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1916 M101-5 Sporting News Babe Ruth (Blank Back) Rookie #151 PSA VG/EX 4....
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Sold on Mar 22, 2024 for:
$348,000.00
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Description
1916 M101-5 Sporting News Babe Ruth (Blank Back) Rookie #151 PSA VG/EX 4. "Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching," Tris Speaker told reporters in 1921 during a discussion about his former Red Sox teammate. "Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star." The pair would reunite in 1939 on the dais in Cooperstown as members of the inaugural class of the Baseball Hall of Fame, where a jocular Ruth would have certainly given Speaker a playful elbow to the ribs for the comment.This monumentally important trading card finds the southpaw pitcher just a few years removed from his departure from a Baltimore orphanage where he had been taught the finer points of the game by a baseball-loving priest. Assuming the card was released at the start of the 1916 Major League season, it would have found the twenty-one year old rookie just forty-seven games and four home runs into a career that would make him the most famous human being on the planet. The Boston Red Sox franchise he represents upon this storied rarity would repeat as World Champions in 1916 to claim their fourth of five titles before the Curse of the Bambino cast the franchise into eighty-six years of painful drought.
The 1920 departure for the Big Apple would slam the door on the Dead Ball Era and ultimately redefine the Babe as the game's premier offensive force, and the New York Yankees as the most successful franchise in the history of our national pastime. So, in terms of the tectonic shifts in the sport's landscape that would follow the production of this humble slab of cardboard, there's arguably no entry in The Standard Catalog of greater significance.
The card has been graded PSA VG-EX 4. The front shows on very small surface "ding" while all four corners have light wear at the tips resulting in a card that presents close to the excellent-mint level. The assessment is based on the staining found on the otherwise blank reverse. There are no creases, wrinkles or any surface loss, not even a tiny speck. It is the quintessential middle grade example of what some might consider the most desired card within the hobby.
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Auction Info
2024 March 22 - 23 Spring Sports Card Catalog Auction #70011 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
March, 2024
22nd-23rd
Friday-Saturday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 25
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
Page Views: 3,395
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20% of the successful bid per lot.
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