Sports cards in old factory probably not worth millions

A former Michigan resident now living in Florida says he's pretty sure he knows the source of a whole bunch of old sports collector cards that were reportedly found in an abandoned factory in Detroit.

The DailyMail, a British tabloid, published a story last week with the sensational claim that urban explorers who sight see in some of the city's ruins found an incredible stash of unopened sports cards that could potentially fetch millions of dollars.

The Daily mail report didn't identify the explorers, but posted pictures of them sitting on unopened boxes of cards, with lots of other cards scattered on the floor.

John Hemmen of Casselberry, Fla., got wind of the story when his sister emailed him a link to it, and Hemmen says he's sure the cards were the same ones he helped his late uncle – who sold sports memorabilia – store in the factory in the early 1990s.

Hemmen says the cards would hardly fetch millions. He said many of them are of Ontario Hockey League or Eastern Hockey League, mixed in with some major league players, and many are from the 1980s and 1990s.

Hemmen said his uncle Hubert (Hub) Hemmen, who died in September 2013 at age 85, owned Hub Tool & Machine in Warren and also dealt in sports memorabilia, at one time owning a small store in Warren and later a booth at the Gibraltar Trade Center.

Hemmen wasn't privy to why his uncle bought the cards but suspects he thought he might make some money off of them.

"He probably got a decent price on them and was hoping to sell them. But it's just like any other investment: some are winners, some are losers."

John Hemmen said he helped his uncle move them in 1993 from a warehouse in Warren to the Ivan Doverspike Co. factory at Gratiot and Conner on Detroit's east side that used to be a Cadillac stamping plant. He said his uncle gave him some of the cards to try to sell after he moved to Florida, but Hemmen said he never found anyone interested in them.

"They're nowhere near a million dollars," Hemmen said. "It's hard to know what the going rate is for cards. You could probably scrap 'em for $20,000 in paper weight."

He estimated that, at most, they'd be worth $150K, "but there has to be a buyer for it. It's only worth as much as someone's willing to pay for it."

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.