Brandon Steiner buys 4 million baseball cards, including 30 Babe Ruths, in deal worth up to $7 million

Brandon Steiner, the sports-memorabilia entrepreneur who founded Steiner Sports, has acquired a collection of roughly 4 million baseball cards — including 30 cards of Babe Ruth — in what he called one of the largest single-card deals in the hobby’s history.

Steiner, 66, said the lot, purchased from New Jersey collector Barry Telesnick, could be worth as much as $7 million and contains every Topps baseball set since 1948, prized rookie cards and thousands of autographs. Telesnick, 55, of Woodbridge, spent more than five decades assembling the collection, Steiner said.

"My first thought when I met him was, 'This actually could just be a trading card museum right now,'" Steiner said. He said the cards will be verified, authenticated and graded before most are listed on CollectibleXchange, the online marketplace he launched in 2019. Steiner said some of the rarest cards will likely be sold at auction.

Telesnick described a lifetime of collecting that he said required careful preservation. The cards were stored in his attic for about 35 years and protected with an exhaust fan, motion detectors, a smoke alarm and cameras, he said. "I'm still having trouble parting with everything," he said. "Some of these sets took 40 years to put together to complete."

Under the consignment agreement, Telesnick will receive roughly 20 to 35 percent of the profit from sales, Steiner said. He added that the process of cataloguing and grading millions of cards will take months and that the marketplace and auction strategy will be designed to place items where collectors and institutions can appreciate them.

Steiner has a long history in sports collectibles. He founded Steiner Sports and has been involved in high-profile memorabilia deals, including acquiring and selling pieces of the original Yankee Stadium. He said earlier transactions sometimes left him reflecting on whether items had gone to the right buyers, citing his sale years ago of Derek Jeter's "Mr. November" bat for $10,000 as an example.

"There are a bunch of sets and cards that I've never seen," Steiner said. "When this comes to market, people are going to flip out." He said the scope of the assemblage — multi-generation Topps sets, rookie cards and thousands of autographs — is rare in its breadth and depth.

Telesnick, who worked in landscape construction, said collecting became a lifelong passion. "Everybody has the same story to tell, 'My mother threw out my cards when I was a kid,' or 'I used it on them on the wheels of my bicycle to make that noise,'" he said. "I can assure you, I was not that kid. I still feel a little guilty because part of me feels like then the world could share it."

Steiner said the market for vintage cards and authenticated memorabilia has expanded in recent years, drawing both hobbyists and investors. He emphasized the need for careful stewardship of historically significant items as they move from private collections into the open market and institutional holdings.

Once catalogued and graded, the cards will be made available through CollectibleXchange, with select high-value pieces expected to appear at auction. Steiner said he feels a responsibility to ensure the cards end up in the hands of people who will value their history and provenance.

The acquisition highlights the continued prominence of sports cards in the broader collectibles market and underscores the role of established dealers and marketplaces in transforming large private accumulations into publicly available material for collectors, museums and investors. Steiner and Telesnick declined to disclose the precise purchase price and detailed inventory until authentication and grading are complete, and until Sotheby's, Heritage, or other auction partners — if engaged — announce sales schedules.

The coming months are likely to reveal the most consequential items in the cache and set the tone for how the collection is distributed between direct sales, online marketplace listings and auction events.