Like a scene from a movie, a Canadian family from Regina, Saskatchewan recently stumbled upon a treasure trove of sports collectibles that will make them millionaires. What they discovered, sitting in their basement for over 40 years, was a sealed case of 16 boxes of hockey cards from the 1979-80 NHL season.
Those boxes, produced by O-Pee-Chee, could contain several Wayne Gretzky rookie cards. Each box contains 48 individual packs and in all of those packs should lie around 20 pristine Gretzky rookies.
Family in Canada discovers a case of 16 unopened boxes of 1979 O-Pee-Chee.
It being Wayne Gretzky’s rookie year, that’s pretty much the right case to find.
Will be auctioned off at @HeritageAuction, should sell for at least $2 million. pic.twitter.com/sfHiPT7GKx
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 28, 2024
The unnamed family has chosen to auction off the case through consignors, Heritage Auctions. The last time that Heritage auctioned off a single, sealed box of the product, it sold for $210,000 in February of 2022.
While it is still improbable that any of the Gretzky rookies inside the case will receive a full “Gem Mint 10” grade from any card-grading companies, this case, if the boxes are opened, perhaps represents the best chance left for that given its sheer rarity. A single, graded “Gem Mint 10” Gretzky rookie sold for $3.75 million in 2021.
Heritage released a video telling the story of the case, revealed the instance of mistaken identity that caused it to sit untouched for so long, and showcased the authentication process that they outsourced to Baseball Card Exchange. In the video, the decades-old case is finally, fully opened for the first time.
“No other unopened case of 1979-80 OPC has ever surfaced in the 21st century, and it’s all but impossible to imagine another ever will,” Heritage wrote in their auction description. “[It’s] the greatest unopened find in the 21st century. By any metric of evaluation, it’s a thrilling miracle of survival, and one of the greatest trading card lots that Heritage has ever had the privilege to offer.”
The current bid on the case is already $1.325 million. Back in 1979, the case would have cost around $150. That insane amount of profit should only rise as the auction still has 26 days left in it.
Not too shabby for a box of cardboard.
