

“My mom knew how special baseball cards were,” Prince, now a Mount Pleasant resident, explained. “As a kid, I didn’t think the cards were worth a lot of money, but they were worth it to me. I’ve given some to friends, but I’ve never sold a card before.”
Prince was introduced to baseball by his grandfather, Joe Descher, a catcher who suffered an injury that kept him from earning a spot on the Philadelphia Athletics’ roster in 1917 and 1918. The first card he ever owned was a 1964 Carroll Hardy, an outfielder with the Houston Colt 45s who was nearing the end of an uneventful career.

Somewhere along the line, Prince transferred his cards from shoeboxes into binders, which is where he keeps them today. They were stored in the closet in his bedroom until he left home at the age of 25, and that’s where he has always stashed them through four moves over the years.

Prince traveled to New York City, and, accompanied by an FBI agent from Philadelphia, visited the auction house. After an hour-and-a-half, Sotheby’s determined that the card was genuine and in top condition. The FBI agent returned to the City of Brotherly Love and bad baseball and put the card in a vault in his office. Prince went back to Mount Pleasant, awaiting a call that would tell him when the card would be auctioned.
Prince said he would be there for the live auction March 28. If, as predicted, the Mantle card sells for $185,000, Sotheby’s will take 30 percent, leaving Prince with somewhere around $130,000.
“At 50 years old, I think the card is hot right now,” he said, explaining why he decided to let go of something near and dear to his heart for half a century. “The next time it will be hot will be when it’s 75 years old, and that’s 25 years from now.”
Prince has other valuables he’s thinking of selling as well, including Johnny Bench’s rookie and final cards; the rookie cards of Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt; and Roberto Clemente’s final card. The first Latin American player enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Clemente died in a plane crash while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on Dec. 31, 1972. He was still an active player at the time.
Prince’s grandfather got him interested in collecting, and, in turn, he passed the passion on to his own sons, Michael, 30, and Eric, 27. Prince said they each own around 10,000 baseball cards, and they also collect ice hockey cards. Before moving to the Lowcountry, Prince worked in media relations for the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers from 1981 until 2014.
Prince insisted that he had no idea his boyhood – and adulthood – hobby would pay off so handsomely. So why did he start collecting baseball cards before he reached his seventh birthday?
“For the love of the game,” he mused. “The love of the game.”
By Brian Sherman
Excellent article covering the trait of card collecting. It is amazing what a one cent or five cent card during our growing years (I am older than Gene) is valued at—let alone the love of collecting the cards. Today it is more difficult for the youth to pickup bubble gum and cards due to todays costs, but possibly a good investment today for later life.
How did the auction turn out? .