DALLAS, TX.- More than 2,400 stars shine in Heritage’s January 24-25 Winter Sports Cards Catalog Auction, among them one of the rarest and most coveted T206s and 51 sealed baseball wax packs from the 1950s to the 1970s. There’s a beautiful Bowman that ranks among the world’s mightiest Mantles, gaudy Goudeys from a renowned collection featuring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and a creamy Caramel from 1909-11 whose Shoeless Joe is sure to kick up a fuss.

But in this auction, there’s only one Star. That’s the 1984-85 Star Company Michael Jordan card, to be precise — his actual rookie card, the first one officially licensed, offered here alongside the other 11 Bulls who made up the Chicago set.

Jordan’s Star card is no stranger to Heritage, which sold a signed example in December for $120,000. However, after a long pause, Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) only began grading the 1984-85 Star cards in July 2022. As the grading service explained, it accepted the cards in the early 1990s, then stopped “due to issues surrounding the legitimacy of several cards that surfaced after the card manufacturer lost its license and started liquidating assets.”

In the summer of 2022, PSA revisited the Star cards and “decided that enough information was available to allow PSA personnel to properly examine and grade the cards.” Last year, it expanded its policy to include all the Star sets released between 1983 and its final year of production in 1986, when Fleer released the Jordan card widely accepted — and sought-after — as the official rookie card, given its iconic appearance and far wider circulation. Look no further than the PSA Gem Mint 10 example in this auction — or the Jordan-signed ’86 Fleer with the PSA/DNA Auto 9.

It’s unclear how many cards Star Company printed in 1984-85. Some estimates say about 3,000; others are closer to 6,000, with owner Robert Levin putting it at around 4,000, with an unknown number eventually destroyed. Yet, no matter the run, not a single Jordan Star card has rated a Gem Mint 10. In fact, of the 410 graded thus far, only three have merited a Mint 9 — and only seven, including the one in this auction, a Near Mint-Mint+ 8.5. That makes it a legitimate rarity in a world where Gem Mint 10 Fleer Jordans number 330.

This auction features a holy trinity of Jordan cards, including the 1997-98 SkyBox Metal Universe Jordan Precious Metal Gems insert, the most vaunted of the additions to the SkyBox set. This Ruby Red example, graded PSA Excellent 5, is No. 67 of only 100 issued with the set, back when numbered cards really were next-to-impossible to pull.

Such is the nature of collecting, pursuing that elusive, mysterious marvel. This might be among the ultimate chase cards in The Hobby: the 1909-11 T206 Sweet Caporal 350/30 Eddie Plank, one among the more than 500 magnificent T206s in this auction from what’s known as The Rounders Collection.

Plank was one of the greatest hurlers of the Deadball era, a lefty whose stats — 326 games won, a 2.35 career ERA, three World Series titles with the Philadelphia Athletics and a 1.38 ERA over more than 54 innings pitched during those championship games — rated him a Hall of Fame invitation in 1946. Yet his T206 is nearly as hard to find as the fabled Honus Wagner card, of which there are some 70 examples known to exist out of the 200 (or fewer) believed to have printed.

The combined grading companies have certified about 100 surviving examples of Plank’s card, whose T206 should have existed in multitudes. Yet it’s almost as much a rumor as Wagner’s. Theories concerning its scarcity — a bad printing plate and his alleged disdain for tobacco (like Wagner) chief among them — “and yet, still, to this day, nobody knows for sure,” says Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Joe Orlando. “There are different theories, but none has ever been verified.”

The Plank T206 offered in this auction has been graded Very Good 3 by PSA, with only eight rated higher.

Plank’s grail is among the more than 520 T206s and early 20th-century cards offered in this auction from The Rounders Collection, and almost all of them are low-population rarities with hard-to-find backs — chief among them, the 1909-11 E90-1 American Caramel Joe Jackson graded SGC Excellent 5 and the 1909-11 T206 Piedmont 150 Cy Young (Portrait) graded PSA Near Mint-Mint 8. When the auction opened on New Year’s Day, collectors immediately gravitated to each, as there are just two exampled graded higher of the Shoeless Joe card and only one of that desirable Young favorite.

The 1953 Bowman Color Mickey Mantle from The Rounders Collection is no less desirable — a PSA Mint 9 with just one higher. Nor the 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig cards, each graded PSA Near Mint-Mint 8.

And that’s just the tip of the tip of the top of the stack of offerings here, which includes a Honus Wagner (one of his the Hall of Famer’s highest-graded 1914 Cracker Jacks, PSA Excellent-Mint 6) and a complete collection of 1964 Topps Stand-Ups so extraordinary that it’s the No. 2 Current Finest (and No. 3 All-Time Finest) on the PSA Registry. From the same assemblage hails an extensive collection of baseball card wax packs made by various companies (Topps, mostly) every year between 1953 and 1979.

Like most assemblages, The Rounders Collection began taking shape in the 1950s by a kid enamored of the cardboard featuring his hardball heroes. Then, the cards were forgotten for decades — until, in the 1980s, a mom called her son threatening to toss what he had long ago left behind.

As the catalog for this auction notes, “That call reignited a dormant passion, transforming a boyhood pastime into a lifelong pursuit,” which involved visits to flea markets across the Carolinas and Virginia and card shows in the South with Marco Rol, the card shop founder, card-show promoter and Collectors’ Showcase of America founder who died in 2021. Eventually, and inevitably, the man behind this auction’s estimable offerings took to the Internet to continue collecting under the moniker Rounders2, assembling “a carefully curated, world-class collection demonstrating a love of the game’s history and a deep appreciation for some of the most creative and beautiful cards,” as the catalog notes.

Those creative and beautiful cards include the 78 that make up the 1964 Topps Stand-Ups set, with each offered individually from the lesser-known edition — Topps’ first with a die-cut design since the 1951 All-Star sets — that places each player against a half-yellow, half-green background. Each looks less like a baseball card than a miniature work of art deserving of a frame rather than a plastic slab.

The Rounders Collection is replete with best-of-the-best examples of these cards rife with Hall of Famers, including Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Carl Yastrzemski and Ernie Banks, all graded PSA Mint 9 — the highest graded examples of these hard-to-find cards.

Collectors will find a graded, unopened 1-cent wax pack of the 1964 Topps Baseball Stand-Ups in this auction among the more than four dozen uncracked wax packs hailing from The Rounders Collection. Most are from Topps, beginning with the vaunted 1953 set; some, too, are from Fleer, including a 1963 five-cent wax pack. There’s even a 1971 O-Pee-Chee baseball pack.

This auction also features nearly three dozen more offerings from The Yeow Exquisite Hidden Collection, whose sales in 2024 realized more than $2 million thanks to the likes of Michael Jordan, whose 2005 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Autograph Patches numbered 99/100 is here alongside Dwyane Wade’s Gold Rookie numbered 3/25 and LeBron James’ Extra Exquisite Dual Jersey Rookie numbered 22/25.

This auction is so loaded it has taken this long to get to the best-of-the-best featuring the could-be, maybe-should-be MVP of this NFL season: Joe Burrow, whose 2020 Panini Immaculate Collection Premium Patch Rookie Autograph-NFL Shield is nothing short of majestic, a one-of-one as impressive as his season.