• HOME
  • FEATURES
    • Best Of Cover Shoot
    • Pet Owner’s Stories
    • People
    • Places
    • Issues
    • Remembering
    • Things
    • To Do
  • DEPARTMENTS
    • Finance / Real Estate
      • Financial Articles
      • Top 10 Most Expensive Homes Sold
      • Real Estate
        • Real Estate Experts
        • Articles
    • Attorney Directory
    • Ask the Experts
    • Business
      • Belle Hall Shopping Center
      • Lowcountry Women in Business
      • MP Business
    • Entertainment
      • Golf
    • Fashion & Beauty
    • Food & Drink
    • Giving Back
    • Health & Wellness
      • COVID-19 Articles & Resources
    • House & Home
    • Learning
      • Wando High School
    • Love & Marriage
    • Pets
    • Relax & Retire
  • Read Magazine
  • MORE MAGS
    • Charleston Women 👩‍🏫🏢
    • Lowcountry Cuisine 🧀🍷
    • Best of Mt Pleasant Mag 🏆🏆
    • Charleston Women in Real Estate 👩🏘️
    • MP Business Mag 🏢
    • MP Pets 🐶🐱
    • Charleston Independent School Directory 🏫
    • MP Senior Living 👴👵
    • More Mags
      • IOP Mag
      • SI Mag
      • MP Town Hall Magazine
  • OUR TOWN
    • MP Town Hall
    • MP Town Council
  • DIRECTORIES
    • East Cooper Church Directory
    • East Cooper Fitness Directory
    • Local 2019 CPA Tax Directory
    • Mount Pleasant Apartment Directory
  • SUBSCRIBE

Mount Pleasant Magazine

Mount Pleasant Magazine (Mount Pleasant, SC) informs residents and visitors about people, places and happenings around our area.

Vote in Charleston's Best in Health
  • Best of Mount Pleasant
    • 2021 Best of Mount Pleasant including Previous Years
    • Best of Mount Pleasant Winner Articles
    • 2021 Best of Mount Pleasant Cover Photo Shoot
    • Best Of Magazines
    • Best Of Videos
    • Best Of Party Photos
    • Best Of Plaques
  • Podcast
  • Local Events
  • Our Winners
  • Advertise
    • Advertise With Us
    • Media Kit
    • Video Testimonials
  • MORE
    • MP Neighborhoods
    • East Cooper Online Network
    • Real Estate Experts
    • Attorney Directory
    • News
    • Contact

Love of the Game: Collector’s Obsession With Baseball About to Pay Off

Posted by MPM 1 Comment

Gene Prince - collecting baseball cards since age 6
Gene Prince has been collecting baseball cards since he was 6 years old.
Gene Prince has been a baseball nut his whole life, but something sets him apart from others of his generation who spent balmy summer days and frigid winter nights dreaming of one day playing the game at its highest level. Horror stories abound of young men who left home for college or the Army and later returned to find that Mom had decided that baseball cards were a useless and trash-worthy relic of the past.

Mickey Mantle’s final baseball card
Mickey Mantle’s final baseball card is expected to be worth $130,000 or so to Gene Prince.
Not so with Prince, who grew up in South Jersey, idolizing and empathizing with the hapless Phillies. He’s been collecting cards since he was 6 years old in 1958, and, though he’s never sold a single one of the 40,000 or so cards he now owns, he’s about to strike it rich. A 1968 Topps Mickey Mantle card that he purchased for a dime – along with nine other cards and a thin, odorous piece of stale bubble gum – is about to be auctioned off for somewhere in the neighborhood of $185,000. It seems that 1968 was The Mick’s final year in the Major Leagues, granting that card, like a player’s rookie card, a ton of extra value in the world of collecting.

“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.

Bob Gibson basball card
Bob Gibson, among the most feared pitchers of his time, played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1959 to 1975. He’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame
After that, young Prince was hooked. He took his cards with him wherever he went, which, at least once, turned out to be an unfortunate decision. During a trip to the doctor’s office, he left a shoebox full of them in the car, and, when he returned, the box, loaded with 1967 and 1968 cards, was gone. He’ll never know how many Hall-of-Famers were represented in that long-lost part of his collection – Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews … the possibilities are both endless and painful.

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.

Gene Prince Philadelphia Phillies baseball cards
Gene Prince has always been a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Prince, whose cousin, Tom Prince, was a catcher for five different teams, including the Phils, from 1987 through 2003, never thought about selling any of his baseball cards until he learned in April 2018 that pro football offensive lineman Evan Mathis had earned an excellent payday for a mint-condition Mickey Mantle rookie card. Suspecting that his own Mantle card might be worth something substantial, he contacted Sotheby’s, which sold Mathis’ card for $2.88 million, the second-highest amount ever paid for a baseball card.

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

Sharing is Caring

Possibly Related:

No related posts.

Filed Under: People Tagged With: Mar Apr 2019

Comments

  1. Pete Smithj says

    April 3, 2019 at 9:26 am

    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? .

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search the Site


We're on Facebook We're on Twitter Mount Pleasant Magazine Youtube Channel We're on Pinterest Mount Pleasant Magazine Facebook Community We're on Instagram
READ ONLINE
Read the digital magazine now.
GRAB A COPY
Where can I pick up a copy of Mount Pleasant Magazine?
SUBSCRIBE
Get Mount Pleasant Magazine Delivered.
Pamper your pets at Hairy Winston Pet Boutique and Grocery!
Ascue’s Auto Body & Paint Shop, serving East of the Cooper for 50 years
Need a doctor? Charleston Physicians can connect you with Mt Pleasant doctors.
Read Charleston Women Magazine online now.
Mount Pleasant's ONLY source for everything PETS!


Online Magazines

Mount Pleasant

Lifestyle Magazine

Read Isle of Palms

Magazine Online

Read Sullivan's Island

Magazine Online

Take a Bite

Lowcountry Cuisine Magazine

Georgetown, SC. Yummy Day Trips
Isle of Palms Magazine - family of sites logo
Mount Pleasant Magazine - family of sites logo
North Mount Pleasant Magazine - family of sites logo
Sullivan's Island Magazine - family of sites logo

Recent Posts

Michael’s Barkery Pet Spa & Boutique: A ‘Paws-i-tive’ Experience

By Colin McCandless Michael’s Barkery Pet Spa & Boutique, winner of Best Pet-friendly Business, may have just turned one last November, but that’s still a wealth of experience in dog years, and … Continue Reading

Southern Belles: A Children’s Clothier, Shop for Family, Feel Like Family

By Ali McCloud More than ever, it’s important to support small businesses within our community. “Local businesses have to work so hard to compete with big-box stores like Amazon and other … Continue Reading

Daniel Island Section

Keeping the Dream of Playing Tennis Alive: The South Carolina Junior Tennis Foundation

Since 1973, South Carolina’s Lowcountry has welcomed players from the Women’s Tennis Association once a year for the annual Volvo Car Open, North America’s largest women-only tennis tournament. … Continue Reading

Truly One-of-a-kind: 369 Ralston Creek Drive

Big cities certainly have advantages – culture, dining, employment opportunities and excitement. But face it: Sometimes people yearn for a peaceful, serene atmosphere where they can relax, raise a … Continue Reading

More Daniel Island Section Posts

SEARCH

Featured Pages

Mount Pleasant Apartments
East Cooper Online Network

Copyright © 2021 · Mount Pleasant Magazine, All Rights Reserved. Advertise With Us.