A Collector Just Struck Out on a Babe Ruth Rookie Card Sale — Losing $3.2 Million On What Could Be The Biggest Flop On Trading Card History

A caller plaything and miss astatine auction, amounting to a adjacent $3.2 cardinal nonaccomplishment connected the merchantability of a 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card, could beryllium a motion of what's perchance up successful the trading paper industry.

The proprietor of the uncommon and historically important paper — lone 10 to 15 are believed to beryllium — sold the paper done Heritage Auctions connected Oct. 24 for $4.02 million, good beneath the $7.2 cardinal the collector paid for the paper successful 2023, Sports Illustrated reported.

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The paper ranked 4th connected the database of the highest collectible sports trading cards ever sold earlier the auction. The nonaccomplishment is wide believed to beryllium the largest taken connected a trading card.

This cliff dive has led to questions and wide speculation astir however a near-mythic collectible had go 1 of the year's biggest fiscal flops.

As the COVID pandemic began keeping radical astatine location successful 2020, galore turned to the aged pastime of trading sports cards. Collectors, one-time collectors and investors dug retired aged cards, revived collections and recovered caller ways to walk stimulus checks, and trading sports cards boomed, according to The New Chicagoan.

From 2020 to 2022, the sports paper marketplace surged. A mint information 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle paper sold for $12.6 million, astir doubling the grounds of $6.6 cardinal acceptable for a sports paper the twelvemonth before, according to Cardboard Connection.

The hobby, arsenic it's known among trading paper enthusiasts, powered ahead, receiving an further boost from celebrities specified arsenic DJ Steve Aoki, who astatine archetypal was skeptical until seeing a person flip a paper for a $10,000 profit, LA Weekly reported. Other celebrities, including Drake, Logan Paul, Snoop Dogg, Bryan Cranston and Mark Wahlberg, helped acceptable the hobby ablaze.

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Between August 2020 and August 2023, 10 of 12 of the astir costly sports cards ever were sold, including the 1909-11 T206 White Border Honus Wagner Sweet Caporal for $7.25 cardinal successful August 2022 and the Babe Ruth rookie paper that sold for $7.2 cardinal successful December 2023, according to Cardboard Connection. A 2003-04 Beckett Exquisite Collection LeBron James Rookie Patch besides sold for $5.2 cardinal successful April 2021.

Several years later, sports paper trading continues to thrive, but it has cooled from the pumped-up paper prices fueled by the pandemic. Lower prices aren't each bad; they let much collectors and investors to get into the hobby. And request remains for galore high-end cards.