Events like this really make us understand why some people are willing to buy other people’s abandoned stuff: you never really know when you’ll come across a small (or big!)fortune. This story is about a really old baseball card bought at a yard sale for a truly insignificant sum. The buyer (anonymous person) paid less than $100 for the album that contained the card, plus a couple of oak chairs and some old Coca-Cola bottles.
Lucky for the buyer, he figured out that the photo in the album was old and special, and specialists confirmed that it was a 148-year-old baseball card, from a time when the sport was near its infancy. It depicted the Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club, whose players and coach were known as the first champions of the game. The team also contributed to the founding of the National Association of Base Ball Players, which later evolved into today’s National League.
Even though the seller had hoped to get as much as $500,000 for the vintage photo (which doesn’t look like the modern-day cards), Saco River Auction Co. only managed to sell it for $92,000. According to Tom Bartsch of Sports Collectors Digest, the price was a good one, considering that this was a pre-war picture that did not represent an iconic Hall of Famer.
