The sale and auctioning of sports memorabilia has become a vast and hugely profitable institutionalized industry, and it’s easy to see why. For every sport, there is affection for key artifacts from iconic pieces of the game’s history.
As a simple example of how meaningful something that was once next-to-useless can become through this filtered lens, an unused ticket to Michael Jordan’s 1984 debut with the Bulls was sold through Heritage Auctions in 2022 for $468,000. The day after that game in 1984, that ticket was worth nothing. But in 2022? That ticket was worth over $450,000, and that’s a great example of how sports memorabilia and auctioning can function: what was once worthless becomes priceless.
Babe Ruth’s Legacy and Baseball’s Nostalgic Value
Arguably, no single sport is as intertwined with American history, superstition, and nostalgia quite as much as baseball. The ‘great American past-time’ is a game that so many young men from across centuries of American living have grown up watching and playing with their father. As such, the value of critical nostalgic artifacts from this game has a price even higher than many other sports. Combine this with the once-in-a-lifetime talent and boundary-breaking legacy of Babe Ruth, and you have a truly invaluable piece of sports memorabilia.
The gray New York Yankees jersey Babe Ruth wore during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series will soon be auctioned. Valued at more than thirty million dollars, the jersey is expected to set a new world record when it hits the market next month as part of Heritage Auctions’ August 23-25 Summer Platinum Sports Auction.
The Role of Heritage Auctions in Preserving Sports History
Heritage Auctions was started in 1969 as a rare coin company. However, the company has grown substantially over the decades and has become the third-largest auction house in the world. Currently, they house over 40 different collectible categories, including sports memorabilia. The Heritage Sports division was started by Chris Ivy in 2003 and has become the most prominent sports auction house, as demonstrated by the earlier mention of their auction of that Michael Jordan-related 1984 ticket. So, in many ways, the Babe Ruth jersey could not be in safer, more certified hands.
As Chris Ivy says of Heritage Auctions, “Everything we sell, authenticity is key and trust of our bidders because if the bidders, you know, are 100% confident in its authenticity and confident that, you know, we stand behind the item, then it’s going to perform better in the auction.”
Even the auction house’s name, Heritage Auctions, is all too symbolic. Chris Ivy’s father started the company, which was passed down to him just as a love and appreciation of the sport of baseball has been passed down through generations of American families. In this way, no single player in the sport’s history is as deserving of this posthumous honor as Babe Ruth.
Through his playing of the game, Ruth fundamentally changed not just the sport but the nation itself, breaking down barriers with each homerun he hit in profound ways. Any piece of memorabilia tied up with that legacy truly deserves to be valued as such.
