A brick of EIGHT sealed 1952 Topps baseball wax packs was sold at auction through REA for $1.1 million! Discovered back in the 1990s, this treasure is one of only a few left unopened. Could there be a Mickey Mantle rookie card inside?
According to REA, Mark Murphy, a well-known sealed wax dealer, was involved in a find of 84 total sealed wax packs of 1952 Topps baseball cards in the 1990s. Owners of old grocery stores sold these packs for 5 cents back in 1952, and apparently had old stock four decades later. Murphy's find of 84 packs included 12 single packs, and 9 different bricks of 8 packs each. These 8-pack "bricks" were wrapped in cellophane.
Over the years, these packs were opened in search of rare cards including the Mickey Mantle rookie card. However, Mantle's rookie card is number 311 in the set, and is in the 6th series. Topps released their sets in series which kept collectors going into stores all season; a marketing ploy for foot traffic in stores all year. When the packs were opened in the 1990's cards from the first series (Cards #1-80) were in the packs. While Mantle isn't in this series, these packs yielded some of the highest-graded examples from the first series! The first card in the set, Andy Pafko, has just one card graded a perfect 10 by PSA. You might remember that in the 1950s, kids would wrap a rubber band around their set and place it in a shoebox. The top card, Pafko, would tend to have rubber band marks! Not that pack-fresh Pafko that came out of these sealed packs, though.
A collector held onto three of the bricks from the 1990s find, but eventually sold two of the bricks. One of the bricks was offered at auction by REA in their 2026 Summer Auction. When the hammer fell, the price for a brick of eight 1952 Topps wax packs was $1,107,000!
Each wax pack has 5 cards. If there are no duplicates, a collector would have 40 of the first 80 cards in the set, all freshly pulled from a pack. Is that a gamble you would take? The last high-grade Pafko card, a PSA 8, was sold for $183,000 in February of 2025. Series 1 has Hall of Famers Duke Snider (#37) and Gil Hodges (#36), too!
Whether you'd take that gamble or not, one thing's for sure — sealed 1952 Topps material like this doesn't turn up every day, and neither do the collections built around it. Just Collect is always buying 1952 Topps cards, especially sealed packs, complete sets, high-graded cards, and the key names including Mantle, Jackie Robinson, and Willie Mays. We have purchased many 1952 Topps collections; you can read a few of our stories below! If you're interested in selling a collection today, reach out any time for a
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Just Collect is always buying vintage sports and non-sports cards from 1879 to 2009 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.
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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.
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