Antique dealer unearths one of the oldest baseball cards

For those of you out there with baseball cards you thought would fund your retirement someday, this might make you a little bit angry.

While you have a full complement of Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Bonds rookie cards that are worth about the same as they did in 1988, Bernice Gallego recently found a card in a box of antiques that could be worth more than a typical car.

It's a baseball card of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team. It just might be the oldest baseball card ever found. And it was rescued from a storage unit in Fresno, Calif., by an antique dealer who had no idea what she'd found.

"I didn't even know baseball existed that far back," Bernice Gallego told the Fresno Bee, between puffs on a cigarette. "I don't think that I've ever been to a baseball game."

She put it on eBay with an initial price of $10, but nobody bid on it initially, and she was beseiged by questions from would-be buyers. She sought some advice from a friend who realized that she might have something worth a lot more, and Gallego took the auction down. Now she's a lot richer for it.

"When I came to meet her and she took it out of a sandwich Baggie and she was smoking a cigarette, I almost fainted," said Rick Mirigan, a Fresno card trader. "They've uncovered a piece of history that few people will ever be able to imagine or comprehend. ... That card is history. It's like unearthing a Mona Lisa or a Picasso."

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

Experts have verified the card's authenticity. It's not in mint condition, but the card is very rare. There's no word yet on when that sale might take place.

"Those cards (of that 1869 team) are considered the first baseball cards, and although they aren't extremely rare - there might be only 15-20 of them in existence - they're still pretty hard to find," collector Steve Wolter told the Cincinnati Enquirer. He estimated the value between $4,000 and $20,000.