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Pile of baseball cards over hundred dollar bills
There are plenty of things you could have bought for 40 cents in 1952 that would be worth more money today. It is significantly harder to find one that could now buy you a very nice house because somebody had the self-control not to rip open eight packs of baseball cards for 74 years.
A cellophane-wrapped “brick” containing eight unopened 1952 Topps baseball card packs headlined Robert Edward Auctions’ Summer Auction, with each pack originally carrying the wonderfully depressing price of five cents. The entire thing cost 40 cents when Dwight Eisenhower was still campaigning for president, and by the time the bidding closed, they’d gone for a cool $1,107,000.
Eight Nickel Packs Somehow Became A Seven-Figure Asset
This is not simply eight old packs somebody discovered underneath Grandpa’s bowling trophies.
According to the REA listing, the brick traces back to a remarkable Seattle discovery in the early 1990s involving 84 unopened 1952 Topps packs. The haul included 12 individual packs and nine eight-pack bricks wrapped together in cellophane.
Naturally, because humans are humans and unopened baseball cards are basically tiny cardboard slot machines, most of them were eventually ripped open.
Only three bricks are believed to have remained completely intact.
That means there are roughly as many known examples of this thing as there are Manning brothers who played quarterback in the NFL. Apparently the difference is you can purchase one of the bricks, although it may require refinancing several important parts of your life.
The Seattle find also produced something collectors would kill for. When some packs were opened, one yielded a No. 1 Andy Pafko that eventually became the only PSA 10 example known, according to REA.
PSA has authenticated just 32 unopened 1952 Topps wax packs in total.
And eight of them are sitting together here, still wrapped like somebody forgot to finish stocking a drugstore shelf during the Korean War.
The Last One Sold For An Absurd Amount Too
There was already a pretty good indication this brick would not be going for $14.99 plus shipping.
Another one of the three intact bricks reached public auction in 2023. The eight packs hammered for $852,000, with Morphy Auctions reporting a final price of $873,300 once the buyer’s premium was included.
Again: eight packs. Forty cents.
Even inflation has to look at that return and say, “OK, relax.”
The 1952 Topps set occupies a ridiculous place in the baseball card world. It helped establish the modern oversized card design and contains one of the most famous collectibles ever created, Mickey Mantle’s No. 311.
One especially pristine 1952 Mantle sold for $12.6 million in 2022.
There is, however, a tremendous little twist with these unopened packs: REA says the Seattle packs were confirmed as low-series packs, while Mantle’s No. 311 came in the final series.
So no, somebody is probably not buying this million-dollar lottery ticket and finding the $12.6 million lottery ticket inside.
Opening it would be lunacy anyway.
The value is precisely that some kid in 1952 somehow resisted the urge to spend an afternoon chewing rock-hard Topps gum and looking for Willie Mays.
Seventy-four years later, that untouched 40-cent purchase became worth seven figures.
Your grandfather was right.
You really should have stopped opening your baseball cards.