Rare baseball card brings $92K in Maine auction Rare baseball card brings $92K in Maine auction ADVERTISING BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — A rare 148-year-old baseball card discovered at a rural Maine yard sale has been auctioned for $92,000. The card
Rare baseball card brings $92K in Maine auction
BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — A rare 148-year-old baseball card discovered at a rural Maine yard sale has been auctioned for $92,000.
The card depicting the Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club was sold by Saco River Auction Co. in Biddeford Wednesday night and it drew plenty of interest.
Bidding started at $10,000 and quickly rose to the final $92,000, which included an 18-percent premium.
Winning bidder Jason LeBlanc of Newburyport, Mass., said he bought the card as an investment for his young son in the hope of selling it for a higher price when his son gets older. If the price had gone up one more time, he said he would have dropped out of the bidding.
A Maine man who doesn’t want to be publicly identified found the card inside an old photo album he bought while antique picking in the small town of Baileyville on the Canadian border. The man bought the photo album, old Coca-Cola bottles and a couple of oak chairs together in a single purchase for less than $100, said Troy Thibodeau, manager and auctioneer at Saco River Auction.
The card isn’t the same as a modern-day baseball card, which became common in the 1880s. Rather, it’s an original photograph from 1865 mounted on a card, showing nine players and a manager.
The Library of Congress said last month it was aware of only two copies of the photo. The other is in the institution’s collection.
In its book “Baseball Americana,” the Library of Congress calls the item the first dated baseball card, handed out to supporters and opposing teams in a gesture of bravado from the brash Brooklynites, who were dominant and won their league championships in 1861, 1864 and 1865.
It was impossible to predict what kind of price the card would fetch because of its rarity, Thibodeau said, but he guessed before the auction that the winning bid would fall somewhere between $50,000 and $500,000. The priciest baseball card ever is a 1909 Honus Wagner card, which sold for $2.8 million in 2007.
Tom Bartsch, editor of Sports Collectors Digest, said $92,000 is a good price for a pre-war card without a Hall of Famer’s picture.
“There are very few artifacts around from the 1860s,” he said. “Baseball was near its infancy in that time.”
Chris Ivy, director of sports auctions for Heritage Auctions, said there’s also only a small pool of buyers for such an esoteric item.
Both said the story of the card’s discovery remarkable is a reminder to collectors of all kinds that a rare find can easily be missed among otherwise unremarkable items.
“It’s what keeps those treasure hunters out there going,” Ivy said.
Raccoons make home atop Wash. construction crane
SEATTLE (AP) — Workers using a tower crane to build a 304-unit apartment complex in Seattle have run into a complication: two raccoons climbed 150 feet up the crane and made a home behind the crane’s cab.
KING-TV reports that the raccoons have temporarily brought the giant machine to a halt.
A crane operator spotted the new residents while ascending the tower Wednesday. The general contractor, Rafn Company, called in experts who are trying to catch the critters with humane traps.
Project superintendent John Kellberg says this is a first for him.
The apartment complex in the city’s Ballard neighborhood is due to open in the summer of 2014. KING reports that neighbors say large raccoons are common in Ballard.
Camel OK after enclosure escape, clipped by van
CONCORD, Calif. (AP) — Officials believe a camel that escaped its enclosure twice Tuesday before being clipped by a minivan probably just wanted to be around some other animals.
The Contra Costa Times reports the single-humped camel was hit by the van as it walked along a road in Concord around 6:45 p.m. Tuesday.
It was the second time Tuesday the 10-year-old camel named “Phil” escaped its enclosure. Earlier in the day citizens helped California Highway Patrol officers shepherd the camel off the roadway.
Raymond Ferrante — a land manager for a company overseeing property where the camel is being kept — says UC Davis veterinarians have examined it and said the camel did not suffer any broken bones, or other injuries.
Ferrante says because camels are “very social” he believes that’s why Phil escaped its enclosure twice in one day.
