A Florida neurologist, Dr. Thomas Newman died from complications due to COVID-19 at 73 years old in January. He left all of his baseball cards that were carefully curated for over 4o years to his family.
According to Memory Lane Auctions, and authenticated by Collectors Universe, Inc., Newman’s extensive collection of baseball cards is worth over $2o million. Some of them even dated back to the 1880s.
Joe Orlando, chief executive officer of Collectors Universe, said that Newman’s collection “exhibits the kind of depth and level of quality that are rarely achieved.”
A collection that includes a Mickey Mantle rookie card from 1952 is expected to worth more than $1 million. Another collection is a mint condition Babe Ruth card of 1933. It is expected to break the current record price of $5.2 million for each baseball card, according to Memory Lane.
“He jokingly called his cards his ‘paper babies,’ and spent almost every day attending to his collection in one way or another,” his widow, Nancy Newman said in a statement released by the auction house.
“It gave him such pleasure. The only reason he would ever sell a card is if he had acquired the same card in a higher grade.”