Fox Collectors

An empty UMC CLUB, 12-gauge, 2 5/8 inch, "Christmas Box" (100 NPEs) hammered for $20496 in last months Ward's Auction.
The CLUB quality paper, black powder, NPE first appears in the 1885-6 UMC catalog. It appears to have replaced the XX quality NPE of the 1884 UMC catalog. In the 1885-6 UMC catalog 12-gauge 2 5/8 inch NPEs were $11 per M in the First Quality; $8.50 per M in Second Grade; $11.00 per M in the "Star" Brand; and $8 per M in the Club Quality. All with UMC No. 2 primers. By the 1896 UMC catalog the CLUB had been replaced with the NEW CLUB. How could a paper box that is at least 125 years old survive in such nice condition?

Way cool, but yowzer!!

Holy crap I thought tungsten matrix was expensive.

Yikes! Excuse me Dave, but did you miss a decimal point, or did it really sell for 20,000!!!!!

Really quite the bargain!! Someone got lot more paper in that box for $20496 than the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card that sold for $2.1 million On April 6, 2013.

Ah yes! Honus Wagner. A good friend of mine has an unopened cigarette pack stashed in a safe. He would like to think that there is a Honus Wagner card in the pack, but we’ll never know because he won’t open it. It’s fun to dream.

The realized prices at Ward's never fail to amaze, but in retrospect I guess it's a positive that the ephemera from our favorite pastime still holds the interest (and purse strings) of so many collectors.

And if you think $20K for an empty box is stiff, check out the take home price on this nifty, F+I War pipe tomahawk with attribution to an armorer at Fort Pitt. It was made for a Pennsylvania rifleman, the elite group who were mandated to carry them, as their deadly accurate long rifles were not built to accept a bayonet.