When a man walked into Hoody’s Collectibles in Beaverton, Oregon, in June to ask for an expert opinion on an old baseball card, the manager Austin Smith had never seen anything like it.
Truly.
And neither had almost anyone.
The man, named Mitch (he asked to only be identified by his first name), barely knew what he held either.
About eight years earlier, after his father downsized and moved out of his home, Mitch, his brother and his sister-in-law began going through the house. There was no shortage of fascinating old letters and mementos scattered throughout. They looked through documents describing their family’s history. There was an invitation from President Harding to his grandfather to attend the inauguration — “apparently, he had to take care of Harding’s dog during the speech.”
Mitch’s sister-in-law, Sarah, opened up a book.
Inside, she found a card, which she unceremoniously dumped in the trash. Upon further thought, she removed it, saying, “you know, maybe we should look into this.”
The story was familiar to Mitch, who recalled his father telling him of a card he found in a book during his grandfather’s estate sale.
“I just assumed he had taken it and had it valued,” Mitch said.
Time passed and the card sat largely untouched. Its identity was never found. Then, earlier this year, after the death of his father, Mitch and his brother decided to figure out what exactly they had.
“We hoped it was original,” Mitch said. “Because it's been in the family, apparently, for decades and decades.”
They tried a few different experts and shops, all of whom told them it was fake. “We'll just kick it up the food chain,” the brothers decided.
Looking for a second opinion, they tried Hoody’s.
Upon being presented the card, Smith leaned in to take a close look, assuming it would be a reprint just like most supposedly rare finds which walk in the door. But as he examined the card, he had an inkling it might actually be authentic.
It had Joe Jackson on the front, but that was pretty much where the familiarities ended. The card stock and the feel of the paper was enough to at least warrant more research.
He texted Hoody’s owner, Tait Hoodenpyl, and told him they might have something worth checking out. They were unable to find a single example of the card online. But there were some that were close. Other players from the set and other Jackson cards featuring different backs but otherwise similar looks.
Though there was nothing to compare it to, they determined if it was real — a 1917 Standard Biscuit Joe Jackson card. The first one ever seen publicly.
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The Standard Biscuit set was distributed around San Francisco in extremely limited quantities. PSA had previously graded around 40 cards from the set and zero Joe Jacksons featuring the Standard Biscuit back.
Things were starting to fall into place. Mitch’s grandfather had lived in the area around the same time after he moved there as a kid following his father’s work opportunities.
Mitch can only assume his grandfather got it the same way anyone of the time would have received one: Buying biscuits.
The impulse to stow the card away for all those years wasn’t due to a love of baseball cards, but more a symptom of a bit of a hoarding tendency, according to Mitch. Unlike the Rolex watch he inherited from his grandfather, which Mitch had for 25 years before finding out it was fake, the card would prove to be the real deal.
Once the team at Hoody’s was convinced it was real, they realized none had ever sold publicly. None appeared in the PSA or SGC population reports.
They contacted PSA about a month prior to the National Sports Collectors Convention, asking if the company would authenticate the card. PSA took weeks to research, asking for photos and videos of the card, just to confirm it should and does exist.
It was eventually slabbed and graded a PSA 3, the only Jackson card from the set. Now, Hoody’s will be selling the card in an eBay Marquee auction in September, officially introducing Joe Jackson’s latest rarity to the collecting world.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.