Canadian Family Set to Make Millions at an Auction With an Unopened Set of Gretzky Rookie Cards

A family from Regina Saskatchewan recently stumbled upon a treasure trove of sports collectibles that is bound to make them millions in the coming days. The family discovered a sealed case of 16 boxes of hockey cards from the 1979-80 NHL season. Those boxes that were produced by O-Pee-Chee may contain several Wayne Gretzky rookie cards. Each box is said to contain 48 individual packs and there should be around 20 pristine Gretzky rookies in all of those packs.

The family is planning to auction off the case through consignors, Heritage Auctions. The last time that Heritage auctioned off a single sealed box of the product, it sold for $210,000 in February of 2022. What you may already know is that anything this old needs to be in mint condition to be able to sell at a high price. However, it is pretty improbable that these Gretzky rookies inside the case will receive a full Gem Mint 10 grade from the card grading companies. Reportedly, a single Gem Mint 10 Gretzky rookie sold for $3.75 million in 2021.

Heritage later released a video online that shared the cast's story. It was also revealed that it remained untouched because nobody knew if it was original. "No other unopened case of 1979-80 OPC has ever surfaced in the 21st century, and it’s impossible to imagine another ever will," Heritage wrote in their auction description. “[It’s] the greatest unopened find in the 21st century. By any metric of evaluation, it’s a thrilling miracle of survival, and one of the greatest trading card lots that Heritage has ever had the privilege to offer," per the description. 

The current bid on this case is around $1.325 million. The case back in 1979 was worth close to $150. That's a great deal, especially for a box of cards, don't you think? However, it's important to know that these cards are not only rare but Gretzky was also considered the best hockey player to ever play the game. Therefore, the higher-grade Gretzky rookie cards will always see an increase in value over time. It is equivalent to the Jordan rookie card in basketball.

As per the Heritage auctions, this hockey card set was undetected for years "gathering dust." "By any metric of evaluation, it's a thrilling miracle of survival, and one of the greatest trading card lots that Heritage has ever had the privilege to offer,” Heritage Auctions said.

“The family who have had this case for 40 some years, always assumed this was a 1980 case of hockey [cards]," Steve Hart the owner of Baseball Card Exchange in Indiana said, via CTV news. “The case says 1980 on it because the hockey season [the cards were released] straddled two years. It went 1979 and into 1980 and something that O-Pee-Chee did, which is the manufacturer, is they would put up the second year, the year that season’s finals would take place,” Jason Simonds from Heritage Auctions added.