Is there anything better than watching someone get lucky on Antiques Roadshow? Probably not! Hence you’ll very much enjoy watching this woman learn that her amazing collection of proto photographic baseball cards, featuring the Boston Red Stockings of the 1870s, might be worth as much as $1 million.
This woman (who hasn’t revealed her name) inherited the collection from her great great grandmother, who owned a boardinghouse where she hosted the Boston Red Stockings (some of the very first professional baseball players). And so she ended up with these cards, as well as a letter with a teasing little sentence and signature from each of the players. The owner plans to keep the collection in the family—or at least she did, until she found out just how much it was worth—so the valuation is primarily a question of how much insurance to buy. Her face, when the appraiser gave her a number: