NEWBURYPORT — A local baseball card collector had a very good weekend, watching a lot of 1916 Morehouse Baking Company cards he helped get before an auctioneer sell for over $900,000.
One of those cards, a Babe Ruth Boston Red Sox rookie card went for $812,724 all on its own.
“We did welll, man, we did very well,” Jeff Gross said. “And those cards were all part of a 10-cent loaf of bread.”
Gross brokered the deal that brought an anonymous Danvers man’s card collection to New Jersey-based Robert Edward Auctions.
He said the former owner was delighted to earn almost $1 million in one evening’s work.
“He has a second Babe Ruth card that’s going to be going up for auction in the spring,” Gross said. “It’s not as nice as this first one but the market has just been set. So, who knows what it’s going to be worth?”
Although he made a commission from the auction, Gross declined to say how much he earned.
A medical business consultant by day, Gross spends plenty of his off time fostering his love of baseball cards and memorabilia.
The oldest of the local resident’s cards goes dates back to 1887 when Grover Cleveland was president. His home office is also filled to the brim with baseball caps, helmets, mitts, magazines, as well as a pair of seats from Fenway Park.
Roughly a year ago, Gross started his own company, Jeff Gross Vintage Baseball Cards, which helps others sell their collections.
“There are people who have some cards come to them in a family inheritance and they don’t know what to do or who they can trust,” he said. “I want to be someone that can be a resource for them to make it happen the right way.”
In June, Gross was helping his wife oversee a Danvers estate sale when he ran into a local man there who told him he had roughly 75 over-100-year-old baseball cards from the Morehouse Baking Company in his possession.
In the mix were a Shoeless Joe Jackson as well as a Jim Thorpe card. But there were a pair of Babe Ruth rookie cards as well.
The Lawrence-based bakery, Gross said, used to put a baseball card in its loaves of bread to entice kids to buy one. Now, he added those pieces of cardboard are worth life-changing money and he quickly got on the phone with Robert Edward Auctions.
Before long, most of the Danvers man’s cards went up for auction beginning Friday, Nov. 22.
And while the auction was scheduled to end on Sunday, Dec. 8, Gross said a flurry of activity saw it going on into the wee hours of Monday morning.
“The auction for the Babe Ruth rookie card started off real hot and it got up to $505,000 real quick,” he said. “But then it leveled off there for about a week and a half.”
On Sunday afternoon, Gross said he checked in on the auction and another bid bumped it up by $25,000.
“At midnight there was a 15-minute countdown. If no other bids came in, boom, it was sold,” he said. “The next thing we knew, three or four new bids came in. That’s what got it up to the $812,724. I guess this is how wealthy people work.”
When it was all over but the crying, Gross said the card lot went for $980,454 in total, with the Joe Jackson card taking in $80,000.
Robert Edward Auctions president Brian Dwyer said the auction was an incredible success.
“It generated a tremendous amount of interest, both from within and outside of the hobby,” he said. “It also exceeded our expectations in every way. So we’re very pleased.”
Another batch of roughly two dozen of the owner’s cards, along with the other Babe Ruth rookie card, will be sold off next year.
“We’re targeting an April auction for those,” he said. “Based on the response we had to the most recent collection, we anticipate just as much interest in that second Babe Ruth card. We expect it will sell for less, because it is in a lesser condition. But it will be no less popular.”
Word of Gross’s connection to the recently completed auction, has spread to the point where others are looking to him for assistance.
“I just met a man in West Newbury who is in his early 80s and wants some help selling his childhood collection,” he said. “From what he told me, he has beautiful stuff.”
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.