Every little boy has at least a few baseball cards with the names and faces of their favorite players, and every grown man has a box of baseball cards somewhere in the attic that his wife is just itching to get rid of. What most people don’t realize, however, is that those old cards might be pretty valuable. Maybe not all of them, or even any of them in your own personal collection, but some old baseball cards are worth a lot of money. These five cards, in fact, are the most expensive ever sold.
Babe Ruth’s 1914 Baltimore News, $500,000
This card is considered the most valuable baseball card in the world. However, it’s not the most expensive card ever to sell at $500,000 in good condition. If the current owner would auction this card today, experts believe he could sell the card for anywhere between $3 and $5 million if the card is still in good condition. If it’s in excellent condition, it could sell for even more than that. However, the chances of a card this old lasting in excellent condition throughout the past 100 years are slim. Before these cards were valuable, they were everyday cards that little boys in the early 1900s carried in their back pockets for sport and to show off.
Honus Wagner 1909-1911 T206, $2.8 Million
This is the second most valuable baseball card in the world, but it holds the title as the most expensive card ever sold. In 1991, hockey great Wayne Gretzky purchased this card for $491,000 and then sold it four years later for $500,000. Since then, the card has been sold four additional times. Most recently, the card sold in 2008 for $2.8 million, though experts believe that the card could sell today for more than $3 million.
Joe Jackson 1910 Old Mill T210, $200,000
Today, this card in good condition is worth $200,000. It’s filled with controversy, however, as it was alleged that Joe Jackson took part in the Black Sox Scandal in which the Chicago White Sox purposely lost the 1919 World Series in favor of taking cash from mobsters. Jackson was banned for life from the game, but experts today believe he may not have had anything to do with the scandal based on his stats from the game.
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
