Law Student Explores Late Father’s Baseball Card Collection, Finds Rarities

Over the years, plenty of people have collected baseball cards. Some for love of the game, some in the hopes that their collection might be an investment and some for the sheer fun of it. While the promise of profit might spark the creation of some baseball card collections, there’s little guarantee that this will pay off. But for one law student, a collection very close to home turned out to be part of a bittersweet story with a happy ending.

At The Washington Post, Scott Allen tells the story of Eddie Healy, a Maryland man attending law school at night and working during the day. Over the summer, Healy was laid off, and decided to use some of his newly-free time to go through his late father’s baseball card collection. At the center of that collection were a number of unopened rack packs — a largely-discontinued method of distributing baseball cards which have increased in value over time.

After doing more research, Healy began to explore selling part of the collection. (He checked with his mother and siblings first.) Now, 23 rack packs from said collection are available at auction; as of the Washington Post‘s report, the bids for them were over $16,000.

Healy told the Post that he plans to use part of the proceeds from the auction towards his student loans. According to the auction house, Robert Edward Auctions, Healy is far from alone in looking to sell a vintage card collection, something that’s led to a pandemic-related uptick in the market.