There is something very interesting about a chest made of wood. Things like letters, coins, and old photos that people meant to keep but forgot are kept there. When Tom Conrad found a baseball card on Facebook Marketplace, he wasn’t looking for one. He likes to collect old soda bottles, oil cans, and signs. The everyday events in American history. But something made him stop, and for $75, he got what might be one of the most important grassroots card finds in recent memory.
There were 122 baseball cards carefully stuck to the lid and inside walls of that chest. Not new playing cards. Do not reprint. Cards from 1909 to 1911 with names like Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and John McGraw on them. These are names that should be on courthouse walls, not in someone’s trash in Providence, Rhode Island. Conrad bought the box from someone who got it from an estate sale. That means these cards were handled by at least two different people before anyone figured out what they were on. It’s hard not to think about how often things like this are thrown away.
For some reason, the cards were kept safe by being glued down. That sounds like harm. In real life, it might have been what kept them alive. Many of them were kept flat and safe from moving and bending for more than one hundred years. Card Vault is a store that Tom Brady co-owns and has a trading card expert who looked at the find and said that even a Cy Young card in bad shape could fetch several thousand dollars. A few years ago, a graded nearly-mint example sold for more than $100,000, he said.
People who don’t know much about old baseball cards tend to undervalue that fact. These weren’t made to be collected. They were put inside cigarette packs as a small incentive for people to keep buying cigarettes. Most of them were lost, torn, bent into bicycle spokes, or just thrown away. Almost by accident, the ones that made it out alive did so. It’s not just a lucky find at a swap meet to find a collection of 122 from that time that’s mostly whole. It’s really strange.
The auction market as a whole tells the same story, but from a different point of view. Mile High Card Company recently took apart what was rated as the fifth-best master set of 1959 Topps cards ever put together. The results were hard to miss. A PSA 9 Willie Mays card from the set sold for over $72,000, which was a huge increase from the previous record. A grade A Mickey Mantle All-Star card sold for almost $12,000. A Billy Loes variation card that was so rare that only serious collectors would know to look for it sold for $17,580. It had last sold for $304 in 2009. There were more than 1,800 lots for sale, and the total price for the whole thing was close to $489,000.
At least it doesn’t look like these prices are in a bubble. There is a real argument for scarcity here. Cards from the early to mid-20th century were not made to last. The ones that did, especially the high grades, are off the market and won’t be coming back. People who know that tend to treat them less like sports memorabilia and more like art, which is pretty much how Conrad frames it. “A true piece of history for baseball itself,” he stated, “but for Americana in general.”
The collection is shown on his Facebook page. The highest bid is now $6,700, and it’s still going up. It seems a little strange and out of place for a man who normally deals in oil cans and advertising signs to be in this situation. But that’s how things usually work out. History doesn’t make itself known. It’s stuck to the inside of an old wooden chest and waits for someone to open the lid.
