The “Ten Million” T212 vintage baseball card

The baseball card collecting hobby has seen a resurgence of popularity over the last several years. Part of it due to the pandemic slowing life down for much of America, part of it due to a penchant for nostalgia in our society.

But let’s be honest: most of it is due to the potential monetary windfall in selling old baseball card collections.

Yep, these days it all seems to be about that powerful force Pink Floyd sang about in the 1970’s.

“Money”

But what’s a good amount of money to land out of your baseball card collection? A hundred bucks? A thousand? A million?

Or how about ten million?

“Ten Million” T212 not worth quite that much

Ok, so the card featured today is not actually worth ten million, even though “ten million” is what it says on the card.

As you may have figured out by now, it’s the actual name of a baseball player from the early 20th Century:

Ten Million was born in Mount Vernon, Washington in 1889 to a family with the last name Million. His mother, according to the story, preferred the unusual things in life, so she named her son “Ten.”

Ten played baseball initially for the Victoria Bees of the Northwestern League, then his contract was purchased by the Cleveland Naps. He never made it to Cleveland, but he did play a few years with the Tacoma Tigers and Spokane Indians between 1912 and 1914.

He managed over 200 hits in four seasons of minor league baseball, but unfortunately that type of production wasn’t worth much. Not ten million, not even one million.

Million eventually left baseball, served in World War I, then sold automobiles for Ford in the 1920s. To add to the legend of his name, when Ford sold their ten millionth automobile, they took photos of Ten in the automobile as a promotion.

I suppose if you’re going to have a unique name like “Ten Million”, you need to milk it for all it’s worth, right?

T212 Obak cigarettes set holds value today

Ten was only featured in one baseball card set, the Obak T212’s, which were released during the height of tobacco card popularity.

Between 1909 and 1911, Obak cigarettes released three different baseball card sets. There were 76 cards in the 1909 set, 176 cards in 1910, and 175 cards in 1911.

Ten Million was featured in the 1911 set. It shows Ten holding a bat over his left shoulder in a Victoria Bees uniform. It has a red-maroon textured background. The back features generous text about Million’s playing abilities, including that he “is one of the niftiest and cleverest outfielders developed in the Northwest in recent years.”

So what is a Ten Million card worth?

There have been several sales of this card over the last several years in various conditions. A PSA Good 2 sold for $356 in May 2018, while PSA Very Good 3’s have averaged $585 over the last 12 months.

The highest sale of this card in any grade was a PSA Excellent Mint 6, which sold for $2,160 in July 2019.

Just $9,997,840 shy of ten million.

Sources: “Game Faces: Early Baseball Cards from the Library of Congress”; “The Cleveland Indians Encyclopedia, 2nd ed.”; baseball-reference.com; vintagecardsprices.com