A collection of around 700 baseball cards dating back to 1910 were recently found in an attic in Ohio. The cards included a perfect set of E98 (the name of the card series) from around 1910 and a Honus Wagner card that was graded mint. The unique element of this find was the near pristine condition of all of the cards.
The best of the bunch was sold in three lots — one, which sold for $286,800, was a nearly complete E98 set, the name of the the series the cards were issued under, and another was a Honus Wagner card that was judged to be in perfect condition by Professional Sports Authenticator, a company that grades cards on a 1-to-10 scale based of their condition. It brought $239,000.
Karl Kissner, who unearthed the cards in February in the town of Defiance with [Karla} Hench, his cousin, said they belonged to their grandfather, Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. They think he gave away the cards at his meat market and stashed the extras in his attic and forgot about them. One of Hench’s daughters kept the house until she died last October, leaving everything inside to her 20 nieces and nephews.
The cards were auctioned off Thursday evening during the National Sports Collectors Convention being held in Baltimore, MD.