CHICAGO, ILL. — A circa 1860 Brooklyn Atlantics baseball card, passed down in the family of player Archibald McMahon for more than 150 years, realized $179,250 including buyer’s premium, at Heritage Auctions’ Platinum Night sports auction on Thursday, July 30. The auction was held in conjunction with the 2015 National Sports Collectors Convention. Selling to an anonymous West Coast collector, the card shattered its $50,000 estimate.

The pre-Civil War baseball card came to auction from Florence Sasso of Great Barrington, Mass., and it shows her great-great-uncle Archibald McMahon, an outfielder for The Atlantics, with members of the team. The Atlantics served as a founding member of the sport’s first organized league, the National Association of Base Ball Players, and held the championship from 1859 through the war-shortened season of 1861.

The card was given to Sasso by her mother, “The story of this card is also my mother’s story,” said Sasso. “She loved baseball and she kept it all those years. She always wanted it to take care of me and now it will.”

Stay tuned for the complete auction review in an upcoming Antiques and the Arts Weekly issue.