There’s a certain kind of quiet that comes over serious baseball card collectors when they know something important is going on. It wasn’t the noise of a record-breaking sale or a big moment on social media. Instead, there was a steady, knowing acknowledgement that a collection worth studying had arrived. That’s how people feel about Love of the Game’s newest auction, which just started but has already gotten the attention of gamers who don’t usually get excited.
There’s a lot in the catalog. There are more than 270 different kinds of cards, including more than 200 cards from the 19th century alone. The company says this is the biggest collection of 1800s items it has ever put together. Take a moment to think about that claim. These aren’t always good times for auction houses, but it’s hard to argue with the description of what’s for sale here.
The main piece is a Babe Ruth card that most collectors, even experienced ones, have probably never seen before. It is from the H801-8 Boston Store set, which came out in 1917 as part of a promotion at a department store in Chicago. The cards were sold in eight weekly sets of 25 for two cents each. At first, only 5,000 sets were made. There were only three weeks of the sixth series before the whole promotion ended. Ruth was in it. PSA has given grades to eleven examples so far. The one in this auction has a PSA 1 grade, which isn’t usually a good enough condition to get a higher price, but for something this rare, the grade doesn’t really matter. It’s real. That’s enough.
There is also a PSA 2 copy of Shoeless Joe Jackson’s card from the same set for sale. There are only about a dozen known authentic examples in the hobby. Together, these two cards are like an accident record of a deal that most people have forgotten about: in the spring of 1917, a department store in Chicago sold baseball cards to customers for two cents each.
There’s also a Buck Ewing tobacco card from 1893 that has its own strange history. It’s the only one that has been graded by SGC. In 2009, it was found inside the walls of an old house. The next year, it sold at auction for more than $17,000, and now it’s being sold here. It’s possible to romanticize that kind of history too much, but there is something strange and interesting about a card that has been stuck in a wall for more than one hundred years.
You can bid on more than just baseball. This set also includes a 1935 National Chicle Bronko Nagurski card, which is widely thought to be the most important pre-war football card ever made. The card’s reputation comes from a number of things, including the famous player who owned it, the fact that it’s from a rare high-number series, and the fact that it looks great even after ninety years. Before it was taken out of its holder to be stored in a binder, it was graded PSA NM 7. A more recent submission got it graded EX 5. The kind of detail that makes you think about how much things can change depending on the situation.
A 22-card uncut sheet of 1980 Topps Pepsi-Cola All-Stars might be the most quietly interesting lot in the whole catalog. These are cards that were never meant to be seen by the public. The deal didn’t work out before it started. Two out of the three prototype sheets were sent back. The third one was cut up into separate cards. It is thought that only three or four full double-sided sheets have survived. Individual cut versions cards have sold for more than $40,000 at different sales. It’s a little strange to see a full sheet with Hall of Famers like Reggie Jackson, George Brett, and Rod Carew still linked.
Then there’s the fan book. A young fan named John White waited outside of Cleveland’s League Park with an autograph book in 1922 and 1923, getting signatures from 243 players over the course of two seasons. The book is still whole, with signatures from Ruth, Ty Cobb (who signed as “Tyrus R. Cobb”), Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, and many more. In 1977, White wrote a piece about it. It comes with that article, the original envelope, and a typed list of players.
It’s still not clear how the market will react to everything, but this auction seems like the kind that catalog collectors will look back on and use as a guide. There are many threads running through history at the same time: a card from a wall, a campaign that never happened, and a boy with an autograph book outside a ballpark more than one hundred years ago.
