Family finds 3 million dollars of baseball cards in attic

"My grandfather stuck it in the attic a hundred years ago and here it is now, a blessing to his grandchildren."

A blessing for sure.

As the Toledo Blade reports, when Karl Kissner and his cousins were clearing out his grandfather's home in Defiance, Ohio, on Feb. 29 they came across a box of very rare and very valuable baseball cards.

According to the Blade, "experts say the trove of about 700 nearly mint cards just might represent the greatest and rarest discovery in the sports card industry's history. The best of the collection is expected to fetch more than $500,000 at the National Sports Collectors Convention next month in Baltimore while the entire stock could bring in $3 million."


Heritage Auctions, which is handling the sale of the cards, calls this the "Black Swamp Find" because of the "damp landscape on the edge of Defiance." The best cards in the cache, the Blade says, "are part of a rare 30-player set distributed with caramel candy in 1910. Only 635 of the undersized rectangular cards from the E98 series were known to exist."

According to the family, granddad (Carl Hench) ran a meat market southwest of Toledo and apparently collected the cards that came with the candies. "We guess he stuck them in the attic and forgot about them," Kissner told The Associated Press. Hench dies in the 1940s, AP adds.

The set in Defiance had been "frozen in time beneath a wooden doll house and a century's worth of dust," the Blade adds.

Heritage says the players represented include greats such as "Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Chief Bender, Christy Mathewson, Connie Mack, Frank Chance, Hughie Jennings, Johnny Evers, Roger Bresnahan [and] Cy Young."

The AP reports that the family is "evenly dividing the cards and the money" among 20 cousins" named in the will of an aunt who lived in the house until her death last October.

Nice find

In one of our past sports cards threads here I remember us talking about knowing there had to be treasures like this sitting up in old attics somewhere...

Baseball Card JACKPOT hit in Ohio

Defiance home yields rare stash of vintage baseball cards

BY DAVID BRIGGS
BLADE SPORTS WRITER


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Karl Kissner stands next to the attic door of his grandfather's house in Defiance, where some 700 vintage, and extremely valuable baseball cards were discovered. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge
DEFIANCE -- Karl Kissner came upon all sorts of old goods as he rummaged through his grandfather's attic in Defiance this winter.
Gas lamps. A steamer trunk. "Uncle Wiggily's New Airplane" board game from 1920.
But one item made him stop. Frozen in time beneath a wooden doll house and a century's worth of dust, Mr. Kissner found a cardboard green box filled with baseball cards.
The names sounded familiar -- Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Connie Mack -- and he soon contacted an auction house in Dallas.
It was his family's winning lottery ticket.
Experts say the trove of about 700 nearly mint cards just might represent the greatest and rarest discovery in the sports card industry's history. The best of the collection is expected to fetch more than $500,000 at the National Sports Collectors Convention next month in Baltimore while the entire stock could bring in $3 million.
A 1910 Honus Wagner baseball cards found in the attic of a house in Defiance, Ohio. HERITAGE AUCTIONS Enlarge
The cards are part of a rare 30-player set distributed with caramel candy in 1910. Only 635 of the undersized rectangular cards from the E98 series were known to exist and most of those displayed significant wear -- a treasure so limited that even the most zealous collectors had long given up hope of piecing together a complete set.
"Amazing. It's just a blessing," said Mr. Kissner, 51, who owns Kissner's Restaurant in town. "My grandfather stuck it in the attic a hundred years ago and here it is now, a blessing to his grandchildren."
The cards belonged to Carl Hench, his grandfather, who ran a meat market in Defiance, 55 miles southwest of Toledo, and stockpiled the cards that came with candies at the time. Then he lost interest and placed the collection in a box in his attic, where they went undisturbed for more than 100 years.
His daughter, Jean Hench, lived in the house until she died in October, leaving the property and its contents to her 20 nieces and nephews. Mr. Kissner was named the head of the estate and helped clearing out the home.
It was not until February that one of his cousins exhumed the box that would change their lives.
At first, the family embraced the cards as a unique slice of a bygone era, but nothing more. The box remained on a dresser in the hallway for three days.
"We didn't understand their true significance," Mr. Kissner said.
But he researched the cards and learned they could be valuable. Mr. Kissner moved them to a more secure location of the house, then the vault at a local bank.
He contacted Heritage Auctions in Dallas, piquing the company's interest but also skepticism. Mr. Kissner could not sleep as he awaited the verdict, which would come when Chris Ivy, the director of sports auctions, and another staff member visited Defiance.
Mr. Ivy said it felt like he was in a movie as he arrived in blue jeans.
"You guys will stick out here if you come wearing suits," he recalled Mr. Kissner saying -- to see if this small Ohio town indeed had hidden the ultimate prize.
It was, in fact, the real thing.
Seeing the cards spread across a table on the second floor of Mr. Kissner's restaurant, Mr. Ivy knew the haul was worth millions.
They were pristine, the colors rich, the edges pointed. There, too, were cards of Wagner, nicknamed Hans, one of 15 Hall of Fame players in the set and the most valuable. One of the former Pirates star's rarest cards had sold for $2.8 million in 2007.
"We had never seen examples that looked this nice before," Mr. Ivy said.
Mr. Ivy said finding something like this is more difficult than winning the lottery.
Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator, confirmed the value as he graded each card on a scale of 1-to-10. He was stunned. A Cobb card, for instance, had never graded higher than a 7.
"After 21 years of grading and grading over a million cards a year, that's the highest grade ever," Mr. Orlando said. "Well, there were 16 9s in this find alone. Honus Wagner, the highest grade was a 5 before this. We graded a 10, we graded several nines, some 8s, some 8.5s.''
Mr. Orlando laughed as he continued to run off the numbers. He called the estimate of $3 million "conservative."
"We're in the business of hearing lots of stories about people claiming to have this or claiming to have that," he said. "So we're a little bit skeptical. But when the cards arrived, they were just absolutely spectacular. ... This could be considered the greatest single find of cards ever."
For Mr. Kissner, his good fortune continues to sink in. The restaurateur, who will split the money from the cards evenly with the other 19 family members who are part of the estate, spent Tuesday talking with reporters, including one from Australia. He awaited a crew from CBS that flew in to share his story on the national news.
"This is a little more than I expected today," Mr. Kissner said with a laugh.
Then again, so has it all.
"My, what more you can ask for?" he asked.

Sorry, didn't see the first thread.

WOW what a find

Never heard of baseball cards being in candies...at least those candies.

BAGIANT said:

Never heard of baseball cards being in candies...at least those candies.

Click to expand...

Think it's a little before our time.... But remember some special inserts with some candy.

Glad to hear someone in Toledo made something happen for others, very little going on in Toledo for years.... (close as you can get to Detroit) the rockets have sucked for a long time....

Sounds like a fraud, I'd be interested to know how many of them "mint condition" cards are not valuable, I bet they're counterfeit. Cmon, pointed edges? Who would have taken that kind of care a 100 years ago?

mnmike said:

Sounds like a fraud, I'd be interested to know how many of them "mint condition" cards are not valuable, I bet they're counterfeit. Cmon, pointed edges? Who would have taken that kind of care a 100 years ago?

Click to expand...

If their going to auction haven't they been checked out?

If these cards are real and every indication says they areYou can mark this post and take it to the bank.


The 3 million figure is a joke.


That collection is going to sell for at least 25 million.I have no clue where the 3 mill comes from. When they hit auction it's going to be unreal.
Just the Wagner 10 alone could sell for 6 or 7 million. Who knows maybe even 10 million.This collection could go as high as 50 million





I h

That same Wagner card with a 7 grade sold for 3 mil a few years ago. According to the story they have a 10 grade of the same card. That card will go down in history as the most valuable card on earth. Who knows that 1 card could hit 8 figures

mickj said:

If their going to auction haven't they been checked out?

Click to expand...

Heritage would pay to have those graded since they are getting 10% . I will follow this auction, it should break all the records for prices.

BAGIANT said:

Never heard of baseball cards being in candies...at least those candies.

Click to expand...

In that era, cards were in tobacco and caramels. Cracker Jack cards go for huge prices.

I think the 3 million figure comes from the non graded book value.

But according to the article these cards have been graded by PSA which is tied for the most respected grading company in the business.


Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator, confirmed the value as he graded each card on a scale of 1-to-10. He was stunned. A Cobb card, for instance, had never graded higher than a 7.
"After 21 years of grading and grading over a million cards a year, that's the highest grade ever," Mr. Orlando said. "Well, there were 16 9s in this find alone. Honus Wagner, the highest grade was a 5 before this. We graded a 10, we graded several nines, some 8s, some 8.5s.''

The part I bolded is the key.
A 10 card at that age in that set was previously considered non existant.
You cant put a price on something that nobody thought existed before now.
Not only did they find a 10. It just so happened to be Honus Wagner.
Like the story says the highest graded Honus Wagner ever recorded before that one was a 5.
A 5 is is BAD. You can put a card in your bike spokes and ride around the block with it at the card could still get a 5.
But this Wagner was a 10.

Just to give you perspective on the 10.

You can go to the store right now and buy 100 ramdom cards in 2012 right off the shelf and you would not be certain to get a 10 out of a brand new pack.

A PSA 10 has to be perfect in every way.

Not only do these people have a PSA 10 Wagner, the story says have 16 nines. Thats unbelievable. And lots of 8's and 8.5's.


I say they get over 20 mil on the low side and over 50+ mil on the high side for this collection.

Its hard to put an exact figure on an auction like this because ego's get involved.
If you have 2 people who want it really bad thats all it takes to bring a price that you cannot imagine.

But the 3 mill figure is a joke.
Thats a fact.