Art Lewicki got to live the dream.
There was a college baseball career at Virginia. A call to the big leagues. Pitching for the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park in 2018 and then a month later, taking the mound on the 4th of July at Wrigley Field.
Injuries ended the Wyckoff, NJ native’s pro career at age 29, but two years later he’s still making a living in sports–as a card dealer who just latched onto one of the hobby’s all-time great finds of vintage material, including dozens of rare, virtually untouched unopened boxes from the 1960s and 70s and a huge group of mint condition single cards.
“It was like a time machine,” he said of the buy that took place hundreds of miles to the east of his current home in Franklin, TN.
There were complete cello boxes of baseball and football cards from 1969, 1970, ’71 and ’75, among others–some in multiples. Football boxes–some never seen in the hobby before–that dated to Topps’ stint as an AFL only card maker. Full and partial ending boxes from the ’60s and 70s. Rare test issue display boxes, wrappers and singles from sets like the 1968 Topps 3D, Plaks and Action Stickers.
It was all reminiscent of the ‘Beer Box Find‘ from several years ago that included a 1948 Bowman Baseball box and other vintage gems.
Lewicki said there were stacks upon stacks of loose cards that included thousands of high-grade stars and commons likely opened from the same group of boxes acquired by the seller over the years. It looked like he had brought the boxes home, opened a pack or two and immediately put them away. Maybe he’d been a Topps employee or knew someone who was? The man wasn’t really forthcoming. Whatever the case, the inclusion of the test issue boxes made it clear he once had access to things most collectors didn’t.
After apparently hanging onto them all for decades, the owner of what became a cardboard gold mine finally picked up the phone looking to sell. It was a connection that got the deal but one that had nothing to do with anyone’s baseball career.
Generations of Cardboard
Art Lewicki’s last name should sound familiar to hobby long timers. His father Paul was a well-known hobby dealer in the 1980s and 90s. “I literally grew up in a house of cards,” Art told SC Daily.
It was through his dad’s history in the hobby that the phone call came to what was a father-son team of very interested buyers.
“He’s kind of been my consultant and liaison,” Art said.
Years ago, Paul Lewicki was buying and selling like mad, sometimes with Al “Mr. Mint” Rosen.
In 2017, Paul and Art Lewicki had purchased a collection of vintage cards from another of Paul’s old customers. During COVID, Art began selling the cards and got caught up in the hobby boom. Retired from baseball after a final stint in South Korea, he’s been doing the hobby grind full-time, selling on his eBay store and at shows and getting acquainted with other dealers for wheeling and dealing.
This find was something every other sports card lover in the world goes to sleep dreaming about.
After Paul scouted the collection from his base on the east coast and learned that it was no fairy tale, the collection finally had a new owner.
But not for long.
The material may have been a dealer’s dream acquisition but the voracious appetite of vintage unopened pack and box collectors coupled with the scarcity of the items that were part of the collection meant it would be best to give someone else a cut and put them in front of a big audience. A catalog that could tell the story and showcase the mouth watering hoard would be the way to go.
Thankful for Consignments
Derek Grady, an executive vice-president with Heritage Auctions in Dallas had spent Thanksgiving with a friend. He was packing his suitcase the next day, getting ready to head back home.
“My phone started going off with a bunch of text messages.”
The author of those excited sentences was Jason Simonds from the company’s New York office, who had already been in touch with Art Lewicki and was blowing up Grady’s phone with pictures of the tantalizing find.
“I said, ‘well there goes the holiday weekend at least for me and Simonds’,” Grady recalled. “There is nothing more important than getting this deal done ASAP.”
Grady and Simonds did just that, securing a previously unknown consignment that will rank among the highlights of the decade.
“It was just a sight to see all of this fresh material from the 1960’s and 70’s,” Grady said. “It was like being at the Topps factory. A time capsule from the period. Vending boxes, rack packs, cello packs, boxes of opened product carefully stored in the original boxes.”
There was a 1969 Topps Baseball cello box with two Ernie Banks cards and a Johnny Bench second year card showing. A 1970 cello had a pack with Roberto Clemente on top. Two 1971 baseball cellos. Loose rack packs of ’71s. Two 1972 Topps Posters boxes. Two 1968 Topps football cellos, three 1967 Topps football cellos–both hobby unicorns.
The ’69 and ’71 cello boxes will likely sell for six-figure prices alone. Two rare boxes of 1966 Batman (Series A and B) will probably fetch $75,000 or more.
The original owner had opened the boxes of test issues but put the loose cards and wrappers back in the box.
“(The) 1968 Topps 3-D test box had a Boog Powell card affixed to the lid,” Grady revealed. “It was really interesting to see the Plaks box, with the wrappers and Plaks inside untouched. There were some interesting door hanging Halloween bags (minus the cards) that seemed to have been a test product.”
“Mountains of high grade cards from the 1960’s and 1970’s from both sports and non-sports,” Grady marveled.
The Lewickis consigned just about all of the unopened material to Heritage. “Honestly we were kind of tempted to open some of it but thank God we didn’t. I do still kind of want to open some of it,” Art chuckled. “That’s kind of the whole point of it.”
They are having fun with what wasn’t consigned, though.
“There were some vending boxes where the pattern on top was broken. You can’t sell it like that so the only thing you can do at that point is open them. We pulled the boxes that had been gone through. There are thousands and thousands of mint cards where it looks like he had just opened them, put them back and left them there. It was pretty wild. There was a ’71 vending box that we opened. That was the series with (Thurman) Munson in it. There was as ’66 football vending box, ’70 and ‘71 baseball vending box.”
“For some of this (loose) stuff there’s so much volume,” Art recalled saying as they pondered their opportunity. He and his dad began talking.
“I was like ‘we’re going to flood the market’. Then he brought up his ’52 story when Al Rosen thought he was going to flood the market with ’52 Mantles.”
Deja Vu
Rosen’s famous 1986 buy of 1952 Topps high numbers brought forth a massive stash of the rare series that included a huge number of the post-War holy grail card, Mickey Mantle.
There were so many ‘52s, Rosen was worried he wouldn’t be able to sell them all. Paul Lewicki was one of the first dealers to see the treasure trove of vending fresh ‘52s, all piled up in Rosen’s basement.
“My dad was one of the first people who had a chance to buy one of the runs that Rosen put together. He said he went down there and was sitting on the couch, put his hand down the side of the couch and felt a stack of loose cards. He said from the arm of the couch down to the floor—two rows deep was nothing but mint condition ’52 Mantles in lucite (holders). He said there were like over 100 of them and Al was worried he couldn’t sell them all so he told my dad to take as many as he wanted so he got the pick of the litter. He picked out like three or four of the best ones. He sold them a few years later for like $5,000, which at the time was insane.”
And no, the hobby had little trouble eventually absorbing the thousands of newly uncovered1952 Topps cards.
After years of frustration trying to stay healthy enough to pitch, landing the deal makes Art Lewicki feel like the sports gods are once again smiling on him, even if he’s got an experienced coach helping him out.
“I’m a little spoiled because our family has history in the card business but I’ve only been doing this for a little while. I’ve had a little bit of a cheat sheet with my father in my corner with all of the stuff that he’s done.”
Some of the loose cards will be sold on the APL cards Whatnot page and later, via their eBay store.
Grady says the boxes in the collection will be sold across multiple auctions between January and August of 2024 once back from BBCE Authentication. That’s when the public will get its chance to bid on something only the Lewickis and Heritage have been able to touch so far.
“These are the consignments we live for. Even on holiday weekends.”
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