A rare baseball card from 1865 of a Brooklyn baseball team is expected to fetch at least six-figures when it goes up for auction on next month.
The 148-year-old card, which features the Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club, was discovered by a man while he was searching for antiques at a yard sale in Maine near the Canadian border.
According to Troy Thibodeau, who works at Saco River Auction Co. in Biddeford, Maine, the card is just one of two in existence and should draw bids of at least $100,000 when it is put on the block on Feb. 6, but it is impossible to put an accurate price tag on it.
“There hasn’t been another one that’s sold,” Thibodeau told the Associated Press. “When there are only two known in the world, what’s it worth.”
The same auction house sold a Michael ‘King’ Kelly baseball card from 1888 last summer for $72,000.
The rare item differs from the standard format for baseball cards that was implemented in the 1880’s and features nine members of the Atlantics team and its manager. The actual card is an original photograph of the team mounted on a card.
The seller, whose name was withheld for privacy purposes, happened to find the card by chance after he purchased a photo album, several old Coke bottles and a couple of oak chairs for under $100 at the yard sale. The card was found inside the photo album and the man mailed it to Saco River Auction.
The only other known copy of the card is owned by the Library of Congress, which has it on display in its book “Baseball Americana” and identifies it as the first dated baseball card. The cards were handed out to supporters of the Atlantics and, in a bold move by the team, to its opponents.
Sportscard Guaranty LLC has authenticated the card, but it is not the rarest one in existence.
A Casey Stengel card that was part of a 1923 promotional set of 30 cards, including Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, holds that honor. There was only one Stengel card produced and it currently sits in Cooperstown at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report