A neurologist from Florida left his family a sports card collection potentially worth more than $20 million after he died following complications from COVID-19.
Dr. Thomas Newman amassed quite the collection over his four decades of collecting cards dating back to the 1980s. Newman focused on acquiring cards from 1957 to ’59, though he additionally has cards dating back to the 1880s, per the New York Daily News.
The most valuable card in Newman’s collection is a 1933 Babe Ruth card, which could break the $5.2 million record for a single card sale. A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card holds the current record after being purchased by actor and entrepreneur Rob Gough in January.
“No one enjoyed collecting more than Tom,” his widow, Nancy Newman said. “He jokingly called his cards his ‘paper babies,’ and spent almost every day attending to his collection in one way or another. It gave him such pleasure.
“The only reason he would ever sell a card was if he had acquired the same card in a higher grade.”
Newman’s collection will be available for sale in an online public auction that will begin June 21 and end on July 10, per Memory Lane Inc. Other items include baseball cards featuring Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams, as well as World Series program books dating back to 1903.
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