A sports memorabilia collection, a shared passion of a father and son in Nederland Colorado, valued at an estimated $100,000 has been donated to TEENS Inc. and is now being sold at auction.

David Shortridge, 73, well known for his philanthropy, gave his late son’s collection of rare and valuable sports memorabilia to the nonprofit organization that runs an alternative high school for troubled youth and provides recreation and leadership opportunities for Nederland teens.

“I am so pleased that my son’s collection is in the hands of these teens,” Shortridge said. “I couldn’t think of a better place to put it.”

“We started this collection together,” the Shortridge said, “… and it brought us together”. After his son died last summer from liver failure at age 51; David Shortridge donated the entire collection to the David H. Shortridge II Memorial Fund, and it was used to fund community-based projects in Nederland. Now the entire collection is in the hands of the teens.

The father and son team spent countless hours, and just as many dollars, canvassing online auctions and memorabilia dealers to find only the best — and rarest — of sports collectibles across the world. Within a decade, the pair had amassed a collection of rarities such as one of the world’s only perfect-condition set of 1989 Score trading cards, a complete set of John Elway cards — including one of only a handful of perfect condition Elway rookie cards and a little-known rookie card from 1981 when Elway played minor-league baseball — and autographs of sports legends such as Michael Jordan and Joe DiMaggio. There are thousands of other autographed pictures, complete with certificates of authenticity, along with signed baseballs, basketballs, footballs, hockey sticks and knick knacks.

Some of the collection has been sold already at the Nederland Holiday Mountain Market, a local arts and crafts festival. Offered items included include 1,000 vintage team caps, hundreds of autographed pictures and hundreds of less-than-perfect graded trading cards. Hats and trading cards were priced at $5 each — some of which would normally sell for up to $50 apiece — while autographs sold for a few dollars more than the original purchase price. Some buyers got great deals, according to Shortridge. Everyone who purchased an item during the sale was entered into a drawing to win an autographed photo of Michael Jordan.

But the big-ticket and especially rare items have been set aside and will be auctioned off online in a virtual eBay store being set up and managed by Nederland teens. All proceeds of both sales will benefit TEENS Inc. Some of those one-of-a-kind items could fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction, including original artwork for trading card packs and original autographs used as templates by trading card companies. There’s even the original artwork used in the mid-1980s to package Michael Jackson trading cards, which Shortridge suspects has skyrocketed in value since the singer’s death.

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