BAT USED BY RUTH TO HIT 59th HR SELLS FOR $717,000 – BUT WHAT WOULD BAT USED TO HIT HIS 60TH SELL FOR? The only thing more exciting than a Babe Ruth game used homerun bat is a Babe Ruth game used bat that comes with a provenance explaining exactly how the bat went from Ruth’s hands to the auction block almost 100 years later! And if there’s anything more exciting than that, it’s provenance from the Bambino himself! The bat Ruth used to hit his (then record) 59th homerun of the season on September 26, 1921, was auctioned by Heritage this
Quite a treat for autograph collectors in this week’s auctions. Just Collect has listed dozens of items signed by Baseball Hall of Famers including autographed baseball cards, Hall of Fame plaques, cuts and Peez-Steele postcards, all authenticated by PSA/DNA. Cy Young, Chief Bender, Tris Speaker, Bill Dickey and Rogers Hornsby are just a few of the names you'll see. Autographed baseball cards have done very well at auction over the last couple of years and this week, we have some remarkable pieces.
The great thing about buying and selling vintage sports memorabilia is that we run across some really historic items on a regular basis. When you hold them in your hands, you imagine the journey they took to get to you. Who bought them originally? Why did they buy a certain item? And if it’s something that looks like it was purchased at a ballpark, what happened on the field that day? What did the person who originally purchased it see? This week, we
If you followed baseball in the mid-1920's, you knew all about Walter Johnson and his Washington Senators’ battery-mate, Herold “Muddy” Ruel. Behind the Big Train, the Senators won back-to-back pennants in 1924 and ’25 with the durable Ruel catching 149 games in ’24 and 127 more in ’25. Their success is at least in part attributed to the arrival of the defensive-minded Ruel in 1923. Johnson was simply the
It seemed incomprehensible at the time and still does today. Baseball’s “Iron Horse”, one of the game’s greatest sluggers and most beloved players, cut down by an unrelenting disease at age 37. It was almost fitting that rain postponed the original date of a planned Yankee Stadium memorial tribute during the 1939 season. Special tickets had been printed for the July 4, 1939 game. All featured a