Around 1,600 vintage baseball cards were found behind a wall covering during a home renovation

By David Williams, CNN

Melissa Brodt wasn’t sure what to expect when she peeled away the dark green shingles covering a bedroom wall in the Boise, Idaho, house she has been remodeling for her son.

The asphalt roof shingles were an odd choice of wall covering, so she’d braced for just about anything — but seeing row after row of baseball cards from the 1970s and 80s glued to the walls was still a surprise.

In all, there are around 1,600 cards, Brodt told CNN on Tuesday.

“We’re not really baseball fans so I didn’t really know what I was looking at, but lots of friends said, ‘Oh, I know that guy.'”

The cards aren’t likely to make hardcore collectors swoon, but there are many familiar faces to fans of the era, such as Mike Schmidt, George Brett and legendary manager Whitey Herzog.

Sadly, being stuck on a wall for decades likely erased any value the cards may have had. Brodt said her son Luke tried to remove a few, but the pictures just tore away from their cardboard backing.

“The only way to really remove it is to cut the drywall out and take it in pieces,” she said.

Brodt bought the house, which was built in 1969, from the estate of the original owner in December. She’s stripping it “down to the bare bones” to restore it.

After discovering the baseball card wall, Brodt said she got in touch with the owner’s son, who still lives in Boise.

Chris Nelson, now 44, remembers decorating that room in the late 80s.

Nelson told CNN his mother was very artistic and let him redecorate his room every few years when he was growing up.

When he was 12 or 13, Nelson said he’d amassed a large collection of baseball cards.

“In the late 80s I was absolutely obsessed with baseball,” he said. “We just decided we were going to wallpaper one of the walls with the excess baseball cards.”

The project took Nelson and his parents a weekend to complete.

“We got some pretty strong adhesive and each of us got a stack of cards and a brush, and we would just paint the glue on the back and tack them up on the wall,” he said. “It was a nice little family activity.”

His friends thought the wall was “super cool” when they would come over to play, Nelson recalled.

As Nelson grew up, it was time to redecorate again — but painting over the cards wasn’t an option, and, as Brodt later discovered herself, they were glued on too tightly to pull off.

“We ended up with a few packages of roof shingles, and we just nailed them up on the wall and painted them,” Nelson said.

For now, the wall’s fate is undecided.

“I would love for somebody to come in and take it if they think it’s useful,” Brodt said.”We don’t have any interest in keeping it because it doesn’t really go with mid-century modern decor and we’re not really baseball fans.”

It doesn’t matter to Nelson if the wall is preserved in the end, but, he said, the discovery brought back fond memories of his parents, who both died last year.

“It’s a nice memory of a family activity that we did for a couple of days where we were all getting along and having fun together,” he said.

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