Sports Collectibles

Rare Piece of Baseball History Heading to the Auction Block

Yahoo! Finance
Wednesday November 28, 2007

“TUSTIN, Calif., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ — A one-of-a-kind piece of baseball history could set a new standard for values of the sport’s most historic documents on Dec. 8, when the rookie-year baseball contract of Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson is sold by Memory Lane Inc., of Tustin, Calif. The company is considered one of the premier sports collectible auctions houses in the country.

Mathewson is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time and was one of the five original inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.

Vintage baseball contracts have become more sought after in recent years by collectors, and that demand has resulted in escalating values for the items. The record for player-signed contracts is the $996,000 price realized for Babe Ruth’s 1919 rookie-year contract, which sold in June of 2005. Collectors will be watching the sale of this Mathewson contract closely to see where it ranks among the highest-priced contracts sold to date.”

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