The Just Collect Blog

1948 Leaf Baseball Sealed Pack Sold at Auction

Written by Mario Morales | May 27, 2022 2:08:44 AM

If you were in possession of a sealed pack of 1948 Leaf Baseball would you open it or leave it intact? While this may be a hypothetical question for you and me, someone has a difficult decision to make and that’s because an auction for a sealed 1948 Leaf Baseball pack graded a PSA 8 just ended at a whopping $135,483.60!

Auctioned through Memory Lane, Inc, the 1948 Leaf Baseball 5-cent wax pack comes from the highly coveted short print series that includes Hall of Fame short prints of Satchel Paige, Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, George Kell, Enos Slaughter and Larry Doby. The difficult to find Newhouser short print rookie card was part of a collection of 1948 Leaf Baseball Just Collect purchased that also included Joe DiMaggio.

Photo Credits to Memory Lane Inc.

 

This sealed 1948 Leaf pack was once owned by Alan “Mr. Mint” Rosen, who would travel the country hunting for sealed vintage items. His famous finds include over 200 boxes of 1954 Bowman cards, a near case of 1962 Topps and over 6,000 1952 Topps baseball cards that included 50 high grade Mickey Mantle rookie cards. 

Perhaps inspired by Mr. Rosen, Just Collect’s Leighton Sheldon also travels the country looking for rare finds. Earlier this year, he discovered three mint 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson  rookie cards chilling in the California sun (figuratively). The collection also included 1948 Leaf cards of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Phil Rizzuto, and Honus Wagner and is properly titled The California Love Collection.

The 1948 Leaf pack is a “leftover” unopened pack that was part of a complete 1948 Leaf short-print series wax box found by Mr. Rosen in the 1980’s. The box was sold to a collector who opened a majority of the packs. It’s exciting to think about the gems that were pulled from those packs. A Satchel Paige rookie, Bob Feller, and Larry Doby and possibly multiples. At the time, nobody was recording themselves opening packs of vintage baseball cards. Today, everyone is doing it including ourselves when we made headlines opening a cello pack of 1955 Bowman Baseball at the 2018 National Sports Collectors Convention. On that day, a pack fresh Mickey Mantle was revealed for the first time 63 years after it left the factory floor.

Just Collect is always buying sealed vintage packs like 1948 Leaf or 1955 Bowman. Any year. Any Sport. All the time. Sell to Just Collect and you won’t have to struggle with the question “Should I open it?” ever again.

WE ARE ALWAYS BUYING

Just Collect is always buying vintage sports and non-sports cards from 1879 to 1979 as well as select modern cards. If you have a collection that you are considering selling, contact us today to discuss or get our industry-leading purchase offer. If you have a collection that you want appraised, please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your collection and help you understand the real cash value of your collection in the current marketplace. Check out the Just Collect Buy List.

We always offer a FREE APPRAISAL for your collection here at the Just Collect site. Just click here:

 

We offer may ways to evaluate your cards other than or using our website, too.

  • Travel to Us

If you can make the trip here like the son from my hometown did for this collection- we can make a deal at the office. We once met a father-son duo that drove eight hours from Virginia to meet us to sell a Michael Jordan rookie card stored in Tupperware since 1986 - great read here

  • Come to convention

We keep a LIST of card shows we'll be attending.  Come stop by the Just Collect table and chat.

  • Meet in-person

If you have a valuable collection and want us to come to you, we'll hop on the next plane out.

  • Meet in New York City

We have another location in New York you can meet us at; read all the information here.

  • SHIP your collection 

If you choose to mail your cards for an appraisal, we will evaluate your cards for FREE still. If you choose not to sell the cards, we'll ship them back shipping fees paid by us!  We can offer our FedEx account with 2-day shipping, fully insured, all covered by us. Simply contact the office to set up this option.

OUR BUYING PHILOSOPHY

We've run into a wide range of people and collections over the last 25 years. Although Just Collect is known for buying vintage sports cards and especially vintage baseball cards, we are also extremely interested in buying non-sports cards, too!  

Every collection and every collector is different and we treat EVERY collection with the respect and attention that we show for our own collections. We understand that many have put their heart and souls into building their collections. So when you're ready to sell, we understand the feelings that you're going through and will work with you to help you reach a decision that is a WIN/WIN, because if you're not happy, we're not happy.

CONTACT US ANY TIME

Whether you have vintage cards or modern wax you want to sell, you can reach out to us any time!