In the 1980s, just as baseball cards started to explode, minor-league cards started to get a serious look.
Masses, for the first time, started to collect these team sets as pre-rookie cards. Companies such as TCMA, ProCards and Best all competed to produce Double-A and Triple-A sets.
Collectors then honed in on the rarest cards, and one stood above them all: the 1980 Charlotte O's police set with Cal Ripken Jr.
Nearly 45 years later, Ripken's first trading card, with the orange border, is still the cream of the crop. On Thursday, Hunt Auctions sold one in a PSA 4 for $11,750. For context, a Ripken 1982 Topps rookie in a PSA 7 sold on eBay on Thursday for $22.
"It's the first one we've ever auctioned," David Hunt said. "We've been around 35 years."
Now, for the essential story that makes the 1980 Charlotte O's Police set so rare.
In the late '70s and early '80s, before minor-league card production was a thing, teams and local officials produced the cards on a promotional basis, meaning they never technically sold.
In 1980, the Charlotte O's, the Orioles Double-A affiliate, did exactly that.
They commissioned an unknown printer to make two sets: one with a blue border that would have the logo of local TV station, WBTV, on the front left of the card, and one for the Charlotte police department, which offered tips such as how to properly drive a bike on the road and to call 911 in case of an emergency.
The WBTV blue borders set is rare. It was given out at one game at Crockett Park on May 30, 1980.
Every child under 14 not only got in for free, with a paying adult, but got the set for free.
It was said they made 1,400 sets, but with a paying attendance of only 2,036.
"I do remember there were a lot of cards left over," former Charlotte O's player Cat Whitfield told the Facebook group "Ripken in the Minors."
Whitfield was Charlotte's 6-foot-4 shortstop. Yes, Ripken played third base for the team, except for the two nights in the season when Whitfield left to get married.
Whitfield said there were several extra cases of the cards left over. What did he do? He sifted through sets, took his card out and threw the rest away.
But for anyone who kept the cards for enough time, the return has been fabulous.
PSA has graded 70 total Ripken cards from the set, the last one, in a PSA 8 sold at Robert Edwards Auctions in December 2022 for $9,000.
But having a Ripken Jr. orange border police card is hitting the motherlode.
Unlike the WBTV set, which came in a plastic baggy, the police sets were loose. Police officers would go to schools in Charlotte and hand out singles. So, it was the luck of the draw whether you'd get Cal Ripken Jr., Drungo Hazewood, John Buffamoyer or The Pepper Girls (the team's squad of ballgirls).
Because the cards were distributed as singles, it became less likely they would be saved over time.
Total PSA population of O's police cards? 65. Number of Ripkens? 30.
The price paid for the PSA 4 on Thursday wasn't a record — a PSA 6 sold in 2021 for $24,401 — but was more a testament to the amazing consistency of the card throughout time.
If you see a Ripken Jr. police card in the wild, buyer beware. In the early '90s, this card and the 1982 Don Mattingly Columbus Clippers card were counterfeited, and there are more fakes than real ones.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectible market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.