Antiques Roadshow $1m Baseball Cards - A woman's rare collection of baseball cards from the Boston Red Stockings in the 1870s has been estimated to be worth $ 1 million.
Reports indicate that the popular PBS series Antiques Roadshow made history this Saturday when the owner of the rare collection brought the items to be appraised.
"It hasn't sunk in....I really couldn't believe that it could be worth that much," the owner, whose identity was only given as Gale due to security reasons, said."It was just sitting in here in a desk drawer and I ran across it one day and decided I'd like to have it, not realizing at all what it was worth."
According to reports, the collection contains classic baseball cards of the 1871-72 Boston Red Stockings team. Gale, who grew up in Boston, said she is a Red Sox fan and inherited the memorabilia from her great grandmother, who ran a boarding house which the team stayed.
Although she had been offered $5000 in the past, she refused to sell the collection because she wanted to continue the family tradition and pass it on to her kids.
"When you look at memorabilia and you value it, you look at the historical importance of the players, the team, of the era, of the event," said expert appraiser Leila Dunbar. "You also look as rarity, you look at condition, you look at provenance, and this has it all."
The Antiques Roadshow $1m baseball cards also featured handwritten letters from some Red Stocking players to the owner's great grandmother.
Three players, who are now in the Hall of Fame wrote a letter, dated May 1871 to a Boston landlady. The players included Albert Spalding, George Wright and Harry Wright.
"These group of cards have never been out, we've never seen an early set of notes like this signed by these great all of famers," Dunbar said. "It's the roots of Boston baseball."
