It’s pretty amazing when a sealed cardboard box that has been stashed away, forgotten, and buried under years of junk turns out to be worth more than most people make in a lifetime. That’s pretty much what happened when a father and son in Regina, Saskatchewan, cleaned out the family office and found a brown case of 1979–80 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards that no one had touched in decades.
Heritage Auctions paid $3.72 million USD for the case. When the buyer’s premium was added, the winning bidder, a Canadian who did not want to be named, paid more like $4.2 million Canadian. It is the most valuable case of unopened trading cards ever sold at auction. It beats the previous record of $1.8 million, which was set in 2020 by a sealed case of 1986–87 Fleer basketball cards with Michael Jordan’s rookie card.
According to everyone who knew him, the man who bought the case was a serious collector. He was the type of person who eagerly bought boxes in the 1960s and 1970s but, as life often does, never got around to opening them all. His family had lost track of which ones were where because he bought so many over the years. This case got pushed back behind stacks and stacks of other things, where it was sealed and waiting. As he helped clean up the office, his son found it. It’s possible that neither of them knew what they were holding at first.
The most interesting thing about this case is probably what it contains. One of the most sought-after sets of hockey cards ever is the 1979–80 O-Pee-Chee set, which has Wayne Gretzky’s rookie card. The NHL still calls him “The Great One.” He then won four Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers and set records for career points and assists that are still being used today. Even if it’s not in perfect shape, his rookie card can fetch a lot of money. A very good one sold by itself at Heritage three years ago for $3.75 million. Heritage thinks that the sealed case could hold about 27 of them.
They called it “the greatest unopened find of the 21st century,” which is a strong statement that is easy to back up. The case has 16 wax boxes that hold more than 10,000 cards. Each box has 48 packs for 14 cards. Before the auction even started, each of those boxes was checked to make sure it was real. This sealed case was confirmed to be the only one of its kind in the world when it was taken to the Baseball Card Exchange in the United States for examination.
The family and close friends got together to watch the bids come in. I can only guess how that room felt—somewhere between not believing it and realizing that things had changed. Jason Simonds, a sports card expert at Heritage, said they were “ecstatic,” which sounds like the right word but is probably too mild.
There is more to this story than just the dollar amount that makes it worth your time. The person who bought that case never opened it, not because he forgot to, but because he put off doing so. He planned to sell sets of cards he made. He never did get there. He also kept something that collectors had long thought didn’t exist anymore by not opening it. Luck like this is strange; it rewards patience you didn’t even know you were getting better at.
The cards are still sealed. The person who bought them will decide if they want to open the case or leave it closed. Both options make sense in their own ways. In Saskatchewan, though, a family who came to clean out an office in the basement left with a story they will never forget.
