The Find that Turned out to be Real

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Posted By: Todd Evans

Back in the summer of 1999, I was searching the classified ads that people post on the old baseball.com website, it may have been the same one that Peter mentioned in his post. Well, I see an ad that says they have 207 1933 Goudeys in EX to NM condition including (4) Ruth's, Gehrig, Dean and Bengough. It also list that there are 459 1939 Playball with (4) Williams and (4) DiMaggio's in the same condition. The asking price was $27,000. I email the poster and excitedly waited for the reply.

Two to three weeks go by and no response so I thought it was a scam. I go down to Atlanta to attend the National with some cards and items from another find that I made and will post later, (I have a good Mr. Mint story). I get back into town three or four days later and there is a reply in my email with his phone #. I call him up to have him send me some scans of the cards but he was an older gentleman and wasn't too computer literate and didn't have a scanner. So I told him to photo copy a couple of the cards and fax them to me. The next thing I know I get a list of each card and next to it what he thought the grade was as well as some photocopies of some of the cards. I'm thiking Wow this guy really has these so I arrange to meet him in Pittsburgh where he is located. I drive down from Louisville, KY to Pittsburgh, PA with cash and protection, if you know what I mean in a briefcase. We meet and there are two people there, a middle aged man who I had been communicating with and his father in his late 80's, who had originally purchased and collected the cards. We meet at the son's workplace and go into the conference room to start going though the cards.

The next thing you know he brings in some shoe boxes and out comes a load of 1933 Goudey's that are in VG to EX-MT condition. The hoard of 1933 Goudey's (224) turned out to be just 15 cards short of a complete set. Out comes another larger shoe box with a hoard of 1939 Playball cards. This box contained over 450 cards in better condition than the Goudeys. (4) Williams, (4) DiMaggio's, I was amazed. The guy had 3 complete low # sets and was just 11 cards short of a 4th.

Well, it gets down to the time to make the deal and he raises the price from $27k to $32k so I'm like hey what's going on here? So I ask them if they have anymore cards and he said he does. He brings in some more boxes and out comes a bunch of 1933 Goudey Sport Kings, some 1938 R42 Don't Let it Happen Over Here cards, a bunch of Goudey Indian cards and a large hoard of 1938 Horror's of War cards. These cards were all in comparable condition to the other cards. There were 40 out of a possible 48 for a complete set of 1933 Sport Kings (missing the Ruth, Cobb, Hubbell and Didrickson). The golfer cards (Hagen, Sarazen and Jones cards were real nice as well as several others like the Rockne and Hoppe.

In the end we come to a price of $32k for everything. I pay them cash and we're all happy and we part ways. I ended up consigning the cards to Mastro's where they had PSA grade some of the cards. The four 1939 Playball Williams' ended up grading out one 8, one 7 and 2 6's while the four DiMaggios greded out at three 7's and one 6. The rest of the Playballs graded ut well with the majority coming back 7's and 8's. The Sport Kings graded out well with the Hagen, Sarazen, Shore Rockne, Londos and Hoppe all came back PSA 8's while the Bobby Jones just missed coming back a PSA 7.

The collection was sold over two different auctions, the 1999 Millennium auction and following June 2000 auction. I did good, but I thought the 1939 Playballs were sold wrong as they should have been broken up and I would have realized a much higher price. The timinng also was an issue as this auction was right after the Halper sale so I'm sure some lots were effected. If I had it to do over again, I would have had more of them graded and just listed them over time on Ebay and would have more than likely made more money since the person that bought the 1939 Playball lot listed the 1939 Playball Ted Williams PSA 8 pn Ebay right after the Mastro auction and got over $8k for it.

It was once-in-a-lifetime deal that just happend to turn out to be real. I have another story that I will post later about a small find that could have been so much bigger than this but it turns out with a sad ending.