What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

[joelsabi]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

1951 Willie Mays Minneapolis Millers Home Jersey

Some interesting background from the description.
It was first brought to the attention of the collecting community when a Minneapolis resident took it to the Antiques Roadshow on June 26, 2004. He had purchased the jersey for fifty dollars about twenty years earlier at a small collectors show. Over the years he began to wonder about which players might have worn the jersey. His excitement in finding out that Mays wore number "28" with the Millers in 1951 was tempered by the fact that his research seemed to indicate that this was a 1950-style Millers jersey. Mays only played with the Millers for thirty-five games in 1951. Undaunted, and knowing that teams recycled their uniforms, he continued his research and eventually found the two accompanying photos that prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mays did indeed wear this jersey during his brief time with the Millers.

pretty amazing that this exists and it does not belong to Willie Mays himself or the HOF.

http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/auction/2011_preview/14.html

[justinbittner220]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

joelsabi, do you have any way to contact Dennis Esken? email me.
justinbittner220@hotmail.com

[joelsabi]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/Auction_Item.asp?Auction_ID=59140

This is kind of amazing. A Roberto Clemente Fielder's Glove from the personal collection of Pittsburgh glove expert, Dennis Esken.

[JETEFAN]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

My Holy grail....... Don Mattingly game used 1st base glove, saw one about 25 years ago haven't seen one since

George
harvesttrustinv@aol.com

Always looking for Mattingly quality game used items

[MikeSharon]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

best item i have seen in person at an auction was in 1990 at the Rangers winter carnival / sale the Rangers put the all star game jerseys from the previous season up at a live auction in the ballpark. they didnt have the patches but they had letters from the team saying they were used in the all star game . The Ryan went for 5 grand and that was 20 years ago. Reese Ryan his youngest son was in crowd bidding on it and dropped out around 2000 i stopped at 3000 if it had had the all star game patch i would have gone higher.

[Mulligans]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Low Blow!

[34swtns]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Bill Belichick's 80 page hand written Defensive play book from the undefeated 2007 season.

Jeff, don't you mean "undefeated regular season"?

Sorry, bro', I just love rubbin' that in!

[flota89]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Stephen Strasburg 2010 Bowman cards. Hands down.

Yea me too. I like the fact that they are bright colors! Some are gold, some silver, some red! That has to be expensive! Much better than any game used jersey or anything.

[CampWest]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Stephen Strasburg 2010 Bowman cards. Hands down.

[Mulligans]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Greatest...I don't know....but absolutely very cool.....Bill Belichick's 80 page hand written Defensive play book from the undefeated 2007 season.

[spartakid]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

I don't think it is the greatest item but I saw and touched the Paul Henderson 1972 Summit Series jersey at last summer's MeiGray show. With the juice, this jersey just sold for: $1.3 million dollars through Classic Auctions.

$1,300,000.00 dollars. For a used shirt. The buyer paid $200,000.00 in Buyers premium alone. In other words, the "honor" of spending a million dollars cost this buyer two hundred thousand dollars. That borders on Usury in my book.

I am a hockey fan. I understand how important the series was to Canada Hockey fans. But when you could purchase 5 to 10 museum worthy grail pieces using the buyers premium alone, that's ridiculous. Do I wish I had that kind of money for a game worn shirt? Of course! But I'd never spend it on any one item. I mean what do you do with a jersey like that? How do you display it? I'd be afraid to look at it, it would wind up in a safe deposit box somewhere in Switzerland. And what fun would owning something you had to store in a box?

Well if he can afford to drop that kind of money, he can probably afford to build a walk-in, climate controlled, safe to store it in.

[gingi79]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

I don't think it is the greatest item but I saw and touched the Paul Henderson 1972 Summit Series jersey at last summer's MeiGray show. With the juice, this jersey just sold for: $1.3 million dollars through Classic Auctions.

$1,300,000.00 dollars. For a used shirt. The buyer paid $200,000.00 in Buyers premium alone. In other words, the "honor" of spending a million dollars cost this buyer two hundred thousand dollars. That borders on Usury in my book.

I am a hockey fan. I understand how important the series was to Canada Hockey fans. But when you could purchase 5 to 10 museum worthy grail pieces using the buyers premium alone, that's ridiculous. Do I wish I had that kind of money for a game worn shirt? Of course! But I'd never spend it on any one item. I mean what do you do with a jersey like that? How do you display it? I'd be afraid to look at it, it would wind up in a safe deposit box somewhere in Switzerland. And what fun would owning something you had to store in a box?

[34swtns]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Since the vast majority of Walter Payton jerseys that come up for sale are fakes, I'd have to say that the very few, (and by "very" I mean less than 3), legit Payton jerseys I've seen are the ultimate in this Bears fan's opinion.

A close second (for me anyway) would have to be the three orange alternate jerseys worn by Brian Urlacher that have come up for sale. For modern day Bears collectors they have to be considered "the holy grail". I've been fortunate enough to own two of the three.

[yankees24]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

for me personally, I now see a tino Martinez game used 2001 World Series jersey on Ebay. my heavenly grail but ah, just too much

[xpress34]

Re: What's the greatest item you've ever seen for sale/at auction?

Hi Chris,

I did a quick 2-minute pass on the catalog and found photos of vintage Yankee pinstripes but could not locate it. Maybe I just missed it.

Anyways it would not surprise me if many, if not most, of the the early years items from collectors featured in the the book Smithsonian Baseball came from the Barry Halper's Collection. There are so many photos that would pop out at you if you looked at both the Smithsonian Baseball book as belonging formerly to the Halper Collection. Mr. Halper was an amazing collector.


Tell me if you have better luck.

Joel

Joel -
I too just did a quick pass... it's been a few years since I've cracked into those... Anyway, it is quite possible that I'm thinking of the Smithsonian (I have that book too), but I could swear I read somewhere that Halper once owned that jersey...

That said, while scanning the Halper Auction books, I did notice one jersey that blew me away - not even GU!

Apparently Halper owned a Gehrig 'presentation' jersey that was signed by Lou and given to family friends. Upon his death, they returned the jersey to Gehrig's widow who later gave the jersey to Halper. No year stitched in and no patches, so it is not believed to have seen game use, BUT it is the ONLY known Gehrig AUTO jersey in exsistence!

All the best -

Chris