Delong vs. U.S. Caramel

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Posted By: barrysloate

In 1998, I got a call from a man in New Mexico who said while cleaning the garage he found his childhood collection of baseball cards (he grew up in New York). The collection consisted of a pile of Goudeys that had the little ads at the bottom clipped off, and two U.S. Caramel cards. One was of Lou Gehrig, his boyhood hero; he could not remember why he kept the other one, but it was Charles Lindstrom (I theorized that he kept it because he was the only kid on the block who had one).

Before we spoke, he bought a catalog and looked up the cards, and saw what he thought was a price tag of $2500 for the Lindy. The print was small, and it was only when he showed the cards to friend that he noticed the listing actually said $25,000! Now he knew he had something valuable. He made a few calls and I was one of them. We hit it off pretty well and he agreed to let me auction it.

One memory I had is he said he did not want to take less than 15K for it, and I told him he had nothing to worry about. But I had no idea what it was worth and felt I made a really bad mistake telling him that. As it turned out it sold for $92,000, and we all had a laugh over it. It has changed hands a couple of times, and you are correct that Fritsch at least at one time owned both. I don't know their current status.