A burglary in Florida and a set of rare football cards goes missing.
A teenager meeting with a mysterious man at a huge shopping mall in Minnesota.
Police tipped off by a Facebook post in a sports memorabilia group.
It’s a wild tale of theft—and maybe redemption.
Two dozen 1935 National Chicle football cards reported stolen by a Florida man in January have been recovered by police who recently searched a home in Inver Grove Heights, MN.
Police are trying to piece together details of how cards from one of the hobby’s rarest and most desirable early football card sets wound up 1,500 miles from where they used to live.
The cards were all graded by PSA and still in their holders with certification numbers, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which reported the Nagurski—one of the hobby’s most valuable football cards—has not yet been found.
MPR reports that an investigator with Inver Grove Heights searched an area home last week after the victim—a collector from Florida—spotted them listed for sale in a Facebook group.
The seller, according to MPR’s report, was an 18-year-old who told them he’d met “with a male suspect at the Mall of America” to purchase the complete 36-card set of National Chicle cards and a 1965 Topps Joe Namath rookie card for $10,500.
The teenager showed Detective Justina Lopez he’d shot video of the collection and said he and a friend met the man again the next day on a Minneapolis street to buy more cards and apparently some memorabilia as well. He told the detective he’d already sold some items, including a Super Bowl XXV ticket stub.
No criminal charges have been filed against the teen and the investigation into who stole the items and how they got to Minnesota in the first place, is continuing.
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