It's that time of year again.....

I finally got my REA -Robert Edward Auctions, catalog the other day.  I've been looking forward to it.  This is the third spring I've gotten one since I heard other bloggers talking about it.  I highly recommend requesting one from REA.

With over 1600 lots this year there is a whole world of Baseball and Americana between it's pages.  Each lot gets a great write up about the player or set  featured and it's significance.  Everything in this catalog is well beyond anything I could ever afford, but its a great tome of history and artifacts.  The whole auction is also online at their website.  RobertEdwardAuctions.com   There are lots of higher end auction houses out there and ones that have much more frequent auctions, but REA's is one that seems to get a lot of attention.  They always seem to come up with some amazing stuff.  Last year I featured and tracked a couple really cool cards. Here and Here.

What would an REA auction be with out a T206 Wagner, they've got one.  It's already over 300k.

And of course out of 1600 unique and vast offerings there is lots of cool stuff.  So much so it was hard to single any one or two auctions out.  I mean there's Cobbs and Ruths and Wagners.  There are 5 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards.  There's a Ty Cobb Cut Plug tobacco tin in mint condition.   There are a ton of 19th century CDV's (carte-de-visite) including the 1869 Peck and Snyder Red's card. A slew of 1887 Old Judge, 1888 Goodwin Champions, and T206 cards.

One of the things that stuck out at me was the 1889 Goodwin Round Album.

Images from REA

Just absolutely beautiful cards.


I'm a lover of Oddballs and here's a great one, the 1910 E125 American Caramels Die-Cuts.

The printed catalog is huge and REA does another fantastic job with it.  The online auction has 66 pages of listings from everything from complete early 20th century tobacco sets to Babe Ruth signed balls and everything in between.  It's a great drool gallery even for use basement dwellers.

One of the Oldest Baseball Cards ever!!!

I'm still waiting for my new Robert Edward Auctions Catalog to arrive.  Not that I can afford to buy anything there, but it's a beautiful catalog with some great examples of trading card and sports history.  And even though I don't have my paper copy the auction is live right now online.  I was skimming through the online auctions there and came across what many believe to be the first baseball card. Auction here.

Now any fan of the game can tell you that the Reds were the first and are the oldest professional baseball team.  But seeing this card in the auction sparked some memories from a few years back about a news story about a woman who owns a thrift store who was sorting through some stuff and came across one of these cards.  Do you remember that?  No.  Go read about it here.

Her name was Bernice Gallego.  And she got her 15 minutes of fame from this too.  Appearing on Leno, morning talk shows, and being featured on the nightly news and newspaper articles.  This was about 2 years ago by the way.  But I wondered is this the same card?  The short answer is no it is not.  This card actually looks like it's in better shape than her card.  I found a good photo of her PSA sticker and they're not the same, so mystery solved there. Bernice's card was sold at auction through Memory Lane 2 years ago and sold for a little over 64 grand and with ML's 17.5 buyer premium pushed the final sell price over 75 grand.  The buyer was Jeff Rosenburg President and CEO of Tristar. 

REA's opening bid was 10 grand with the a estimate of 25 grand plus for the card.  Right now the card sits at 15 grand and if Bernice's card sold for 64 thousand I can imagine that this example in slightly better condition might fetch a bit more, unless economic conditions come into play here and then who knows.

Check out the auctions and drool my friends some great stuff there I'll never be able to afford, but a cool collection to gaze upon.

Auctions close May 7th and I'll probably post about more cool stuff I find.

cb out