A case of sealed O-Pee-Chee hockey boxes sold Sunday at Heritage Auction for $3.72 million, doubling the price paid for a 1986 Fleer case containing Michael Jordan rookie cards that was sold for $1.8 million in 2020.
It’s expected that the unopened case of OPC hockey boxes could contain up to 30 Wayne Gretzky rookie cards from the 1979-1980 NHL season. Gretzky rookie cards are highly coveted and since there are 16 wax boxes contained within the case, with 48 packs of cards in each box, and 14 cards per pack, there’s a total count of more than 10,000 cards. Since the set contains 396 different player cards, there may be 27 Gretzky rookie cards inside.
Discovery
The discovery of this 1979-1980 OPC hockey case was found by a father and son in Saskatchewan, Canada. During a basement cleaning at their home, the duo, who chose to remain anonymous, were going through a storage room that was filled with various boxes.
The father was a collector from the 1960s through the 1980s, purchasing a few cases of cards from a distributor every year and either selling or trading the cards contained within each case. The OPC hockey case that just sold for $3.75 million is estimated to have cost $150 back in 1979, according to Heritage Auction sports card specialist, Jason Simonds.
“The person who buys this, one night could crack open a couple beers and open up the case and then go to town on these 16 boxes,” Simonds told the New York Times.
He’d go on to say that the chances it remains a sealed case is strong for the foreseeable future.
Authenticity
To verify the authenticity of the OPC case, Heritage Auction took it to Baseball Card Exchange. BBCE is an authenticator which specializes in unopened vintage sports cards. During inspection, the box was estimated to sell in the $2.5 million to $3 million range.
The story of the year in 2024 so far in collectibles.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) February 25, 2024
How a family found a 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee hockey case in their home.
It sold tonight at @HeritageAuction for $3.72 MILLION.pic.twitter.com/dUdwalrmV8
The case was labeled 1980 since that was the year the Stanley Cup was held for the 1979 season. However, upon opening, the boxes inside were white, indicating that these were from the 1979-1980 season, which was Gretzky’s rookie year. This drove the expected value up from $300,000 to roughly $3 million, since blue boxes are the color from the 1980-1981 season.
The box wound up selling for a whopping $3.75 million during auction and was purchased by an anonymous buyer in Canada. This purchase broke the record for the most amount of money spent on unopened cards, making it the most any buyer has ever spent on a vintage hockey collectible to date.
