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Babe Ruth bat, Lou Gehrig rookie, rare vintage cards highlight Memory Lane Summer Rarities Auction
The New York Yankees were the dominant team of the 1920s (and ’30s and ’40s and ’50s). They were led in the ’20s and ’30s by such baseball legends as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Collectibles from both are featured prominently in the Summer Rarities Auction at Memory Lane Inc., which features a catalog of nearly 400 pages of vintage and modern sports cards, autographs and memorabilia.
The auction is highlighted by a late-1920s Babe Ruth game-used bat from the estate of his former Yankees teammate Mark Koenig. The bat, which has the initials “MK” branded above Ruth’s engraved signature on the barrel, is graded GU 8.5 by PSA/DNA.
Koenig played shortstop for the Yankees and with Ruth from 1925-30. He batted .500 in the 1927 World Series and was on third base when Ruth belted his then-record 60th home run of the season.
Koenig’s first year with the Yankees was also the same season in which Gehrig supplanted Wally Pipp at first base and began his legendary consecutive games streak. Gehrig’s first appearance on cardboard was his 1925 Exhibit Supply Co. postcard. A “gray tint” version of what is considered Gehrig’s rookie (PSA 3.5) card also is featured in the auction.
The auction also features several other early-1900s vintage cards, including:
• An 1888-89 Old Judge N173 Buck Ewing cabinet card. The 4¼-by-6½ premium card of the Hall of Famer is the “bat in right hand at right side” version and is the only example ever graded by PSA (VG-EX 4).
• The only known graded card of Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, the little-known ballplayer-turned-doctor who gained fame from the popular baseball movie “Field of Dreams.”
Three years after his lone major league appearance, Graham was still toiling in the minors for Scranton in the New York State League when he was included in a 1908 Rose Company postcard set. It was issued not long before he retired to pursue his medical career. The card up for bid is the only known example graded by PSA.
• The only known 1904 Allegheny Card Company Christy Mathewson card. The PSA 5 example is part of a 112-card boxed set that has never reached the public before. Only one card of each player from the only set ever created is known to exist.
• A 1912 M101-3 Sporting News Ty Cobb card with advertising for a Kansas Hardware Store on the back. Postmarked in November, 1912, the card has been authenticated and is graded SGC 1.5.
• Several pages of T206 cards, including Cobb and Mathewson, with rare advertising backs, including Broad Leaf, Drum, Hindu, Brown Lenox, and Old Mill. Many have of the cards have populations of fewer than five known examples.
• A breakup of a near complete set of 1911 T3 Turkey Red cabinet cards spread out over 87 lots, including a Cobb card with checklist back.
• Autographed cards ranging from 1933 Goudeys to a 1939 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio card, including a 1952 Bowman Mantle and a PSA 10 1980-81 Larry Bird-Magic Johnson-Julius Erving card signed by all three NBA legends.
The auction, which opens Aug. 17 and runs through Sept. 7, also includes key single cards, high-grade vintage cards, and rare unopened packs and boxes from all major sports.
