Thirty-seven baseball cards sell for more than $470,000

Thirty-seven baseball cards that were nearly thrown out were sold for $473,750 at an auction in Baltimore on Thursday, the Baltimore Sun reported.

And there are still plenty of cards left that could bring the total sale price of the collection to more than $2 million.

The cards were part of what is being called "Black Swamp Find," named after the area in Defiance, Ohio, where the cards were found by the Hench family.

While cleaning out the attic of an aunt who had died, family members found the 1910 E-98 cards in a simple box hidden under a dollhouse.

The family had no idea the cards were worth anything, and Karla Hench twice had to save the cards from the dump.

They finally did a little research and in June contacted Heritage Auctions, which hosted Thursday's event.

"Typically when someone calls and says they have some of these cards, they were packaged with candy and are stained and in terrible condition," Heritage Director of Sports auctions Chris Ivy told the Sun. "So when they sent us an example with eight of them...those eight cards would have been a find on their own. They were absolutely mint."

Over 700 cards were found in the collection, but only 37 cards were auctioned off Thursday, split up in three lots. The rest of the cards will be auctioned off over the next few years, Ivy told the Sun.

The second lot was just one card, a PSA Gem Mint 10 (the highest grade a baseball card can receive) Honus Wagner card, the only such card in that condition in existence. It sold for $200,000.

The first lot of 27 cards sold for $240,000, and the third lot of nine color variations from the 1910 E-98 set went for $33,750.

The entire collection could end up being worth $2-3 million.