Rare hockey card collection surpasses expectations at New Hamburg, Ont. auction

CTV’s Colton Wiens gets a close look at what could be a highly-coveted card collection.

The “holy grail of hockey cards” hit a home run on the auction block.

The century-old collection went for $87,725, after the buyer’s premium, on Sunday night.

The sale was organized by Miller and Miller Auctions LTD. in New Hamburg, Ont. and included 51 cards from the highly-desirable 1924–25 Champ’s Cigarettes hockey set.

It was described as a once-in-a-lifetime get.

“[This collection] sort of stayed in one family for the whole 100 years,” Ben Pernfuss, the auction house’s consignment director of sports cards and memorabilia, said on Jan. 21.

The standout in the collection was a card depicting the Stanley Cup.

“This is the first time the Stanley Cup was ever featured on a card,” Pernfuss explained. “It’s considered sort of the rookie card of the Stanley Cup.”

The winning bid for that one card was $27,000.

Another featuring Clarence Day brought in $18,000, while a Howie Morenz card was snapped up for $7,000.

Donald Badder of Windsor, Ont. put the collection up on the auction block. He told CTV News they belonged to his father, who had traded them for another set of cards featuring birds from Canada. In 1988, Badder found the hockey cards in a tobacco box which his father had planned to throw out. He asked to keep them and stored the collection in a safety deposit box until they hit the century mark.

To put the initial swap into perspective, Pernfuss said the bird cards Badder’s father traded would be worth approximately $5 each to collectors today.