The nuns of the School Sisters of Notre Dame did well selling their Honus Wagner card.

The nuns will receive $220,000 from the sale. The total sale price includes a 19.5 percent buyer’s premium. Sister Virginia Muller, who was entrusted with the card, says the proceeds will go to the order’s ministries in more than 30 countries around the world.

Collector and card shop owner Doug Walton bought the card.

Doug gets the double pleasure of securing a rare collectible and helping people all over the world at the same time.

Here’s my second nun story. My aunt was a nun, and when my grandmother passed away, Sister was retired in New Haven, just up the road from the family in Bridgeport, CT. She came down to stay at the convent at the family’s church, and there were a number of young nuns in the parish. That evening, she’s walking around and hears guitar playing. She walks into a room and sees the young nuns gathered around a man in a Hawaiian shirt, a good looking guy with thick red hair and a beard playing the instrument. The nuns are looking at him like he’s a rock star, and my aunt, shocked, pipes up with, “What’s going on here?” Turns out, the guitar player was the parish priest, who calmly explained that to Sister.

The next day we held the wake. For four hours we sat there, and nuns kept coming in, two or three at a time. We didn’t know until later, but my aunt’s order bussed in everyone from New Haven and New York City (where my aunt taught for many years) to go to attend. Rather than inundate us all at once, they waited in the bus in the parking lot, and came to pay their respects in dribs and drabs. We reached the end of the wake, and the nine grand children, including me, are sitting in one row when three more sisters walk in. We all thought the same thing, “There’s more of them?” when my uncle Tony, sitting behind us, says, “I didn’t think there was that much black cloth in the whole world!” We all lost it that point and started laughing, and I almost fell off my chair. 🙂