The most valuable football card collection in the world remains on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, giving collectors attending next month’s National Sports Collectors Convention another option for a side trip.
For two years, the Hunt-Casterline collection has been on exhibit at the Canton, OH shrine, enabling football fans from around the world who visit the Hall to be exposed to card collecting. The Hall has 700 of the rarest, most-valuable and most significant pieces of the 300,000-plus card collection on display, with cards spanning the history of the sport, from the 19th century to the modern era. The value of what’s on display runs well into seven figures.
Pieced together over a five-year period by Robert Casterline and friend and business partner Dan Hunt, the collection includes a copy of the highest graded card available for each member of the Hall of Fame. Their set of Hall of Fame rookie cards that is on display is the only 100% complete collection on PSA’s Set Registry, with a phenomenal rating of 9.78.
The collection includes rare complete sets, important rookie cards and others with informational displays that help tell the story of the sport and the hobby of collecting football cards.
Casterline and Hunt acquired 16 copies of Joe Namath’s 1965 Topps rookie card, including one of the four PSA 9-rated examples and seven graded PSA 8. The Namath cards have their own section in the exhibit, which is supplemented by pieces from the Hall of Fame’s collection of ephemera, photos, and even a few game-used artifacts.
Featured sets include the 1894 Mayo’s Cut Plug set, the first to focus solely on football players. Also included is the 36-card 1935 National Chicle set, considered to be the “Holy Grail” of football sets, and the 1957 Topps set that includes a “who’s who” of future Hall of Famers.
The collection is on display indefinitely. A Hall of Fame official told Sports Collectors Daily on Tuesday that they are “actively shopping” the collection as a traveling exhibit with hopes of bringing at least a portion of it to communities around the country.
The Hall of Fame is located about 64 miles from The IX Center and is open into the evening during the summer months.
Check out the photo gallery below to take a virtual tour of the exhibit.
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