Sport-used Babe Ruth glove sells at public sale for document $1.53 million

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

The earlier document is believed to be $387,500 for a Lou Gehrig glove bought with Sotheby’s in 1999. In 2013, a Jackie Robinson glove believed to have been utilized in each the 1955 and 1956 World Collection bought 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 Instances,” captures Austin discussing the glove and pounding its leather-based along with his hand.

“My childhood reminiscences 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 realized of its historical past and heard the superb audio recording.”

In line with 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 potential photograph match to a Ruth picture bearing the identical mannequin glove with an identical tobacco staining — yielded one thing far 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.