NC family to sell rare, 100-year-old baseball card dad found at a flea market
EDITOR’S NOTE: THE RARE TY COBB BASEBALL CARD SOLD AT AUCTION ON DEC. 8 FOR $337,704, THE SECOND-HIGHEST SALE IN THE AUCTION BEHIND THE EXTREMELY RARE 1916 MOREHOUSE BAKING BABE RUTH ROOKIE CARD THAT SOLD FOR $812,724, ACCORDING TO ROBERT EDWARD AUCTIONS
A North Carolina family is selling a rare, more than 100-year-old baseball card that their late father found at a flea market in the 1980s.
The father collected baseball cards and knew the card might be special because of 12-time batting champion Ty Cobb’s portrait on the front, Brian Dwyer, president of New Jersey-based Robert Edward Auctions, told The Charlotte Observer on Tuesday.
The dad likely had no idea how rare the card is, Dwyer said. Fewer than 24 are known to exist, he said.
“It’s a card that for many years wasn’t even known to exist, until the 1970s or ‘80s,” Dwyer said.
“Exceedingly rare” back of the card
The T206 Ty Cobb portrait card with red background is part of the same series as a 1910 “Slow” Joe Doyle error card that a Charlotte-area family sold via REA for $1.3 million in August 2023, the Observer reported at the time.
The undiscovered 1910 baseball card topped all other sales in REA’s national auction of rare baseball memorabilia that summer.
Cobb’s red portrait card “is already one of the hobby’s most iconic pieces,” REA spokesman P.J. Kinsella said. “But what makes this example truly remarkable and valuable is the ‘Ty Cobb’ Tobacco advertisement on the back.”
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Four Cobb cards appear in the series, also including one with a green Cobb portrait background and others of the Hall of Famer with and without a bat on his shoulder, Kinsella said.
On the back of the N.C. family’s Cobb red portrait card is a “Ty Cobb Tobacco” advertisement, “which is exceedingly rare to find, almost impossible to find,” Kinsella said.
“The advertising backs on all of these cards are what can really add some serious value,” he said. “If you rank the rarity of all of the advertising backs of all of the T206 cards, this is the rarest,” Kinsella said.
Card auction begins Nov. 22
The family of the man who bought the card at a flea market lives in the Greensboro area, Kinsella said. REA doesn’t release consignors’ names, he said.
REA has no idea what the man paid for the card or the location of the market, Dwyer and Kinsella said.
“The details of where the flea market was have kind of been lost to time,” Dwyer said. “To the best of our understanding, it was somewhere in the North Carolina region, but we don’t know where specifically.”
“We know he was frequenting flea markets and other places where he might find old baseball cards,” Dwyer said. “He was an avid collector. And one day he stumbled upon this card.”
The family took the card to a large sports card convention in Ohio this year to see if anyone might know its value, Dwyer said.
“They were looking to get information and met us there for the first time,” he said. “We had no idea they were coming, no idea what they had, and we were pleasantly surprised to learn exactly what they had with them.”
Industry-recognized card-grading company SGC evaluated the card at 2.5 on a scale of 10.
“While that may not seem to be that impressive on its face, for this particular card, it actually ranks as one of the best-condition examples,” Dwyer said.
The auction of rare sports cards and memorabilia runs on the Robert Edward Auctions website from Friday, Nov. 22, to Sunday, Dec. 8. Initial bids are due by 9 p.m. Dec. 8.
In its 2024 summer auction, REA sold a Ty Cobb red portrait card with the same grade for just under $5,000, “but it had a common (Piedmont Tobacco Co.) advertisement,” Dwyer said. “And we’re starting the bidding on the card we’re speaking about today at $75,000.”
The discovery was the second “very rare, very significant card discovered in North Carolina from this series in the last year, year-and-a-half,” the Joe Doyle error card being the first, Dwyer said.
“That’s a testament to the fact that there was production in that area. A lot of the cards originated from factories in the Tobacco Road area of North Carolina. So it’s quite fascinating.”
“For a lot of people” who bought tins of tobacco in the early 20th century, the cards in the tins were a complete afterthought” and were discarded, Dwyer said.
This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 10:26 AM with the headline "NC family to sell rare, 100-year-old baseball card dad found at a flea market."