I have a friend who has a piece of sports memorabilia that might be worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Or it might be worth nothing.
My friend has a baseball that he knows was signed by Babe Ruth, but he may have a hard time proving it.
If you look at eBay, you will see numerous balls signed by Ruth that have a wide range in pricing — a horrible looking one for about $4,000 and one that looks like it was signed this week for $99,000.
His great uncle was one of New York’s Finest, and after an act of heroism, he got the opportunity to be part of the detail at Yankee Stadium during the years Ruth was playing. He was a lifelong bachelor, and he became one of the Babe’s favorite drinking buddies.
Over the years, Ruth signed several dozen baseballs for his friend, who passed them along to family members.
Two still exist.
The balls pictured her are not those balls.
Of course Ruth himself died in 1948, and my friend’s uncle has been gone for many years as well.
Therein lies the problem. There is no single signer with the possible exception of Mickey Mantle for whom there are so many counterfeit signatures out there. I know. I almost certainly have one.
In the late 1930s, Sinclair Oil did a promotion where they gave away something like 500 balls ostensibly signed by the Bambino. Maybe 90 percent of the balls were actually signed by a clerical employee of the oil company who could imitate his signature really well.
I got one of them on eBay for $200, and my only complaint has nothing to do with it being real or not. My problem is that it’s so badly faded now you can hardly see there’s a signature at all.
As for my friend, he can go to one of the companies that authenticate signed baseballs and ask them to appraise his two balls. They can probably tell him if the signatures are real, but without any other proof — witnesses to the signing, etc. — it’s difficult to imagine someone paying tens of thousands of dollars no matter how pretty they look.
I have a similar problem, but it doesn’t bother me. I have a bat that came down to me from my grandfather, a bat owned and used by Hall of Famer Napoleon Lajoie, who played from 1896-1916 and is arguably the greatest all-round second baseman ever.
There’s no authentication and it isn’t signed. I’m not looking to sell it, so it doesn’t matter.
But a mint condition 1933 baseball card of Lajoie sold for $192,000.
Big bucks.
I’ve got baseballs signed by several dozen members of the Hall of Fame, but the most I ever paid for one was $500.
I was never in it for the money.