Memorabilia

1934 Quaker Oats Babe Ruth Advertising Sign

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In 1993, Sotheby’s offered this Quaker Oats Babe Ruth Advertising Sign in their Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia auction. Sign me up for this club!

The sign was described as a multi-color, large (16 by 20 inches) cardboard die-cut stand-up advertising sign showing prices for the Quaker Oats Babe Ruth baseball club.

REA sold an identical, possibly the same, display in the spring of 2008 for $1292; they dated it to 1934 and acknowledged it had been restored.

In the description, REA noted Quaker Oats produced other similar signs for grocery stores. Here’s another one I found online, dated to 1935.

If you’re still interested in joining the Babe Ruth Baseball Club, membership cards pop up for sale from time to time. This one, with an original envelope, sold for $168 in 2023.

More about these Babe Ruth advertising signs and the Baseball Club in future posts!

2001 Barry Bonds Full Home Run Ticket Run

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Bonds shattered the single-season HR mark with 73 in 2001, and someone managed to put together a complete run of 61 full tickets from each of his home run games. 

The lot was available for sale in Mastro’s April 2002 catalog, and each was described as being in NM/MT to MT condition.

The keys were home run #60 on September 6 vs. the Diamondbacks, #70, which tied Mark McGwire for the single-season home run mark on October 4 vs. the Astros, #’s 71-72 when he set the new single-season home run mark on October 5 vs. the Dodgers, #73 when he established the new record on the last game of the season on October 6 vs. the Dodgers, and #6 on April 17 vs. the Dodgers which was his 500th career home run.

A lot of the tickets were obtained from season ticket holders by a collector who started the set on the first game of the season.

1958-59 Boston Celtics Team Autographed Poster

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This incredible 1958-59 Boston Celtics Team Autographed Poster was offered in Sotheby’s Important Baseball Cards and Sports Memorabilia auction in June 2005. It included all 11 players from the NBA Champion team, plus coach Red Auerbach and trainer Buddy LeRoux.

The 1958-59 Celtics swept the Minneapolis Lakers in the 1959 NBA Finals, then known as the NBA World Championship Series, and kicked off the Celtics streak of eight straight titles between 1959 and 1966.

The Near mint to mint-conditioned image was described as 20” x 24” in size and with flawless signatures by Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Sam Jones, and Bill Sharman. It came with an LOA from PSA/DNA.

I found the following example of the same picture, but without the text beneath the image showing, on eBay (June 2004) for just under $3k, accompanied by an LOA from Beckett. The autographs are in slightly different locations for each player, so it’s a unique piece.

1953 Spic and Span Dry Cleaners Milwaukee Braves Shirt Covering

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How many of you still use dry cleaners? And those of you who do, how many of you save the hanger bags? Well, here’s one that survived in someone’s closet for over fifty years!

It’s a circa 1953 Spic and Span Dry Cleaners Pictorial Shirt Covering. The Milwaukee-based dry cleaning company had a licensing agreement with the local Braves team from at least 1953 to 1957. 

The auction lot for the shirt covering described the bag as containing 12 different portrait sketches of popular players of the Milwaukee Braves, including Warren Spahn. They wrote that the portraits on the bag are 12 of the 13 known Warmuth designs that went into the company’s 1954 card set, so they felt comfortable placing the bag’s date of issue.

1953 World Heavy-Weight Championship Marciano Vs. Walcott Tickets

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I ran across this ad, from Mastro of all people, in the July 1981 issue of Trader Speaks, looking to sell or trade full unused mint tickets for the world heavy-weight championship boxing match between Rocky Marciano and Jersey Joe Walcott at Chicago Stadium. 

He mentions having five different tickets, each with clear portrait photos of the boxers, for $10 each (or for trade). 

After exploring the PSA registry, it looks like Mastro was advertising a combination of phantom tickets for April 10th (white, orange, pink, and cream) and the actual fight on May 15th (blue and orange variations). Here are all the examples from Heritage Auctions.

When PSA first started grading tickets, I don’t believe they were not putting the ticket color on the slab, like the following example.

Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 Point Game Ticket Stub

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On March 2, 1962, Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks in Hershey, Penn. 4,126 tickers were originally sold for the game, and here’s one of the remaining stubs. 

This example was offered in Mastro West’s March 2000 Fine Sports Auctions catalog with a minimum bid of $900. They described it as being in Ex to Mt condition with an inscription on the back: “Wilt Chamberland (sic) scored a record 100 pts against N.Y.”

The stub was accompanied by this newspaper article describing the game.

Surviving tickets are incredibly pricey and seem to be getting more expensive; REA sold this PSA 2 graded stub for $36k in the summer of 2023.

They sold this PSA 1.5 Mk’d example approximately a year earlier for $22.2k.

Heritage has also sold several stubs, including a PSA Authentic copy for $26.4 in February 2023, another PSA Authentic copy for $49.2k in February 2022, and a PSA 2 Mk copy for $49.2k in August 2022.

Mickey Mantle’s Four-Bagger Ball Toss Game

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Did you know Mickey Mantle sponsored an indoor-outdoor cornhole-like throwing game in the 1950’s? I ran across this example in Ron Oser Enterprises April 2001 auction catalog.

They described it as a very large & colorful 22” x 34” heavy cardboard game with a striking 30” tall image of Mantle in a batting pose. They wrote that the board contained four 6-inch holes into which balls (or beanbags) were thrown to score singles, doubles, triples, or home runs. The center “Home Run 1000” hole still had the original red oil-cloth sack backing that would “catch” the ball. They gave the item an overall VgEx condition grade.

With all four bags in place, Heritage sold the following example for $2040 in May 2019; other auction houses have sold signed copies for north of $4k.

The instructions on the back show that Garnder & Co., in Chicago, Illinois, manufactured the game.

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