Sorry I couldn’t share details until now - the backstory was understandable and intentionally embargoed until REA was able to land their national story (this past Sunday in the Athletic/New York Times) and then in the hobby online journal, Sports Collectors Daily.)

But my own first stop with the backstory to the backstory HAD to be here - I look forward to seeing you all at upcoming events so we can chat more about this all.

You just got to love this hobby (And garage sales!)

Here are some photos of the day I first saw this collection…

And here is PJ’s full story that just posted last night

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...eading-to-rea/