2/11/09

Bernice Sells an Old Baseball Card for $64,073


Nice going Bernice!
Fresno woman's rare baseball card nets $64,073
Fresno woman gets $64K for rare baseball card she originally tried to sell for $10

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- A Fresno antiques dealer has hit a home run with the sale of a rare baseball card she thought was worth only $10.

Bernice Gallego ended up selling the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings team card on an online auction site for $64,073 on Tuesday. That's more than double the previous record set for an identical card. The Cincinnati Red Stockings are the first professional team in the U.S.

Gallego didn't know what she had when she originally listed the card on eBay for $10. After numerous e-mails asking if it was real, she pulled the card. Only a handful of them exist.

The front of the card features a sepia-toned, gelatin-silver photographic print of the entire team. The reverse has a red-and-white advertisement for Peck & Snyder, a New York sports equipment manufacturer.

Gallego enjoyed national media attention and appeared on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" after finding the card in a box of junk.

The buyer was Jeff Rosenberg, president of a Houston company that promotes sports memorabilia shows.

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