His autograph was magic, even long before anyone really placed a monetary value on it. Why else would the owner of a Ford Motor Company dealership stick ten baseballs away for safe keeping after Babe Ruth signed them?
Eight of those unlikely investments from 64 years ago sold at auction over the weekend after family members consigned them. The final tally totaled $216,000.
The highest graded ball (PSA DNA 8.5) sold for $77,000 in the Heritage Auctions sale that also saw numerous other Ruth items sell as well as the Mookie Wilson-Bill Buckner baseball from the 1986 World Series.
Ruth visited Spencer, Iowa just a short time before he would die of cancer, signing dozens of baseballs, chatting with newspaper reporters and presenting a baseball trophy to a local winning team. It was part of his endorsement contract with Ford, which also produced a junior baseball program that Ruth was fond of.
Those eight balls don’t comprise all of the family’s original stash, though, according to this story in the Sioux City Journal.
