T206 Ty Cobb Lucky 7 Find | Just Collect Blog

You’ve probably heard about this by now, but there was an incredible baseball card find a few weeks ago in South Carolina. A family was cleaning out their great grandfather’s house and found seven Ty Cobb T206 baseball cards at the bottom of a paper bag. What makes this group of Ty Cobb T206 cards so incredible is that all seven cards featured an extremely rare “Ty Cobb Tobacco” advertising back.  So rare, in fact, that before the Lucky 7 Find, there were only 14 examples of this card front/back combination known in the hobby. Even with the addition of the Lucky Seven Find, the Ty Cobb T206 with the Ty Cobb Tobacco advertising back is even rarer than the famous Honus Wagner T206 card!

Here is the grading breakdown from the Lucky 7 Find: 

(1) PSA 4.5
(1) PSA 3.5
(4) PSA 2.5
(1) PSA 1.5

Here is the complete grading breakdown, from PSA & SGC examples (including the Lucky 7 Find):

The newly graded PSA 4.5 and PSA 3.5 are also the highest graded examples EVER for this card.

Since 2005, Ty Cobb T206s with Ty Cobb Tobacco advertising backs have publicly traded a scant dozen times, or about once a year. The last recorded sale of this card was in April of 2015, when REA auctioned off an SGC 30 GOOD 2 graded example with a hammer price of $132,000.00. Prior to the Lucky 7 Find, the highest recorded sales price for the T206 Ty Cobb back rarity came in 2014, when REA had a PSA 1 POOR example close for $154,050.00.

It has been reported that four of these cards from the Lucky 7 find have already sold, with the first three cards totalling over one million dollars. The bombshell news circulating now is that the PSA 4.5, the highest graded EVER awarded to this variation, has been sold to a private collector for a price in excess of $1,000,000.00!  This find is setting records with every sale and with only three examples left in the Lucky & stable, bidding may get even more heated for the last few Cobbs. The exact sales numbers for each transaction have remained private, but suggestions are that they worked out to something like this:

• (1) PSA 1.5: $260,000.00
• (2) PSA 2.5: $425,000.00 (2 examples have sold)
• (1) PSA 4.5:  In excess of $1,000,000.00

So, what does that mean for the remaining three cards? What are they worth? How about the coveted PSA 4.5 example? Could that be worth a million dollars? We certainly think so. Here is what we estimate the remainder of the cards to be worth:

• (1) PSA 3.5 $750,000.00
• (2) PSA 2.5 $400,000.00-$450,000.00 (2 examples remain)

Bringing the grand total of the entire Lucky 7 Find to more than $3.7 million dollars!

And how has the news broken? What sources have been quoted? Well, much of the national media has been running with the original story which was provided by PSA’s Joe Orlando and the representative of the family that is orchestrating the sale. The rest was conjecture and speculation that ran rampant on Twitter and Facebook. But there’s much more to the story of how the collection came to be and how the players were put into play.

The trouble with stories like this is that there is no real go-to source for breaking hobby news and finding follow-up information and details is even tougher. Just Collect will be launching the Just Collect Market Report (JCMR) that will be a vehicle for providing the latest hobby news, auction results and collecting trends and will strive to be the one-stop for all of your hobby news and informational needs!

Photo Credit: Professional Sports Authenticator