THE ATTIC

Author

Matthew Garringer
February 01, 2024

Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The baseball newsletter that loves the game as much Bill James loved sabermetrics.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about an Ohio family that found the holy grail of baseball collectibles in their Aunt’s attic.

Jean Hench passed away in 2011, leaving her estate to her 20 nieces and nephews.

The following summer, her nephew, Karl Kissner, and his cousins began sorting through her belongings and cleaning out her Victorian-era home.

Unbeknownst to him, they were actually about to unearth one of the greatest hidden treasures in sports history.

Up in the dusty attic, Karla Hench came across a green box with about 700 baseball cards packaged and wrapped with twine.

Will Ferrell / Step Brothers

They were smaller, tobacco-style cards from the early 1900s, and while Karl thought they looked interesting, there was a lot to clean, so he just set them aside for a couple of weeks.

Once he had the time to go through the box, he realized they were sitting on a gold mine.

The cards were in perfect condition, and featured Hall of Famers like Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Connie Mack.

The family decided to consult the experts (good call) and enlist the services of Heritage Auctions, who authenticated and valued the collection at $3 million dollars.

The cards were part of a rare series dubbed “E98” from the year 1910.

There are only a handful of the E98’s in existence and the ones floating around certainly aren’t in pristine condition like these beauties.

The collection included 16 Ty Cobb cards with PSA ratings of 9 or better.

The family decided to auction off 37 of the best cards and got $500,000 for them.

As the years have gone on, more cards have been sold in small chunks, and the discovery has been nicknamed “The Black Swap Find.”

This legendary artwork is based on a gigantic painting (7 x 8 ft) that Australian artist, Jamie Cooper, was commissioned to create.

“The Greatest All Stars Dream Scene” took three years to conceive, paint, and deliver from Cooper’s studio in Melbourne to the collector’s home in California.

The print version is available in our gallery, along with with the rest of the story behind it; definitely worth a read.

RIDICULOUS STATS

BASEBALL TRIVIA

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Ironically, Fireman only had one save during his entire career.

There’s not much on the internet about him, but he played most of his days with the New York Cubans.

In 1943 he threw one game with the Grays, who had one of the most iconic teams in baseball history that year.

The roster included five hall of famers: Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, Jud Wilson, and Ray Brown.

TELL ‘EM WE SENT YOU

Alright folks, this is the part of the newsletter where we shamelessly plug a few cool companies that we love.

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  • Homage: The kings of retro sports apparel. In my opinion, they have some of the coolest gear out there. They even have an entire collection of shirts dedicated to every ballpark you can think of.

The cool thing about all of these sites is that when you subscribe to or buy any of their stuff, we get a little kickback.

So by supporting them, you’re supporting us.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

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