Winning bid: Babe Ruth rookie card found during yard sale goes for $812,724
A rare Babe Ruth rookie card that was found at a yard sale in Massachusetts was recently sold at auction, and the winning price was more than five times the starting bid.
Jeff Gross of Newburyport has been collecting baseball cards for decades, but he never thought that a yard sale at his in-laws' house in Danvers would result in finding such a valuable card.
"This is by far the biggest thing that's ever and will ever happen to me," Gross said in November.
"A nice guy rides by on his bicycle. He introduced himself, and I overhear him talking to my wife and said something about baseball cards, and I said, 'Oh, what's going on over here?'"
The Danvers man explained to Gross that he had some old cards passed down from his father and Gross agreed to go through the cards with him.
"The card he had at the time that stood out to me was Joe Jackson from the 1919 Black Sox," Gross said. "The expert's expert said to me, 'If that card is authenticated, your friend has a card that has been rumored to exist."
However, a card worth $50,000 was just the start, as just a few days later the Danvers man found more cards.
"I still have the text. He said something like 'the better of the two Babe Ruth Cards," Gross said.
The Danvers man then revealed to Gross that he had a never-before-seen 1916 Babe Ruth Rookie Card while on the Red Sox.
That card was just sold by Robert Edward Auction House. The bidding began at $150,000 on Nov. 22 and closed on Dec. 8.
The winning bid was $812,724.
