World’s most valuable baseball card worth $6m sold

A 1914 Babe Ruth baseball card valued at $6m (£4.3m) has smashed records to become the most expensive baseball card ever sold.

CNBC reported that the pre-rookie card was the first to feature the Major League Baseball (MLB) icon as a player at 19 years old.

Collectable, a sports memorabilia investing platform, said in a press release that a private buyer recently purchased the card but did not disclose the price of the sale.

The card itself pictures Ruth as a minor league pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles ahead of his contract with the Red Sox.

“It never comes up, and when it does, people grab it and pay whatever price it takes,” Collectable CEO Ezra Levine told CNBC. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime find.”

A 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card previously held the title as the most valuable sporting card of all time after being sold for $5.2m (£3.7m), Collectable said in the release.

Mr Levine explained that while the company could not disclose the price paid for the card, he told the broadcaster it would be a “reasonable assumption” that they had paid around its estimated value of ($6m) (£4.3m).

The owner has put the card up for partial ownership and the company, similar to a stockbroker, will sell 20,000 shares of the card on the platform starting at $3 (£2.1) per share, Axios reported.

“He loved the ability to share this asset with the public,” Mr Levine told CNBC. “He’s taking this physical asset and almost transforming it into a stock which can be liquidly traded on a platform.”

The card will remain at the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, in a newly created special exhibit showcase for shareholders to be able to visit their asset in person, the company said.

“Today’s announcement represents not only a record price for a sports card, but also a historic and seismic moment for the sports collectibles industry,” Mr Levine said in a press release.

He added: “For the first time in history, via Collectable, collectors and sports fans of ALL income brackets will be able to co-own this record setting asset.”

Interest in the sporting memorabilia sector has only intensified amid the coronavirus pandemic, and this new version of selling has evolved with the growing prominence of non-fungible tokens (NFT’s).

An NFT is a unique digital item that belongs to the person who purchases it but isn’t physically owned, similar to buying shares in a stock or a valuable object as with the baseball card.

“We continue to see tremendous excitement for rare and exciting pieces of sports history, and we’re thrilled that today’s announcement showcases the power of fractional ownership to democratize and modernize our special industry,” the Collectable CEO said.

Axios reported that as of now, the 10 most valuable trading cards of all time are worth over $3m ($2.1m) each for the first time ever.

Last month, the family of a doctor who died of coronavirus complications discovered that the baseball card collection passed onto them was worth $20m (£14m).