Eighty-five years after his last big league at-bat, Babe Ruth is still swinging a big bat. When the final tally in Memory Lane’s Spring Rarities Auction was totaled early Sunday morning, five of the top ten selling items featured either a Ruth autograph or trading card. The top selling Ruth item was one of only two PSA/DNA-certified copies of autographed 1929 Kashin … [Read more...]
Auction House Hacking Update: Alonso’s 52nd HR Ball Sells; ’58 Topps Football Break on Tap; Rickey Opens Old Packs
Shadowy groups and criminals looking to steal data are a major problem for website owners and over the weekend, we saw two such efforts in the hobby. Heritage Auctions was hit with a malware attack Friday that disrupted a planned close of its latest sports memorabilia auction. The company's entire site remained essentially offline through Tuesday morning. By late … [Read more...]
1958 Topps Football Cello Pack Rip Yields Plenty of Goodies
It's the type of vintage pack break that generates a buzz even among those who have no skin in the game. The 1958 Topps football set houses one of the hobby's top rookie cards with ten cards in each cello pack, there's a fighting chance that one could be inside. Last Wednesday, Just Rip It took a PSA 4 '58 cello and made it available to participants in their regular … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1958 Topps Football
It was a moment that made collectors of vintage cards a little weak in the knees. That 2006 episode of Antiques Road Show is buried somewhere in the broadcasting archives--or maybe lost to time--but the story lives on. A woman had come to the show (it had been videotaped in 2005) with 312 1958 Topps football cello packs that had somehow been salvaged from her … [Read more...]
The Toughest (and Easiest) Jim Brown Cards to Find in High Grade
His career was relatively short as NFL greats go but there was no one better running the football during the time he was employed by the Cleveland Browns. From 1957-1965 he terrorized opposing defenses at over 100 yards per game for his entire career. Brown appeared on football cards from 1958-1966 and while his rookie card is the most valuable of all, it's not the … [Read more...]
Mantle, Ruth Items Lead Pack in Multi-Million Dollar Auction
The amount of money being spent on high-end sports cards and memorabilia shows little sign of abating. Twenty-eight lots sold for over $100,000 through Heritage Auctions’ Platinum Night catalog on Saturday, led by a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle graded PSA 8 which set a new record for the grade when the hammer fell at $660,000. The old record was $525,800 for a card sold … [Read more...]
1952 Topps Mantle Sells for Over $1 Million
One of the best known copies of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for over $1.1 million early Friday. The PSA 8.5 rated example was one of the featured attractions in Heritage Auctions’ Fall catalog. It's the first baseball card other than the T206 Honus Wagner to sell at public auction for over $1 million. Bidding for the Mantle card stopped at $950,000 but … [Read more...]
Notes: T206 Wagner, Brown RC Soaring; CU Revenue Up
Bidding for the PSA 2 T206 Honus Wagner currently for sale through Heritage Auctions is now at $657,250. That’s a new record and the auction still has two weeks to run. The Wagner card last sold for $675,000 via Lelands in 2014. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle graded 8.5 still hasn’t cracked the $1 million mark, despite a strong flurry at the start of online … [Read more...]