Babe Ruth baseball glove sells at public sale for file $1.53 million

A baseball glove personally donated by Babe Ruth to St. Louis Browns third baseman Jimmy Austin offered Saturday on the nineteenth annual Louisville Slugger Museum & Manufacturing facility public sale for $1.53 million, shattering the file paid for a baseball glove.

The earlier file is believed to be $387,500 for a Lou Gehrig glove offered with Sotheby’s in 1999. In 2013, a Jackie Robinson glove believed to have been utilized in each the 1955 and 1956 World Collection offered for simply over $373,000 by Steiner Sports activities.

The Ruth glove was manufactured by Spalding for Ruth’s use circa 1927-1933. An audio recording from 1964, utilized in “The Glory of Their Occasions,” captures Austin discussing the glove and pounding its leather-based along with his hand.

“My childhood recollections with my ‘Uncle Jim’ are extraordinarily pricey to me,” Susan Kolokoff, niece of Jimmy Austin, mentioned in an announcement from Hunt Auctions. “The glove had rested in a field for the final 30 years till we discovered of its historical past and heard the superb audio recording.”

In response to Hunt Auctions, which dealt with Saturday’s sale, the glove was initially believed to be a classic Babe Ruth retailer mannequin when submitted for consignment. However the provenance and authentication course of — together with a attainable photograph match to a Ruth picture bearing the identical mannequin glove with equivalent tobacco staining — yielded one thing way more.

“This monumental glove is actually [one] of essentially the most historic items of its medium to have ever been supplied at public public sale,” David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions, mentioned.