Anonymous donor gifts Calgary charity thousands of pieces of memorabilia

A Calgary charity is looking for help from the community to help it catalogue and organize a huge amount of movie, TV and sports collectables for a future auction.

The Calgary chapter of the Hope Mission says it was approached by a widow who wanted to donate a large assortment of memorabilia to the charity.

"The donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, and her late husband always valued the care of children and youth, and she wanted this legacy of sports and entertainment memorabilia to be used to benefit kids in Calgary," Hope Mission said in a release.

The donation includes trading cards, autographed photos, autographed baseballs, team jackets, celebrity photographs and even preserved copies of newspapers published around the time of historic events.

"Our mind was blown away that the lady brought in a whole bunch of items," said Tim Goodwin, community relations manager with the Hope Mission.

"We were going through and it's sports memorabilia of all kinds, movie and music memorabilia. Then, a couple weeks later, she brought in another load and we have everything from trading cards to old magazines."

All the items will eventually be sold to benefit the charity, but Goodwin first wants to be able to meet with someone who knows more about all of the items so they can be properly valued.

"(We want) somebody to come along side us, take a look and give us an idea of the value of some of these items so that we can either look at listing on the Internet for sale or perhaps bringing in an auction house or something like that," he said.

Among some of the items are a 1955 World Series jacket featuring the Brooklyn Dodgers and a baseball, autographed by both Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr., which also included a certificate of authenticity.

"I can't imagine what that would mean to somebody," Goodwin said.

In all, there are hundreds of items that the Hope Mission will eventually sell, as well as thousands of trading cards that he hopes will also bring in money to help the charity continue with its work.

Officials are looking for a person who can help appraise the items so they can either be sold privately or through an auction.

"This is going to be a little bit of an injection into some of the resources that we try to provide for our programs," Goodwin said, adding the charity does a lot to support youth and their families.

"One of the things that we try to do is mentor kids with a homework club once a week," he said.

"With the way that technology works in today's world, we'd love to set them up with some some little notebooks or something like that in house here so that we can do some research online and be able to help them out that way."

The donated items will also help pay for youth programs and meals at its HUB facility.

Experts' take

One of the items in the collection is a first edition Spectacular Spider-Man comic from 1968.

Jason Bisschop is the manager of Words and Pictures on Centre Street, a store with thousands of comic books.

"Pretty nice book (the Spectacular Spider-Man comic). I would give it an 8.5 grade, which is a higher grade," Bisschop said.

"Pretty good pick up. $150-200 is what I would sell that book for."

For the sports memorabilia, Mike Davis, who owns Eastridge Sports Cards and Games had a hard time putting a dollar value on everything due to the vast amount.

"There are some cool items in there. Yogi Berra-signed ball. Dual-signed Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. balls. Those go for about $150 apiece," Davis said.

"Gordie Howe-signed pictures, Bobby Hull-signed pictures. Gordie Howes are about $200."

Davis did say he would like to check the authenticity of the memorabilia before confirming a price.

(With files from Tyler Barrow)