Tampa Doctor's Baseball Card Collection Auctioned For $21.5M

TAMPA, FL — The baseball, football and hockey sports memorabilia collection of a Tampa doctor who died of COVID-19 complications brought more than $21.5 million in a public auction that ended Sunday morning, according to Memory Lane Auctions in Tustin, California.

The extensive collection was assembled over four decades by Tampa neurologist Thomas Newman who died at age 73 in January.

More than 50 historic sports cards set record prices in the auction, according to Memory Lane officials. Some of his one-of-a-kind cards and sports memorabilia dated back to the 1880s.

“Although it did not break the world’s record for most valuable sports card, one of Dr. Newman’s 1933 Babe Ruth cards (Goudey #53, graded PSA 9 on a scale of 1 to 10) is the finest known of its kind and it sold for $4,212,000, a record price for that particular card,” said J.P. Cohen, president of Memory Lane Auctions. “He purchased it for less than $20,000 in the mid-1990s.”

A more commonly found 1933 card depicting Ruth in a different pose (Goudey #133, PSA 9) sold for $1,272,000, a record price for that card.

Other highlights of the Newman Collection auction included:

• A 1916 Sporting News rookie card of Babe Ruth sold for $1,452,000, a record for that card in that condition (PSA 6);
• One of the finest known surviving examples (PSA 5) of a gray tint 1925 Exhibit Supply Co. rookie card of Lou Gehrig was purchased for $1,032,000, a record price for that card in that grade.
• A near-perfect 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card (PSA 8) brought $2,112,200, a record price for that card in that grade. Dr. Newman purchased it in 1986 after it was discovered that year in Massachusetts in an original case of 1952 Topps baseball cards.
• Also among the 950-plus lot auction was a unique Babe Ruth single signed ball from 1929 that includes a video of Ruth signing the ball for the young boy. It wasn’t often that fans could catch Ruth on film in 1929.

All prices included a 20 percent buyer’s fee and reflect the final price paid by the winning bidders.

“No one enjoyed collecting more than Tom,” said Newman’s widow, Nancy Newman. “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.”

“My dad began collecting in the early 1980s starting with baseball cards from 1957 and 1959 when he was 10 to 12 years old,” said Newman’s son, Stewart Newman. “Those were replacements for the treasured cards of his youth that he kept in shoeboxes as a youngster and that his mom later threw out.”

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