General Forum

I was wondering, have you guys ever found a card in your collection you didn't know you had that was valuable or is really rare? One time I found a Sidney Crosby UD MVP RC card in a book I didn't even know I had!

I stopped collecting cards in 2003, and started really collecting again early last year. I had gotten a box of 12-13 Hoops as a Christmas gift in either 2014 or 2015. Found out later that the Klay Thompson and Jimmy Butler cards in that blaster were actually rookie cards once I later discovered the NBA lockout prevented rookies being released in 11-12. 

I wouldn't say thse are really  "gems" as I'm sure they aren't worth much, but still cool to find out I had 2 rookies of stars that I didn't know I had. 

Double RC classes can be a doozy haha 

I bought a 1940 Play Ball reprint set and found an original card in it less than a couple years ago. 

No, but I keep very detailed records of what I have. However, considering they have not been sorted properly by set since 2004, opening each box is a mystery.

That's a pretty common occurence in MLB cards and NFL too. You pull some cards of a freshly drafted player and they are unknown players to you. Years later, you find out that RC card you forgot about all those years ago is now a star player.

My best example would be this: For Christmas in 2000, my grandma bought me several random packs of football cards. I pulled my first-ever pack-pulled AU card from a pack of Fleer Tradition. That was a bust of a player and I just FINALLY traded it away a few months ago. BUT, in a pack of 2000 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory, I pulled a Tom Brady RC card SN2000. The only reason I kept it was b/c I also collect Patriots cards. That was a $3 card when I pulled it and today it is a $100 card! If it wasn't for Drew Bledsoe and Curtis Martin making me a Patriots fan in the mid-90's (after the Panthers and Packers), I would have traded that card away and still be kicking myself in the rear to this day!! That card did not change in value for 3 years and it continued to go up for several years, then back down a bit, and then back up again. HOLY CRAP! I just NOW checked the BV to see if it changed since the Super Bowl win and it jumped up to $150!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most of my other examples would be MLB, but nothing like that card.

Think I've said this before, but I'll repeat. When I was 14 in 1979, I bought a box of old cards off a nine year old for five bucks. We were both thrilled. Cards from the 50's and 60's, stars, a nice lot. I put them away, looked at them every now and then. It wasn't until about 8 years ago that I noticed that someone had written his name in pencil on the 1970 Pete Rose card. Upon closer inspection, it seems that someone was Pete Rose. It appears Jim Kaat similarly marred his 1970 card. I've never had the autographs authenticated, but I'm confident they're real.

Other than that, like others, I'm surprised regularly at the rookies I own without knowing they were to become somebodies

V3

In the early 90's when I got my collection from the parents house since I was in the Army. I finally had a chance to organize and in a box I found a 79-80 Topps Gretzky rookie. Not is great sahpe but heck, it is cool to own. Had it graded since I have a coupon for Beckett grading in the late 90's came back a 5.5 grade. 

I guess it was around 1983 or 1984. I was visiting a older lady from my church (we used to visit her often). Her son, who was well into his upper 40s had collected cards as a kid, and she knew I was really big into collecting cards. She had recently re-found the shoebox (literally) where his collection had been housed for the last 20+ years at that point. She asked if I would like to look through them, and of course, I'll look through ANY baseball cards. As I was looking through them, oohing and ahhing over some of the cards, she made the offer of a lifetime, "If you see any you want, you can have them." My response was typical for an early teenager, though respectful, I said, "I'd love to have them all, but I doubt you'd do that." Her response was something on the order that her son probably would get too upset if she gave the whole thing away, but if I took a handful, he wouldn't care. I said thank you, and starting putting aside the Phillies I found and a couple names I recognized. And here's where this story relates to the forum topic.

I get the cards home after her approval to take the small stack. I looked them up in the most recent price guide (I was a subscriber to SCD) and nearly fell out of my chair. I knew the players were good, but I had no idea the values. The only problem with most of the cards - he apparently had most of them TAPED into a photo album. Most of the cards have tape or tape residue on the tops and bottoms of the fronts. But, free is free, and I love what I have. Anyway - some of the cards I got that day:

• 1951 Bowman - Whitey Ford, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Lou Boudreau, & Joe Garigiola
• 1955 Bowman - Ed Mathews
• 1957 Topps - Hank Aaron & Frank Robinson
• Other players I got cards of but can't remember the exact year - Jackie Robinson, Duke Sniker, Warren Spahn

Needless to say, all of the cards I got were either Phillies or HOFers with 2 exceptions (1 of which did finally make the HOF - Larry Doby - and the other was the Don Larsen RC, of course, a very recognizable name!).

So, to wrap it up, I called her immediately after looking them up and told her the values (if they were in better condition, which they weren't, but they still had some decent value). I told her I would return them the next time we visited. She insisted I keep them as she offered them, but appreciated my honesty. Which was the case. I mean, I knew they weren't cards you'd find in a dollar bin, but I had no idea they'd be in the hundreds (they were at the time). So, what I thought might have been about $50 worth of cards wound up being worth about $4,000 (well, $750-$1,000 in the condition they are in). Still, quite the find.

Note: Every card I got that day is still in my collection. I never sold or traded one away. My theory is she wanted me to have them, so I will keep them.

Awesome story Dan! That is right about the time I first got to LOOK at my father's cards. I couldn't touch them, but it got me wanting to see why they were special to him. That's when I started watching some games with him (well, as much of a game as a 5-6 year-old kid can sit through). I got to start opening packs with him a couple of years later but the cards weren't mine. In 1987, he started sharing packs with me and what I pulled from my packs was mine. We would trade cards then too. Basically, I was starting my STL Cardinals collection while helping him complete sets. He was a Cardinals fan and after watching Ozzie Smith doing backflips into position at the start of every game we watched together, I was too. I have been a Cardinals fan since youth and will be forever! After my parents split up in 1988, I continued to enjoy sports and card collecting and then spread out from just baseball. I have changed my collecting habits over the decades, but I'll always collect STL Cardinals baseball cards. I really wish I had more cards from the 1960's and earlier, but I am happy with what I've accomplished in my 30 years of collecting.