Baseball cards bring windfall to church

PHILADELPHIA, July 2 (UPI) -- A Pennsylvania man who donated a box of old baseball cards to an inner-city church in Philadelphia learned later they were worth about $35,000.

The Rev. Kevin Lawrence of St. Malachy Church gave David Smith, who lives in suburban Berwyn, the chance to take the cards back. But Smith declined, The Philadelphia Inquirer said Thursday.

Smith gave the cards, collected by his father, to be auctioned as part of a baseball-themed fundraiser on Opening Day for the Philadelphia Phillies. St. Malachy is trying to raise $350,000 to repair the pipe organ.

The collection -- including 70 cards of members of the Baseball Hall of Fame like Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Tris Speaker -- are to be sold in a live auction during the All-Star break.

Smith, a retired university administrator who worked at Villanova and LaSalle, got involved with St. Malachy by chance because his home parish had twinned with the church. He discovered when he spotted a clock at St. Malachy identical to one he had at home that his grandfather had been awarded the clock as the head of the St. Malachy Young Men's Benevolent Association from 1894 to 1930.