Babe Ruth card first collected by Baltimore paperboy sells for $7.2 million
A Babe Ruth rookie card first collected from a 1914 Baltimore newspaper sold for $7.2 million at auction.
The card is the highest-selling Ruth item of all-time and the second-highest price realized at auction for a trading card, Robert Edward Auctions said on social media. The most expensive baseball card ever is a Mickey Mantle rookie card that sold for $12.6 million last year.
As a paperboy on Baltimore streetcars, Archibald Davis collected the baseball cards included in newspapers and found the Ruth card in 1914. It depicts George Herman Ruth as a 19-year-old pitcher for the minor league Orioles.
Glenn Davis, Archibald’s grandson, said he remembered playing with them as he grew up in Towson in the 1950s and 1960s. The Davis family sold the card, which had been on loan at the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore since the 1990s, to a private collector in 2021. The auction started Nov. 17 at $2.5 million.
The card is the highest-selling Ruth item of all-time and the second-highest price realized at auction for a trading card, Robert Edward Auctions said.
The 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth was issued in both red and blue, and there are only 10 known to exist in either color. The simple card features just Ruth’s last name on the front. On the back, it advertises the 1914 Orioles’ schedule against other International League teams.
