In the Aug. 9 edition of Gavel Chat
, I wrote about a man, who still wishes to remain anonymous, who inherited an accumulation of some amazing baseball cards.
If you click on this link HERE you can read his communication with the Network 54 Vintage card members in his search of getting his collection appraised.
It is very intriguing to read the dialogue in this thread and you can sense the members’ excitement growing higher and higher when they gradually learned what this man had discovered.
After reading that post, I immediately tried to contact this mystery man and until now I have been unsuccessful. However, this week he contacted me and wanted to share his amazing baseball card fantasy.
According to the man, his wife’s grandfather, who originally owned the cards, was a collector.
The collection includes, thousands of cards, some of which have not been catalogued yet.
"The collection consists of all sorts of cards; T206s, T205s, Colgan's Tin Tops, all in ridiculously high grade,” he said. “Of the Tin Tops, I would say that 90 to 95 percent of them are in near-mint or better. The crazy thing about the Tin Tops, is he never handled them. They just stayed in their original containers."
And if you look at the images, you will agree with his amazement.

Mastro sold a Joe Jackson Colgan’s card this year for 45K, in lower-grade condition. From the looks of the image, his looks like it is mint!
According to the man, his collection has been appraised at more than $1 million and three auction houses are currently battling it out to have the opportunity to handle this accumulation.
He also acknowledged that because of the help that members from the message board gave him this entire process was much easier and he felt a lot more secure in his dealings.
"The message board has been incredibly helpful," he said. "I've made two good friends through this and probably through a month's worth of emails I could determine that they didn’t have an agenda. They were just honest to goodness collectors in it for the love of the game. They were very helpful in pointing me in the right directions.”

According to the man, he hasn’t even gone through the entire collection, but he did mention that there are some even more interesting cards that he doesn’t want disclosed, although something tells me we will learn more about what else he found in the future.
He also told me that he should have an answer next week of which auction house will get the cards... Stay tuned.