The card received a BVG grade of 2.5, described as Good+
Ellen Kelly bought the old piano from a family estate sale in Westernport, Maryland, in 1992, Yahoo Sports reported. Kelly said she never remembered it working, but she still wanted to play it after buying it for $25. Because 112 baseball cards had been placed inside it, when Kelly asked a friend to repair a pedal and tune the piano, the friend found that the pedal was stuck. Because her aunt was a neat freak and might have thrown them away, kelly said they may have hidden them there.
“He was looking at a pile of cards and I said, ‘Hey, there’s Babe Ruth,'” Kelly recalled. The piano had belonged to her aunt Nora, who had kept it at her home. That led to an unexpected discovery. As Kelly looked through the cards, she noticed one of the biggest names in baseball history. The cards were believed to have been placed inside the piano by Kelly’s father or uncle. The cards had apparently remained inside the piano for decades, with the Babe Ruth card among them.
The card found by Kelly was a 1916 Sporting News M101-4 Babe Ruth rookie card. Babe Ruth played professional baseball in Major League Baseball from 1914 to 1935. The Babe Ruth card was sold separately at auction, while the other 110 cards from 1916 were sold together. That group fetched $4,420, according to Forbes.
Because her truck was breaking down, she said she wanted the money to help care for her brother’s medical condition and to buy a new vehicle.
“We were expecting $60,000-$75,000 for the card, so it far exceeded our expectations,” said Steve Bloedow, Beckett Director of Auctions, in a Beckett news release. It shows Ruth’s photograph along with his name, position and team on the front, while the back is blank. Kelly eventually decided to sell the cards rather than continue keeping the collection.
