Circa 1860 Brooklyn Atlantics Baseball Card will be offered on July 30, 2015, as part of Heritage Auctions’ Platinum Night Sports Auction, held in conjunction with the 2015 National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago. It is expected to bring $50,000+. The card, which has remained in the same family for more than 150 years, is being offered by western Massachusetts resident and New York native Florence Sasso, 75, the great grand-niece-in-law of Archibald McMahon, one of the players on The Brooklyn Atlantics. The card, was given to Sasso by her mother, the late Mildred Sasso. Without children to pass it on to, Sasso has decided to put the card up for auction.
The 2.5-inch by 4-inch card is a photograph mounted on a 21/2 inch by 4 inch cardboard featuring nine players of the Brooklyn Atlantics.
The Atlantics served as a founding member of the sport’s first organized league, the National Association of Base Ball Players, and held the Championship from 1859 through the war-shortened season of 1861 before finally surrendering supremacy to archrival Eckford of Brooklyn in 1862.
The Atlantics enjoyed a recent brief return to the spotlight when an 1865 team card surfaced in a small Maine auction a year ago, garnering a winning bid of $92,000.