1916 M101-4 The Sporting News Babe Ruth Rookie #151 PSA VG-EX 4. "Ruth made a grave mistake when he gave up pitching,...
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The most important rookie in the hobby!
1916 M101-4 The Sporting News Babe Ruth 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.
We're particularly impressed by the image quality of this rookie grail, the black ink applied to the white cardboard stock with a precision that supplies ideal contrast. The advertising text on verso is likewise as black and sharp as an obsidian blade. Points are lost to the most common of Dead Ball Era trading card faults--corner wear and imperfect centering--but let's remember that fewer than twenty of these cards appear in the entirety of the PSA population. Graded PSA VG-EX 4.
Guide Value or Estimate: $500,000 - up.
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Auction Info
2026 August 22 - 23 Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction #50087 (go to Auction Home page)
Bidding Begins Approx.
July
31st
Friday
Auction Dates
August
22nd-23rd
Saturday-Sunday
Proxy Bidding Begins Approx.
25 Days
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: N/A
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
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