When Melissa Brodt bought a home to restore late last year there was one room she knew had to be renovated almost immediately; a bedroom with the walls tiled in painted, dark green, outdoor asphalt shingles.
Such a strange choice for a wall, she thought, and quickly got to work ripping off the roofing material.
What she found underneath, though, was just as surprising as the shingles.
Rows and rows of baseball cards were hidden in the Boise, Idaho home, glued to the wall with a strong adhesive.
Brodt told CNN that she discovered about 1,600 cards, most of them from the 70s and 80s.
“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,'” she said.
Brodt, a realtor, shared photos and video of the discovery to her Facebook page, and the visual is quite astonishing. At one point she peels back a big swath of shingles to reveal what looks like wallpaper.
“For three weeks I’d been fretting about what might be under those shingles,” she told KTVB.com.
“I was surprised, shocked, confused — I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until we continued to pull down the shingles.”
Curious about how the cards got there, Brodt contacted the home’s original owners, who had built the house in 1969.
Sure enough, the young boy who’d lived there — now a 44-year-old man — said his mother gave him permission to paper his wall with the duplicate cards he’d amassed from his large collection.
“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,” Chris Nelson told CNN. “It was a nice little family activity.”
However, when it was time to redecorate, he realized they’d use too strong of an adhesive and the cards wouldn’t budge.
That’s where the shingles-as-wallpaper mystery is solved — Nelson took a few packages of roofing shingles and covered over his baseball cards.
Unfortunately, given both the era of the cards and the fact that they’re superglued to the wall, there’s little value in the cards, if any.
Brodt’s son, Luke, told KTVB he’s tried Googling some of the players on the wall, but hasn’t found any cards that are worth much.
However, Brodt said she’s happy to have someone come and remove the cards, if they wish. They’ll just have to take the drywall, too.
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