Saskatchewan family finds the white whale of hockey card collections

Typically when you clean up your house, you’ll find a handful of dust bunnies, a box of clothes that don’t fit anymore, and a dusty collection of gifts from distant relatives that haven’t found their way to the trash can yet.

What you wouldn’t expect to find is an unopened case of 1979 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards that could contain around 25 pristine Wayne Gretzky rookie cards.

That’s what happened to a Saskatchewan family who discovered the case when cleaning out one of the spare rooms in their father’s house.

The collection recently went up for auction and is garnering a lot of attention. As of Tuesday, bidding was at $1,325,000.

Jason Simonds, the consignment director of sports for Heritage Auctions in the United States, guesses the case could end up fetching $3 million.

In its online listing of the collection, Heritage Auctions called it “the greatest unopened find of the 21st century.”

“It’s an incredibly popular set,” Simonds said from New York City. “It’s probably the most important hockey set of all time.

“To have an unopened box is something incredibly special, but to have an unopened case — especially the only unknown unopened case — is something that collectors will really gravitate towards because it’s completely unique.

“(The Gretzky rookie) is the holy grail of hockey cards, and that’s not overstating it.”

The case in question wasn’t the only thing the family found. There also were nine other different cases containing boxes full of other hockey cards from that era.

980 CJME has confirmed the identity of the owner and agreed to withhold his name for security reasons.

When asked about the cards and how they were discovered, the owner’s son said his father was an avid collector.

“My dad was downsizing, which is why we had to start going through the house to find out what was there,” the son said.

“My dad was a collector for a long time of various sports cards and collectibles, and his house was full of all these things, and we just recently started to clean out his house …

“When we found it and we reached out to the auction people, they were very excited because it’s apparently one of a kind.”

The case of 1979 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards that’s up for auction. (Heritage Auction)

The son said his father’s collection was a large part of his life growing up.

“As a kid, I grew up in that hobby, and in fact, my dad would have bought two cases in 1979, and he usually got me and my sister to sort,” the son said. “He would have opened one of the cases, and my sister and I quite routinely sorted them, and he would trade them.

“We grew up with that around us — hockey cards, baseball cards, and things like that.”

After the family’s discovery of the 1979 case, they reached out to Heritage Auctions.

“It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I got a text from (the son) saying, ‘Hey, I think I’ve got something good,’ and it was a 1979 O-Pee-Chee hockey wax case, the only one known,” Simonds said. “I believe that the only response to my text message was, ‘Oh my god,’ but then what I asked for was a picture.

“When you talk to people in the hobby, there’s a lot of whispers and rumours that these ’79 cases are out there, but no one has actually been able to provide proof or photos. When (the son) sent me that photograph, it’s the first time that someone had seen one since probably the 1970s.”

After the family contacted the auction company, the priority became making sure that the case got safely to Dallas to be inspected. A guard was quickly flown in and helped escort the case to Toronto, where an armoured shipment flew it to Dallas.

“This is the biggest single item I have ever brought in. It’s remarkable. It’s going to be the most valuable piece of unopened material that has ever sold at auctions,” said Simonds.

The large 1979 case, which was unopened until the point of being authenticated, contained up to 16 boxes of 48 wax packages containing 14 cards each. The significance of this particular year for hockey cards was that this was the first year it was possible to purchase Gretzky’s rookie card.

Heritage Auctions sold one Gretzky rookie card in mint condition for $3.75 million.

The son said the collection holds immense value.

“The auction house that has it listed … has an estimated value of $2 million on it at the moment,” he said. “They sold one of the 16 boxes; not one of the selection, but one from the past. They sold one box for $250,000 US — and this one had 16 inside of it.”

Simonds is excited to see where the bidding goes.

“It’s something that you just don’t see in this industry,” he said. “You just don’t run into a $3-million case of hockey cards. It’s just otherworldly.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Gillian Massie