Eight wax packs that retailed for a nickel apiece just sold for $1,107,000. A cellophane-wrapped "brick" of eight unopened 1952 Topps five-cent packs — 40 cents of product on the store shelf — closed as Lot 1 in Robert Edward Auctions' Summer Catalog Auction on the night of Sunday, August 16, according to Sports Collectors Digest. It is the highest price ever paid for one of the three known bricks, and the sale cleared $18 million overall.

The number that matters here is not the price. It is the count.

Thirty-Two Packs

REA's lot description supplies the scarcity math: PSA has authenticated 32 single 1952 Topps wax packs, total, ever. For comparison, REA notes PSA and SGC have combined to authenticate 2,815 examples of the 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle — and that the two services have certified nearly twice as many Mantles at NM-MT or better (58) as they have single packs (32).

That inverts the usual hierarchy. The Mantle is the benchmark against which postwar vintage is priced, yet a high-grade one is nearly twice as common as a sealed pack from the same product. Eight packs in one cellophane wrap is roughly a quarter of the authenticated pack census.

The supply side has a grim explanation. Packs were sold to children to be torn open, and most were. REA points to a second cause: Topps staff, including Sy Berger — credited with the 1952 set alongside Woody Gelman — are on record having dumped hundreds of cases of surplus into the Atlantic Ocean to clear warehouse space.

The Seattle Find

In the early 1990s, dealer Mark Murphy was involved in a Seattle find that produced 84 packs — twelve singles and nine bricks. Most were opened at the time, and REA credits that with producing the only PSA GEM MINT 10 of card #1, Andy Pafko.

Three bricks sold intact to a private collector, and REA states those are the only eight-pack bricks known to have stayed together. He later released two. This one transacted privately in 2019; a different brick sold at auction in 2023 for $852,000 — the mark this sale broke. Bidding on Lot 1 opened at $250,000.

The Rest of the Board

Unopened material led the sale, per Sports Collectors Digest:

  • 1987-88 Fleer Basketball factory-sealed wax case — $332,100, a record
  • 1986-87 Fleer Basketball wax box, newly discovered, with a Jordan rookie showing on top of one pack — $239,850
  • 1971 Topps Baseball First and Fourth Series wax boxes — $246,000 each, records for both
  • 1961 and 1962 Topps Football wax boxes — $221,400 and $196,800
  • 1998-99 Skybox Molten Metal Basketball sealed case — $110,700

Single cards set records too. A 1962 Topps #300 Willie Mays PSA MINT 9 brought $369,000 and a 1954 Topps #94 Ernie Banks rookie in PSA 9 brought $215,250 — both, SCD reports, the highest sales ever for those cards in any grade.

REA president Brian Dwyer said in a statement that "this was one of the most energetic and exciting auctions we've had in a long time," citing a record number of new bidders and adding that the brick "set a new standard for this incredible piece of history as it joined the seven-figure club."

What This Is and Isn't

Analysis: The headline figure is a brick record and a set of per-lot records — not a global unopened record, and not a verdict on the market. What the board does show is where the deepest bidding sat on one night in August: sealed 1950s-to-1980s product, with the 1998-99 Skybox case the only modern entry and the smallest number on the list.

Analysis: The scarcity figures come from the house selling the lot, and PSA's count is a census of what has been submitted, not of what exists. They are the best numbers available — and they arrive with an interested party attached.

One thing no source claimed, so this article won't either: what is inside. The packs are sealed, and the contents are unknown. That is rather the point of buying one.

The verdict: a nickel pack became a million-dollar artifact not because of what might be inside, but because almost nothing like it survived the 1950s — and the company that made it threw much of the rest in the ocean.

Sources: Sports Collectors Digest (August 17, 2026) for the results, prices, and Dwyer quote; Auction Report for the July 28 – August 16 run, the three-known count, the Seattle provenance, and the $852,000 2023 comparable; REA lot 193956 for the lot description, PSA authentication figures, the Seattle find, the 2019 private sale, and the $250,000 opening bid. Passages marked Analysis are this blog's interpretation, not findings in the sources.