Local Man Discovers Babe Ruth Signature at House of Cards

A 61-year-old local resident walked into Silver Spring Avenue’s — as he had done many times before — to peruse the store’s vast selection of sports relics and memorabilia. This time, he would walk out with much more than he could ever imagine.

Dave (who requested that his last name be withheld) had read about a new product in the sports card hobby world called "In Memory of…" from the Historic Autograph Company. It features only signatures of deceased baseball players, and he went to the store to purchase one of the $169.95 boxes.

Starting out in the hobby with his kids – he would buy older cards of players from his youth, while his kids collected more contemporary ones – Dave’s interest didn’t wane, even after his kids stopped collecting.

“I figured ‘what the heck,’” Dave said. “I’ve been doing this a long time and was due to get lucky. While it’s tough to justify spending that much money on one pack of cards, I decided to do it!”

For fear of embarrassment, Dave chose not to open the box in the store. For fear of reprisal for paying $170, Dave chose not to open it in front of his wife.

“I went into the room where I keep my collection and opened the box to first find an Eddie Brinkman and thought, 'This is pathetic!' Next was Dick Weik, another Washington Senator, and that really put me down in the dumps!”

The third and final card in the box more than made up for Dave’s disappointment.

“I slowly pulled out the last card and saw the letter ‘B’ then ‘a’ and thought that I may have something exciting,” he recalled.

The Babe Ruth signature card Dave uncovered is one of only five that were available in the entire run of 9,000 cards.

“Babe Ruth is the most collected baseball autograph,” said House of Cards store manager Ricky Huggins. “Finding that Babe Ruth autograph is just like winning the lottery!”

Huggins believes the Ruth find to be one of the more impressive pieces found at the Silver Spring store.

“We’ve had people find a Blake Griffin rookie signature card and a John Wall autographed rookie card, but this easily beats those,” he said.

“When I went back to House of Cards, and found out that it was worth between $3,000 and $4,000, suddenly my wife was OK with my hobby again,” Dave said.