'Antiques Roadshow' guest lost for words after expert reveals her baseball cards are worth 7-figures

The cards were placed on a board with notes handwritten by some of the players in them.

PUBLISHED DEC 2, 2024

The woman who brought baseball card collection in screenshots from the show (Cover image source: YouTube | Antiques Roadshow)

While most think property, shares, or jewels are valuable things to inherit, sometimes the simplest things end up being the most precious. A guest who appeared on PBS "Antiques Roadshow" discovered this after bringing one of the oldest baseball card collections of the Boston Red Stockings team to the show. The archive which she got from her great-great-grandparents, almost left the appraiser in tears.

Screenshot showing the old baseball card collection (Image source: YouTube/PBS Antiques Roadshow) — Screenshot showing the old baseball card collection with handwritten notes from players (Image source: YouTube/Antiques Roadshow PBS)

Hitting the Jackpot With a Rare Artifact

In this particular episode, the guest revealed that her 'great-grandmother' ran a boarding house, which once looked after the Boston Red Stockings back in 1871.

Screenshot showing the guest's great great grandmother (Image source: YouTube/Antiques Roadshow PBS)

The team was one of the first professionally paid baseball teams in the country, and they laid the foundation of the National and the American baseball leagues. The guest shared that the cards were collected by her great-great grandfather who assembled them on a board along with handwritten notes from the featured players. The cards included some of the most famous and instrumental figures of American baseball, such as Harry Wright, his brother John Wright, and Albert Spalding, who was the first to use a catching glove in the game. The collection left the expert evaluator, Leila Dunbar, stunned.

Screenshot showing the photographic baseball card of A.G. Spalding (Image source: YouTube/Antiques Roadshow PBS)

"They must have really loved her. I’m sure she did the cooking, the cleaning for them," Dunbar said while taking a look at the cards and the personal letters. She noted that the archive was one of the first collections of photographed baseball cards and the handwritten notes made it even more special. She showed that some of the players including Spalding, who later became the founder of a sporting goods empire, had talked about the meals prepared by the guest's great-great-grandmother.

Screenshot showing the handwritten notes from the players (Image source: YouTube/Antiques Roadshow PBS)

Dunbar also pointed out the significance of having a signature from Spalding, who started the trend of wearing a baseball glove while playing amongst players, and later founded the sports equipment company of the same name. "To have anything with their signatures on it is phenomenal because again, you’re talking about the precursor to the National and American leagues," she said. Thus, she explained that the archive was a lot more special than the most valuable baseball card collections. She noted that to find something with personal remarks from Wright and Spalding was a tremendous feat.

She then asked the owner, if she was going to keep the collection in the family. The owner confirmed that she had no interest in selling the archive and wanted to pass it down to future generations. The expert then went on to value the archive for the owner to get insurance for the collection. Dunbar estimated that if the owner was getting insurance for the collection as a whole it should be for no less than a million dollars. This left the guest astonished as she could not believe her ears.

Dunbar then added that she had never seen such a phenomenal collection on the show and it was probably the greatest collection of all time. "I have to say, you have hit a grand slam today!" she told the guest.