T206 Ty Cobb card to beat half a million?

This unique T206 1909-1911 Ty Cobb red background with “Ty Cobb back” trading card is from the so-called Lucky 7 Find.

The cache of seven identical, high quality variants of this great T206 rarity was discovered during an estate clearance in small town Georgia in 2016.

Ty Cobb Lucky

Few of the "Ty Cobb back" T206 cards have survived 

Prior to this, only 15 examples were known.

That means it’s still the rarest card in the T206 series.

Meanwhile, the finest variants of the Honus Wagner T206 card (with a relatively high 75 recorded specimens) have sold for as much as $3.1m.

So how did seven of these cards turn up in one home?

Simple. The man who accumulated the cards was one of few people in the country to smoke Ty Cobb brand tobacco.

These cards were issued with much greater frequency inside these tins than in others, although very few were kept or looked after.

This card, graded VG + 3.5, is the second best in the cache.

It’s valued at upwards of $500,000.

There’s also a 1920-1922 Babe Ruth game-used bat that’s expected to breach $600,000 at the February 25 auction.

The auction house describes it as “the bat that changed the game forever...

“...unquestionably one of the most important game used bats that Heritage has ever offered.”

Ruth spent most of the early 1920s belting out home runs, becoming such a draw that in 1923 the Yankees had to move to a bigger stadium.

This is a seriously heavy bat, weighing over 1.2kg. You get a real sense of Ruth’s enormous physical strength.

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