The link is to a story about a family clearing the stuff out of a home that belonged to their grandfather. The baseball card collection has, according to several evaluators, the potential of being worth two to three million dollars.
Damn.
My god, if he found just the Honus Wagner card in top condition, he could afford to retire early. You could take that card, throw it in the mud, drive your car over it, and it would still be worth six figures! That’s the Holy Grail of baseball cards! (A nun found one in her brother’s things not too long ago – it was in poor condition, and I think she got something like six figures for it. I’ll see if I can’t find the story)
I read the article and the Honus Wagner card was not the one that’s really high value. But it’s still one of the top value cards ever.
We just cleaned out my in-law’s attic since they are moving and downsizing. I found some awesome china she had stored and forgotten about, but everything up there that was paper was ruined. It all just crumbled and fell apart. Baseball cards or comic books would have fared poorly in their attic.
“Sixteen Cobbs found in the Ohio attic were graded a 9 - almost perfect.”
So a handful of people who have the same Ty Cobb cards just lost hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight.
“Oh, you have a grade 7 E98 Cobb? I’ll give you $5 for it. And I’m not making any money on this.”
**Why can’t I find something like this in the attic? **
Probably all that other junk you have piled up in the attic. I can’t find anything in mine.
Thing is, if most people had something like this in their attic, it wouldn’t be worth much. These baseball cards are worth money because they are rare.
I’m a sucker for the “Antiques Roadshow” shows, and I far prefer thet BBC version.
“The family has been hiding this ugly thing in the attic since great-great…grand-dad brought it back after working for the British East India Company. We had no idea it is a 400 year old year old wedding outfit of the Raj.”
So to answer the OP, I can’t find stuff like that in my attic because no one in my family lives in the same house for 50 years, squirrelling away things like baseball cards.
Oh yes, I do love “Antiques Roadshow”
I once saw a mother and daughter bring in some diamond and ruby jewelry the mother had inherited from a great-aunt. They believed the stones to be real, but since they were quite large assumed the quality was iffy. Indeed, friends had teased them about the “costume jewelry”
The evaluator was all but drooling over the gems, and said they were the finest Burmese rubies he had EVER seen. His value of the five pieces of jewelry was, he said, no less than a quarter of a million dollars. The two women were stunned and said that they would be heading for a safe deposit box immediately. Heretofore they’d just kept the stuff in the house.
A cousin of mine found out some Eskimo artwork her father had brought back from Alaska had some value, after watching the show. She made sure to get it insured, but keeps it out as a memory of her dad, who died when she was a little girl.
My kid or grandkid (if any) may well strike it rich off my crap some day. I keep pretty much everything and have some “rare” stuff that my be worth something…many,* many *years from now! 
I used to collect football cards 40 years ago, and have some rookie cards from HOF’ers now. All in good shape, I know right where they are.
I bet they hit the trash can before my ashes cool! 