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What does Wilt Chamberlain have in common with Crosby, MN?
The 1961 Fleer Basketball Wilt Chamberlain rookie card sold for $1.7 million.
CROSBY, Minn. — Crosby is known as the antique capital of Minnesota, which is fitting considering a collectible object with a very high value was just discovered there.
“One in a million doesn’t put close to terms on what the reality of it was,” said Caleb Baker, co-owner of DK’s Sports Cards in Crosby.
Now, Baker’s also the co-star of the biggest card find of his life.
“He calls me and I see this thing in person and I’m like, man, I am trying to play it cool because I don’t want to get his hopes up. I don’t want to be like, ‘Dude, this is gonna change your life.'”
But soon they’d all learn that Baker’s find was a life-changing.
But, how did he come upon the 1961 Fleer Basketball Wilt Chamberlain rookie card? You ask?
“His [the seller’s] parents owned a grocery store when he was growing up. Him and his brother ripped a bunch of packs of cards and just stuffed them in a cabinet or a drawer in the grocery store,” Baker said.
“A bunch of years go by, his brother asked the father, ‘Hey, where are the old cards? What did you do with them?’ ‘Oh, I burnt ’em. They are gone; they went to a burn pile years ago.'”
The old man was fibbing, but the brothers wouldn’t know until a most welcome surprise greeted them more than six decades later.
“The owner found ’em in the store, 60 years later,” said Baker.
So, here we are: Two guys, one card.
“I said, ‘Let’s grade this thing. I will send it down to SGC in Boca Raton, Florida,'” Baker said. “‘They will take care of it; they will grade and if it grades well, I will fly down and pick it up.'”
SGC is one of two companies that grade a card’s value based on the shape it’s in — and remember, this card was shoved in a drawer for more than half a century by two kids.
By the time SGC gets the card, they deem it “one of the most impressive trading cards that the hobby has ever seen.”
The Crosby card was graded a 10 — on a scale of 10. SGC said it has never, ever graded a card that well in its history.
“The gravity of the situation started to hit me,” Baker said. “I was at my grandma’s house cooking for the family and I just started crying to myself, ‘Man, you read about this, it never happens.'”
“You just never think you will be experiencing this yourself and I’m crying as I’m cooking burgers and my wife and grandma were like, ‘What is wrong with you? And I’m like, ‘You just won’t understand until all this unfolds.'”
Caleb flew to Florida with his brother to get the card back from SGC. That’s when SGC told him a private buyer was ready to pay — wait for it — $1.7 million.
“The highest vintage basketball card sale of all time,” said Baker.
Now, all that was left to do was tell the brothers back in Crosby who were itching to sell it.
“I kind of told them the magnitude of this and said if this was an 8, it was 40 grand.’ I’m like, ‘You guys might want to sit down for this.'”
Baker told them he sold it privately for nearly $2 million.
“Hardworking, blue-collar guys and just to have to this, is just unbelievable,” said Baker.
I guess they don’t call Crosby the antique capital of Minnesota for nothing.
The brothers who owned the card wish to remain anonymous, as does the buyer.
And according to SGC, this card is the best Wilt Chamberlain card in existence.
Firefighters and the medical examiner were present at a home on Lancaster Lane around midnight.
MAPLE GROVE, Minn. — A house fire turned fatal overnight Wednesday in Maple Grove.
The scene was active around midnight at a home on Lancaster Lane. A KARE 11 photographer said they saw a body being removed from the house, and the medical examiner on scene.
KARE 11 has reached out to the Maple Grove Fire Department for more information.
This story will be updated once more information is available.
Weed companies will be able to consider commercial real estate property as a possible site location
ST PAUL, Minn. — The St. Paul City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday for adult-use cannabis zoning within city limits.
“What we’ve done today is just set a zoning standard that says here is where you can consider and contemplate having those types of facilities,” said Council President Mitra Jalali.
These businesses can look at commercial real estate spaces within city limits.
“Other cities around the state frankly are rejecting the economic opportunity that’s possible saying ‘You can’t have these anywhere,’ they’re using really regressive zoning, and so I hope St. Paul can set another end of the spectrum and encourage other cities to follow suit,” Jalali said.
She said opening more of the city to cannabis operations could bring in more money.
“It’s really important to realize the economic opportunity it represents, right. We can generate and collect local sales tax. We can use that revenue to help the city in other ways,” Jalali said. “I think that we have regulatory structures in place to be able to support safety to make sure that everything is following state law. That is one of the cities rules.”
However, some people aren’t as excited. Zev Radziwall, executive director of St. Anthony Park Council, said his neighborhood is concerned cultivation facilities could impact public health.
“The biggest concern is air quality,” he said. “How do we mitigate that odor, so we don’t have the skunky smell permeating throughout neighborhoods and affecting residents.”
Jalali said there are regulations in place to control odor.
“The state law sets out a standard of how facilities have to regulate odors on and off the property line,” he said. “We took what state law said and we mirrored it into our local ordinance so the city can also be on the enforcement side of that and basically have an additional layer of regulatory support.”
Radziwall said he would have liked to see a more conservative distance including daycares. Currently, the ordinance mandates weed facilities to be at least 300 feet away from primary and secondary schools. The council talked about including daycares but decided to possibly bring up it for consideration at another time.
The ordinance would allow these businesses to cultivate and sell all under one roof. Radziwall said St. Anthony has a lot of warehouses where these businesses could potentially grow, which is why he would like to see tighter regulation.
“We hope that it’s the beginning of a conversation not the end,” he said.
Jalali said by allowing these businesses to open in more areas, it should help prevent over concentration in one area.
“Part of the logic actually in having the zoning being pretty permissive is that when you have less area that you can do these businesses in it does concentrate them, so I think what we need to do is look at the applications that come in, see if that’s shaping up in any type of way or pattern that’s cause for concern,” she said.
Ryan Beierman says his son, Owen, shot the 200-pound bear during a hunting trip near Siren, Wisconsin.
SIREN, Wis. — A 12-year-old boy saved his dad from a bear attack at their cabin north of River Falls in Siren, Wisconsin.
Owen Beierman says he shot the bear when it started mauling his dad, Ryan. The two had been hunting at the beginning of September when it happened.
Ryan says Owen first spotted the bear that day and shot at it but missed. The injured animal ran into the woods and the two waited before going after it. They performed grid searches, followed a blood trail and even used a neighbor’s dog to try and track it.
They didn’t have much luck, until the dog led them into an overgrown area several hours later and the 200-pound bear was about 10 feet from Ryan when it attacked.
“I had the pistol in my hand and I was hitting him in the head, trying to get him to let go,” said Ryan. “I looked down and all I saw was teeth and claws coming at my face and I remember hearing the first bite.”
He says a fight ensued and then he heard Owen take a shot. He felt the bear’s weight shift and he was able to shove it off of himself.
“I saw him (the bear) knock him to the ground and I just saw the black outline and shot over the dog’s back and hit the bear,” said Owen. “I just felt like, shoot the bear and save my dad; it’s all I really remember.”
Ryan has stitches to repair the deep wounds on his face and has bite marks all along one arm and a leg. He has other scratches along his face and head, too.
“He needed to go to the hospital when I saw his cheek hanging,” said Owen.
A neighbor helped the two get out of the woods and to the hospital. Ryan says the looks on the faces of the police officers who later helped them made him realize how badly he was injured.
“He was trying to live and I was trying to live at that point,” said Ryan about the bear.
The father and son eventually claimed the bear’s remains and are now debating how to mount the animal and where to put it. Ryan says he plans to bear hunt again in the future — despite the story he says his wife didn’t even believe when he first told her after it happened over the phone.
“I don’t care if they believe it or not, I got the scars to prove it,” said Ryan, laughing.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) says the attack on Ryan is the 14th in the state since 2013.
