Super-rare Babe Ruth card that turned up in Danvers expected to fetch $500K at auction
A Danvers man discovered that he was sitting on a treasure trove of historic baseball cards after a chance encounter with a collector.
An extremely rare Babe Ruth rookie card is set for inclusion in an auction Friday that could end up fetching half a million dollars or more for a Massachusetts man, all because of a chance encounter.
Jeff Gross, an avid collector of baseball memorabilia from Newburyport, was helping out with a family garage sale in Danvers when a man stopped by on his bike to see what was for sale. He and Gross struck up a conversation, and the man brought up the fact that his father had left him a box of old cards. Gross, intrigued, urged the man to inventory the cards and offered his assistance. They exchanged contact information.
The man’s father had been planning to sell a series of antique cards to help pay for retirement, but never got around to it. As the man cataloged hundreds of cards from the 1910s through the 1950s, he got back in touch with Gross, according to Sports Collectors Daily.
As Gross reviewed the spreadsheets that the man compiled, a tab labeled “Morehouse Baking” caught his eye.
In 1916, a Chicago-area publisher designed a 200-card set that was distributed to companies around the U.S. The idea was that the cards would be remarketed and used for promotional purposes for these individual businesses. One of those companies was Morehouse Baking Company in Lawrence, which decided to sell loaves of its “Sunlight” bread with a card. The cards, which were marketed to children, could be redeemed for prizes. Anyone that collected 50 unique cards could turn them into Morehouse and receive either a “Dandy baseball and bat, or a nice long jumprope.”
Today, the Morehouse cards are very rare. The Danvers man had 119 of them, two of which depict a young Red Sox pitcher named George Herman “Babe” Ruth during his rookie season. Due to their rarity, Gross had to consult with multiple experts to properly evaluate the cards. At the 2024 National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland, he connected with the president of Robert Edward Auctions and hit it off. He returned to Massachusetts and consulted with the Danvers man, creating a plan to auction off the cards.
“This is a significant find,” REA President Brian Dwyer told The Boston Globe. “Anytime you can introduce something that’s never been seen before, or known to exist, to a hobby that’s been around for generations, it’s an exciting opportunity, and we’ve been fielding questions from serious collectors from the moment we announced the find.”
In addition to the Ruth cards, the recently-uncovered collection features, notable members of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” and Jim Thorpe, an Olympic gold medalist who played baseball, football, and basketball professionally, and other Hall of Fame players. Every card has “cancelled” stamped on the back, meaning they were redeemed for prizes at some point. It is the single largest collection of Morehouse Baking cards to be found so far, and the largest ever to be available at auction, per Sports Collectors Daily.
One of the Ruth cards is in better condition, and it will serve as the centerpiece of REA’s fall auction. Bidding will begin on Friday at noon and run until 9 p.m. on Dec. 8. Those that entered qualifying bids will then be entered into a lightning round of bidding. Most of the Danvers man’s Morehouse collection will be included in the upcoming auction, but the second Ruth card and some other duplicates will be sold in the spring, according to the Globe.
Bids start at $150,000 for the higher-rated Ruth card. It is expected to eventually fetch at least $500,000.
Despite that price tag, Ruth cards that depict the legendary ballplayer at an even younger age do exist, and are more valuable. A card distributed by the Baltimore News in 1914 shows a 19-year-old Ruth as a minor league Baltimore Orioles player. It is not technically considered his rookie card, but sold for $7.2 million last year.
While the Danvers man, who is choosing to remain anonymous, likely won’t see that kind of windfall, he still stands to make serious money. “After I’d retired they were sitting in boxes in my home office, and my wife has exercise equipment in there, and for years she’d stare at the boxes while she was working out and constantly ask if I was ever going to do anything with them,” the Danvers man told the Globe. “My jaw dropped when we found out what they might be worth.”
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