Cooperstown's 'Mona Lisa' Found in Ohio Attic

Talk about not knowing what you have.

In a dusty cardboard box stored under a wooden dollhouse for decades was a treasure trove of extremely rare and valuable baseball cards, so much so that estimates are that the collection in total could bring $3 million at auction.

The cards now belong to a Ohio guy who knows a bit about baseball, but it was his grandfather who collected about 700 cards and kept them all in pristine condition. And pristine they are, part of the E98 series, one of the more famous of the card series in baseball's less recent past, with half of the 30 players appearing on plaques on walls in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Unlike other, more dog-eared members of this series, these are mint. Among the shining lights in this newly discovered Ohio collection are cards representing Christy Mathewson, Connie Mack, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, and Honus Wagner.

One enthusiast compared it to finding the Mona Lisa in your attic.

The cards originally belonged to a man who died in the 1940s. When the man's wife died, one of their daughters continued to live in the house. When she died last year, she left everything to her 20 nieces and nephews, the youngest of which was put in charge of the estate. It was during a recent clean-out that the guy found the gems.

Once the guy and the family figured out that they had something valuable on their hands, they sent some of the cards off to a professional authentication company, which rated the cards very highly indeed. On a scale of 1 to 10, the company rated the Ty Cobb card a 9 — and there were 16 in the collection. And, for the first time ever, the company gave out a 10, a rating of perfect condition, to a Honus Wagner card. Wagner, of course, is the Holy Grail of baseball players, having used his considerable influence to get his cards pulled from the market. The biggest price ever paid for a baseball card was for a Honus Wagner: $2.8 million, in 2007. Honus was also a hit for some nuns, who gained the system for more than $200,000 in 2010.

As for the owners, they are dividing everything among equally, with all but a few vowing to sell the cards and take the money.