Game-worn '31 Gehrig jersey expected to sell for $1.5 million
Next week, a jersey worn by Lou Gehrig during his record-setting 1931 season with the New York Yankees becomes sports memorabilia's latest big swing. It could sell for as much as US$1.5 million at auction.
The uniform is part of a sale offered by Christie's and Hunt Auctions in New York titled Home Plate: A Private Collection of Important Baseball Memorabilia. The auction comprises 152 lots and carries an estimate of $4 million to $7 million. It includes a Louisville Slugger baseball bat used by Babe Ruth sometime between 1916 and 1918, which is estimated to sell for between $500,000 and $1 million.
The auction comes at a time when sports memorabilia sales continue to shatter records.
“The last two and a half to three years has just been staggering,” says Dave Hunt, owner of Hunt Auctions. “An item that sold for $1,000 to $2,000 for years all of a sudden is $25,000 or $100,000. A Lou Gehrig jersey that we'd sold at auction maybe in 2007, for $450,000, we sold privately for nearly $3 million.”
At the onset of the pandemic, Hunt anticipated a crash.
“The opposite happened,” he says. “It's gotten even stronger.”
Besides the famous sales — Michael Jordan's game-worn 1985 Air Jordans, which sold for $560,000 at Sotheby's in May, and the Lebron James rookie card that hammered for a stunning $1.8 million at Goldin Auctions in July — prices for more esoteric sports memorabilia have risen across the board.
In September, Hunt sold a collection of baseball memorabilia assembled by Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully. The sale included a baseball signed by Ronald Reagan ($11,750) and a Dodgers scorebook from 2016 ($82,250). Heritage Auctions is currently hosting a sports memorabilia sale that includes a 1971-72 Boston Bruins jersey worn by Bobby Orr; as of Thursday, bidding had already reached $97,500, or $117,000 with the premium.
Memorabilia, it seems, is being pushed by the same tailwinds as the rest of the online luxury and collectibles market.
“People are at home,” Hunt says, “and they're not spending money on travel and leisure and tickets to games. So they're spending it elsewhere.”