When Boise, Ida., realtor Melissa Brodt bought a 1969 mid-century home from the original owner, she was interested in its prospects as a possible place for her son to stay.
As Melissa, 51, and her son Luke, 23, were working on overhauling the residence, their attention was drawn to a bedroom with a very strange wall made up entirely of roofing shingles painted green – a strange, suspicious choice for a wall.
“It was suspect — what am I going to find? Is it mold? What is it?” Brodt told NBC News of her worries.
However, the surprise was much more pleasant than she could have expected: Over 1,000 vintage baseball cards, glued side by side and spanning the entirety of the wall.
The room-sized baseball shrine was created by Chris Nelson, who inhabited the bedroom when he was a kid in the late 1980s. It was his mom’s idea to display his baseball card collection so uniquely.
“We just had all these cards, and my mom was like, ‘Well, why don’t we do this?’ and I was game,” Nelson told KVTB. “So we spent a weekend gluing baseball cards to the wall.”
The cards, featuring stars of the time and of the past like Greg Maddux, Willie Hernandez and Rafael Palmeiro, vibrantly decorated his bedroom wall for about five years.
As for the shingles, “I think at that point my parents figured it was the easiest way to cover them up,” Nelson said.
Of course, once Brodt figured out where they came from, the next question is… where are they going? She said she’s had inquiries about the wall of cards since she posted the story on social media, and she’s weighing her options. But she does know she wants to offload the wall as one piece and will not be selling individual cards.
Serious inquiries can be relayed to Brodt through KVTB by emailing the208@ktvb.com.
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