By This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it | Corridor Inc. Staff Writer

Originally published April 2007

A baseball signed by Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson sold for $161,000 during a recent auction.

     Huggins, who is co-owner of Huggins and Scott Auctions, has seen his fair share of valuable sports memorabilia like baseballs signed by Babe Ruth and jerseys worn by Mickey Mantle.

     The latest big-ticket item — the Mathewson ball — set a company record for the highest selling signed baseball.

     “It’s a neat item; the finest one I’ve offered for auction sale by far,” said Huggins, who co-owns the Silver Spring auction house with John Scott Sr.

     The baseball, signed by the Hall of Fame pitcher, was one of 1,550 items sold during an online and telephone auction from Feb. 21 to March 8.

     This year’s auction also highlighted a Babe Ruth signature card, which sold for $40,250, a Jackie Robinson signed baseball for $2,300, a game-used baseball from Cal Ripken’s 2,131 game signed by Ripken for $3,450, a signed replica Mickey Mantle jersey for $5,462 and a 1986 Mets World Series home plate for $4,025.

     The auction, one of two per year, grossed $1.7 million, the highest to date. The company’s last auction in October grossed $1.4 million.

     Most of the auction merchandise is sports-related, but the company has also highlighted rare Beatles record covers, comic books and movie memorabilia.

     About 80 percent of the items sold through the auction are from consigners. The other 20 percent is comprised of items Huggins has bought directly from people who want to sell their memorabilia.

     While the price of the items can go as high as bidders take them, Huggins said usually nothing sells for less than $200.  

     Consigners get between 85 to 95 percent of the sale price, Huggins said adding, a 15 percent buyer’s premium and five percent sales tax are added to final auction sale items.

Bill Huggins at his Silver Spring store, House of Cards. Photo by Steve Putnam.

     Huggins turned his love of sports into a business 27 years ago.

     In 1980, he, and former partner, Chuck Bortnick, opened House of Cards, a sports memorabilia store in Wheaton. Seven years later, the store moved to its current location in Silver Spring. House of Cards offers both old and new sports merchandise, in addition to consignment sports items.

     Today, the company has consignment representatives across the country and the Silver Spring office houses seven full-time and four part-time employees.

     The store’s success — and demand for vintage sports memorabilia — led to the first auction in 1989 at the Silver Spring Armory. The auction moved online in 1994 and now the semi-annual auctions have more than 10,000 bidders.

     Huggins and his team collect items for the auctions throughout the year. Several hundred items are already slated for the next auction in September.

     For convenience, the company also distributes a catalog at the time of the online auctions.

     “It’s work surfing the Internet so a lot of people like the idea of having a tangible item,” he said, adding that six to 12 names are added per day to the mailing list. 

     Huggins has a local following and clients as far as Ethiopia, Canada, France, Germany and South America.

     Barry Malkin, 58, of Kensington, has been a customer since 1987. He turned to the store to complete his baseball sets from 1956, 1957, 1959 and 1961.

     “Over the years at auction and in the store, I’ve purchased $75,000 in cards easily,” he said.

     Collecting baseball cards is a learning experience, Malkin said, adding that times have changed for collectors.

     “As a kid you had four television channels so the way you learned about sports was by collecting baseball cards,” he said. “Now people are putting sets they had as a kid back together. Things you paid 50 cents for then you now pay hundreds for.”

     Baseball items are the most popular items, Huggins said.

     “People are collectors as a kid and they grow up, have disposable money and come looking for cool finds,” he said.

     The sports memorabilia industry is showing no signs of slowing down.

     “In 2005, sports memorabilia made $2.2 billion,” said Alina Halloran, director of GenuNet, the Internet monitoring and reporting system of auctions for global Opsec Security Inc. “This is one of the more mature industries that’s continued to show growth over the years.”

     Today, collectors seek tangible items for sentimental if not monetary reasons.

     “Fans want athlete material and there’s a definite demand to fill and a large volume of product,” Halloran said.

     Huggins expects the growth to continue.

     “The only thing that can kill it is if they stop playing professional sports or if they stop making kids,” he said. <