First baseball card ever to be auctioned

"When the baseball card first went up for auction on eBay, it was priced at 99 cents. That may have been a tad low.

The e-mails started coming immediately: someone offering $5,000, someone offering $10,000. The seller, who had found the card in an old photo album he purchased at a yard sale in ­Baileyville, Maine, quickly removed the eBay listing and brought in professional appraisers, who determined that the card was more than rare: It was one of two known examples of the first baseball card ­ever printed.

Now the card — a photo of the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics amateur baseball club — is going back to auction, with a slightly higher price tag. The Saco River Auction Company in Biddeford, Maine, will host the auction next month for the seller, who has chosen to remain anonymous, and ­expects the card to fetch upward of $100,000. The only other known example of the card is in the ­Library of Congress.

Troy Thibodeau, the auctioneer, said the find is generating huge excitement from those who collect early 19th century baseball memorabilia."