VANCOUVER, Wash. — Steve Tingwall has been collecting baseball cards all his life. He owns a hobby shop in Vancouver, Columbia Hobby, whose walls and display cases are filled with valuable cards and other memorabilia.
He's seen and held a lot of expensive, coveted cards in his life.
But nothing could have prepared him for what happened on Saturday, when he opened a $425 Panini National Treasures box and found a Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig dual cut autographed booklet card.
The card opens like a book. One side of the card has Ruth's authenticated autograph, the other side has Gehrig's signature. The print run is marked on the card and reads 1/1, which means it's the only such card in existence.
Tingwall said the card is worth between $20,000 and $25,000.
"Someone like me doesn't see that [card] every day," he said. "You know, Babe Ruth! Something he touched and signed. In my wildest dreams, I never though I'd pull something like this. I'll never pull a better card. It just doesn't happen."
Tingwall plans to sell the card — "I can't afford to hold onto a card like that," he said — and said he already knows how he'll spend the money.
"My wife and I were actually discussing about a week ago, you know, my daughter's getting to college age, and wondering how we're going to pay for her college," he said. "This card here, if it sells for what we think it sells for, pays for her first year.
"It's pretty incredible, because you try to do everything for your daughter, send her to the best schools. This is giving us an opportunity, hopefully," he said.
Baseball card boxes range from $50 to $1,500. The more high-end, expensive boxes will usually have guaranteed autographs from current players or game-worn jersey cards with limited numbering.
"The value on some of these cards is nuts," Tingwall said.
A box like the Panini National Treasures box, from which he pulled the rare Ruth/Gehrig card, contains just eight cards and retails for $425.
"$400 is a lot of money for a box. That's not a typical price," he said.
Tingwall opened the box live on Facebook and YouTube during a live, streaming show he runs every two weeks called Columbia Overtime. He'll open boxes live on the show so other collectors and hobbyists can share in the excitement.
"Every now and then, you get a cool pull out of it," he said. "Which is kind of what happened this time."