Hockey lives on an uprecedented
amount of money for a box of cards.
| jzp |
| A hobby from his youth brought the man a fortune that NHL stars usually make. He became fabulously rich by selling a cardboard box of hockey cards that had been lying around in his attic for years. And which no one may ever open again. From the 1960s to the 1980s, he was an avid collector of sports cards. He would buy entire boxes directly from distributors, selling or trading the cards inside for others. However, he never opened some of the boxes. For example, this one with hockey cards from the 1979/80 NHL overseas season. He and his son came across it in the attic while cleaning out their house in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. For a long time he thought it was a valuable, but not incredibly valuable, set from the 1980/81 season, because he saw the number 1980 on the box. But when he tore it open to make sure, he saw smaller boxes not in the expected blue, but in the white color that the manufacturer O-Pee-Chee had bet on in the 1979/80 season. At that moment, the man, who wished to remain anonymous, must have realized that he had stumbled upon a treasure. The box contains 16 smaller boxes, each of which contains 48 packs of 14 cards. That makes a total of more than ten thousand. But only one is really important - a rookie card of perhaps the best hockey player in history, Wayne Gretzky, who immediately won the Hart Trophy for the league's most valuable player upon entering the NHL. There should be around 27 cards with Gretzky in the box. That's why it sold for $3.72 million last week. That's a little more than Boston Bruins star goalie Jeremy Swayman will earn this season. Jason Simonds, a sports card expert at the auction house that sold the box, said the family is "over the moon" about the amount. "She exceeded our wildest expectations. That kind of money changes your life," he added. When it comes to collecting sports items, nothing has ever sold for that much in an unopened state. That's why the British BBC and the American newspaper The New York Times wrote about the case. The boxes, or rather individual boxes, may remain closed. After being completely unpacked, it could turn out that the artifact is actually worth significantly less. It should contain around 27 cards with Gretzky, but due to a statistical anomaly, there may theoretically be none. Then it depends on the quality. Three years ago, a card with Gretzky as a rookie was auctioned for $3.75 million, but it was in perfect condition. There are only two of them in the world now. For those that receive a rating from the specialized company PSA just one notch lower than a full ten due to minor imperfections, the value drops to "mere" tens of thousands. And the probability that another "ten" will be found in a freshly auctioned box is small. However, someone paid almost four million for the hope that it might be there. The original owner from Saskatchewan once cost the box only a few dozen dollars. A truly successful investment ... |
