For many Jewish fans who collect baseball cards, the joy of opening a new pack and finding a Jewish player is second to none. That was Seymour Stoll’s experience years ago when he drew a Sandy Koufax card at 14 years old.
Inspired by that sense of pride, Stoll set out to collect the cards of every Jewish player in baseball history — around 200 total. More than 50 years later, his complete collection is going up for auction at Sotheby’s, with an estimated price of $500,000 to $700,000.
Touted as “the most complete Jewish baseball card collection in the world,” Stoll’s archive features over 500 cards representing 191 Jewish players. It claims to contain at least one card for every Jewish player who has appeared in a professional game as of the 2024 season. (A similar but much smaller set of Jewish baseball cards was produced and sold throughout the 2000s.)
The players most represented in the collection are Hall of Famers Koufax and Hank Greenberg. Other well-known Jewish stars such as Norm and Larry Sherry, Ron Blomberg and more contemporary players like Ian Kinsler and Ryan Braun are all featured. Lipman Pike, the first Jewish baseball star and one of the sport’s first-ever professional players, is also represented.
The most valuable card in the set is an 1867 tintype — an old-fashioned metallic print — of Philadelphia Athletics star Levi Meyerle, one of two Meyerle tintypes in existence. Stoll told Sports Collectors Digest that he bought the card for $750 around 30 years ago and later had it appraised at $250,000 to $300,000.
Jewish baseball cards
Meyerle’s card stands out for another reason — because some of the most devoted aficionados of Jewish baseball history are certain that he is not Jewish, despite his name. He and several other players mentioned in the Sotheby’s listing are not included in The Jewish Baseball Card Book, published in 2018 by Bob Wechsler.
Sotheby’s acknowledged having heard from Neil Keller, a baseball fan and self-described “national and international speaker on ‘who is Jewish,'” about the listing. It said his concerns were addressed in the online listing, which acknowledges some uncertainty about the included players’ Jewishness.
“Compiled over five decades, this remarkable archive represents every Jewish baseball player of the 191 total as of the 2024 MLB season,” the listing says. “Of these, 177 players have confirmed Jewish heritage, while the remaining 14 players’ heritage has not been proven.” It does not note that Meyerle is among the 14.
Other notable cards include a rare one of 1930s New York Giants star Philip Weintraub and a 1946 Cuban series card of Max Rosenfeld. There’s also a fake card of former Cincinnati Reds player Harry Chozen — a card that Chozen’s family created after the Reds refused to have one made because Chozen was Jewish. (That card holds little value on its own.)
“This collection not only celebrates achievements but also sheds light on the challenges Jewish players faced on and off the field,” reads the Sotheby’s listing, which notes that Koufax and Greenberg both faced antisemitism during their careers.
Stoll’s collection has been on display at 11 major museums around the United States — including the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles — as well as synagogues, libraries and community centers.
“Everybody loves something whether you’re young, you’re old, and it gives you a sense of pride of what the baseball players did to integrate Jews into society,” Stoll, now a physician in California, said in 2020. “In the old days, they would be blackballed and had to hide their Jewish heritage. Today, they’re welcomed with open arms. It shows the evolution of the game, the evolution towards the feelings of Jewish players and the country in general.”
Bidding in the auction — which includes a broad array of Americana — is open now and ends on Jan. 25. For Shabbat-observant interested parties, Sotheby’s notes, bids can be made in advance or through an agent.
This story has been updated to reflect the fact that not all of the players included in the collection are Jewish.