Family finds “Holy Grail” hockey card collection in basement and it’s worth millions

A ‘once in a lifetime’ sports discovery has been made after a family in Regina, Canada found out about their ultra-rare hockey card collection sitting in their basement for 40 years.

16 boxes of booster packs from NHL legend Wayne Gretzky’s rookie year have been located and a bidding war is already underway.

The boxes, authenticated by Baseball Card Exchange’s Steve Hart have a chance to contain the Wayne Gretzky rookie cards, which alone fetch a fortune. Up until now, only two Gem Mint 10 OPC Gretzky cards exist, with one selling for nearly $4M.

So, exactly how did this incredibly rare collection go undetected all these years?

Family was sitting on hockey goldmine without knowing it

According to Heritage Auctions, a set collector had purchased the boxes wholesale many years ago, but didn’t realize what he had.

“The family, since they’ve had this for 40-some years, always assumed this was a 1980 case of hockey [cards]. That’s not so bad, $300,000 to $350,000, but one day someone finally asked them, ‘you might want to check and see what’s exactly in there.’”

That’s when they realized the boxes were white and from the 79-80 season and not blue like the 80-81 season. This family, like many before them, had a collection on their hands worth far beyond what they could have imagined.

“The case says 1980 on it because the hockey season straddled two years, it went 1979 and into 1980 and something that O-Pee-Chee did, which is the manufacturer, is they would put up the second year, the year that season’s finals would take place,” Heritage Auctions’ Jason Simonds explained.

Hart says this collection is the “holy grail” of sports collections from the 1970s onwards, remarking that the cases were in “flawless” condition.

So far, bids have reached 1.3M with the auction ending on February 24.