The monster has been unleashed.
The hobby’s best graded T206 baseball card set has been put on the auction block, but what would likely be a multi-million dollar item is being broken into 520 lots, with each card being offered individually.
Heritage Auctions is holding a special auction dedicated solely to the collection, one that has been tops on PSA’s Set Registry for many years, with a current GPA of 8.205. Bidding opened Thursday.
There’s no Honus Wagner or Doyle error, but the collection does include a PSA 7 Eddie Plank (current bid $260,000) and a PSA 8 Sherry “Magie” error card ($120,000). All four Ty Cobb cards in the collection have been rated PSA 8.
In all, eight cards carried bids of over $50,000 just 48 hours into the auction.
Remarkably, nine of the hobby’s 13 T206 cards ever to rate a PSA 10 grade are in the collection and 116 of the 271 9s. There are 11 cards that carry an 8.5 grade. Only one rates less than a 7 (John Titus).
So far, most of the general interest has been in the Cobb cards, three of which occupy the auction’s “most active” listings.
Bidding continues through September 20 at HA.com.