Babe Ruth baseball card from 1914 could fetch record auction price

It was not. It was a missing link.

This was him, alright. The Babe. The most famous player baseball has ever produced, captured here before the legend, the pinstripes, the 714 home runs, the seven World Championships, the single MVP award (you could only win one in those days), the cigars, the celebrity, the cartoon-like heroics in the Bronx, and that 86-year, since-broken curse which tormented the foolish club that unloaded him, the Red Sox.

In the card, he looked young. He was young – 19 years old. The card is from 1914, when Ruth wasn’t far removed from his time at St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. He’s a rookie for his hometown Baltimore Orioles, then a minor league outfit with the International League. Everyone knows The Babe began as a pitcher, but it’s right there on the card, in all caps: RUTH PITCHER.

He’s svelte! I should clarify: svelte-ish. Babe’s a big person, clearly, even under his ball cap and coat.

Confession: I’m not a big baseball card guy. I bought some as a kid, but I was equally interested in that brittle slice of gum that came with every pack, and lost its flavour within two seconds. My eyes glaze over when people start to talk about their card collections, even though my mother tells me she’s held on to a few shoeboxes of mine in the attic. I would almost rather hear someone talk about their NFL fantasy team.

Settle down. I said almost.

But even I knew this Ruth card was valuable, extraordinary, worth a visit. If I wanted confirmation, I needed only to look at the armed guard sitting on a stool next to its display case. Other guards lurked around, I was told. This card was precious cargo, protected like a Picasso, making a brief pit stop at its former home, the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, before being auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder.

The auction began Wednesday. Within hours, bidding for the Babe rookie had hit US$5.25 million. The sale, which is being run by Robert Edward Auctions and lasts through Dec. 3, has lofty expectations. That US$5.25 million bid may be a speed bump on the way to eight figures.

Ten million? It’s possible.

Could this Ruth rookie top the all-time amount paid for a baseball card, which was the US$12.6 million last year for a close-to-flawless 1952 Mickey Mantle card?

“We think the record is within striking distance,” Brian Dwyer, the president of Robert Edward Auctions, told me at the Ruth Museum.

Phew. Here’s why the Ruth card – held for generations by its original owners, a Baltimore family, until it was sold privately in 2021 to an unknown buyer for an undisclosed amount – is such a big deal:

One, it’s the first known card depicting the towering lefty slugger. The card, which was part of a promotion by a local newspaper, the Baltimore News, is extremely scarce: There are only 10 of them known, and one hasn’t hit the market in more than a decade. This one is in good shape: it’s been given a grade of VG 3, the VG “very good,” from the grading agency SGC.

But also: It’s the Babe! This is a charismatic cultural figure with a reach far beyond sports; who once justified making a salary higher than President Hoover by saying, “Why not? I had a better year.”

“It’s the dawn of the Great Bambino,” said Dwyer.

“When I hold that card, I think of Babe Ruth looking back at me as a 19-year-old,” he continued. “Being exposed to the world – not just baseball – for the first time. Babe Ruth goes beyond card collecting. He’s gigantic.”

A major Ruth sale would place this card in a collectable trinity with the ’52 Mantle and another iconic card: the “T-206” Honus Wagner, which pops up for sale now and again. In 2011, a group of Baltimore-area nuns auctioned off a T-206 they’d received from the donation of an estate; that card sold for US$262,000. More recently, a T-206 Wagner sold for US$7.25 million.

Why are prices soaring? “This is an opportunity to park money away in something that historically has shown it’s not going to go down in value,” said Dwyer.

Rare cards are far from alone in their skyrocketing values; Dwyer pointed to a recent Sotheby’s sale of a 1962 250 GTO Ferrari for US$51.7 million.

“I think there is a class of high net worth individuals [who] recognise that these statement pieces – these incredibly rare high quality assets – will perform well and store value for them,” he said.

I am not one of these high net worth individuals. But the next time I am back at my mother’s, I am going to dig into those old shoeboxes and figure out if I have enough cards to buy myself a superyacht. Or at least lunch at Chipotle.

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I’m not saying there’s a Babe Ruth. There definitely isn’t. But if anyone wants to give me $10 million for a uncared-for, corners-bent Rickey Henderson, bubblegum stain on the back, I will listen to all serious bidders.

Even if you want to talk about your NFL fantasy team.

-The Wall Street Journal