Treasure Trove: Honus Wagner Baseball Card

the Find
A rare Honus Wagner Baseball Card, printed around 1909 to 1911.  Honus Wagner was known as "The Flying Dutchman" because of his speed.  He played in the National League for 20 years, most them as a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates .  Inducted in 1936, he was one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Baseball cards back then, were printed and distributed along with tobacco packs to appeal to young boys.  Honus didn't like the idea and put a stop to the production of his card. Today, there are only 57 known copies of the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card. It is one of the rarest and most expensive in the world.  A near-mint copy sold for $2.8 million last 2007.

the Lucky
The nuns from School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore

the Place and the Time
The card was found in a safe-deposit box, with a note that said, "Although damaged, the value of this baseball card should increase exponentially throughout the 21st century!". Heritage Auction Galleries sold it last year, November 2010.

How in the world!?
One of the nuns' brother left all his possessions to the convent when he died in 1999. His lawyer found the card in his safety deposit box and informed the nuns about it. It sold for $262,000, even though the card was in poor condition-- it had creases, had been laminated and one of the borders had been cut. The money will be used to help the order's ministries in more than 30 countries.

"It just boggles your mind," one of the nuns, Sister Virginia Muller told AP. "I can't remember a time when we have received anything like this."


Sources:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honus_Wagner
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5732365
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T206_Honus_Wagner