Baseball legend Babe Ruth’s shirt breaks sports memorabilia auction record
Al Jazeera
Ruth wore the ‘called shot’ shirt during a historic game against the Chicago Cubs in his final World Series in 1932.
A shirt belonging to American baseball legend Babe Ruth has shattered the record for the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever auctioned, fetching $24.1m after a weeks-long auction.
The online auction for his New York Yankee shirt began in July and culminated after a bidding war that lasted more than six hours on Sunday, according to Heritage Auctions in Irving, Texas. The buyer wishes to remain anonymous, Heritage said.
Within the first few days of going up on auction, the prized item broke the record by attracting a bid of $13.3m, with experts estimating the bidding price to cross the $30m mark.
The previous record for the most expensive sports object sold at auction was $12.6m, paid in August 2022 for a baseball card for Mickey Mantle.
Until 2022, no piece of sports memorabilia had ever broken the symbolic $10m mark, but that year saw both the Mantle card and a shirt worn by basketball great Michael Jordan blow past the threshold.
