Rookie cards are a collecting category all their own. When the rookie card is one of a star, a Hall of Famer or an immortal, the value relative to other cards in that set is exponentially greater.
There’s never been a star more larger than life than New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth, who dominated baseball like no one before or since. He became the central figure not just in his sport but more broadly across the cultural landscape of the 20th century. So Ruth’s rookie card is one of the prized jewels in all of sports card collecting.
The problem? Getting people to agree on what card properly checks that box.
There are two contenders, both from regional sets not remotely as popular as the tobacco cards that came before and gum cards that came later. The first is the 1914 Baltimore News card. The second is the 1916 Sporting News card, with two variations issued months apart with identical, photographed subjects. So what’s the issue? Since 1914 comes before 1916, the early card wins the race, right?
Not exactly. Rookie cards are generally accepted now to be Major League issued, meaning the player is depicted as a member of his first big-league team. The Baltimore News card, with its blue-tint photo of a teenage Ruth, was issued when he was a member of the then minor league Baltimore Orioles, with the backs containing a schedule of their games “compliments of the Baltimore International League.” Ruth lasted only three months in the minors before being sold to the Boston Red Sox. So while the 1914 card is Ruth’s first card without question, it’s technically not a rookie card.
That would be his Sporting News card, which shows Ruth as a member of the Red Sox, in either of the two sets. (Even more confusingly, the one numbered later — the M101-5 series — was actually issued before the earlier numbered M101-4.) A version of this card, with a rare Morehouse Bakery Co. back, is going to be sold via Robert Edward Auctions (REA) later this month. (Note the link will take you to a closed auction but will revert to the live one when it begins on November 22.)
This is a case, however, where the rookie card isn’t the most valuable for a player. Rather, it’s his first card.
Last December, an SGC 3 graded version (“Very Good” condition) of the Baltimore News Ruth sold for $7.2 million. That’s one of nine graded copies in existence and only one, a PSA 4 is graded higher. There were 15 players on that club known to have a card issued then. Ruth’s emerged as the third most valuable of all vintage cards in the baseball hobby, trailing only the famed Honus Wagner T-206 card (adjusted for the same grade and general eye appeal, according to REA) and a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle graded an SGC 9.5 that sold for $12.6 million in 2022.
“It’s rare where a minor leaguer of that era had a card, never mind someone who turned out to be as significant as Ruth,” says REA president Brian Dwyer.
Owned initially by six-year-old paper boy Archibald Davis, whose favorite team was the Orioles, the SGC 3 example was passed down in his family for 107 years. As late as the 1980s, no version was known to have survived. In 1998, 25 years before it would be auctioned, its home was the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore.
Davis was either a die-hard fan or had an incredible eye for raw talent as it wasn’t known in 1914 that Ruth was a future Sultan of Swing. According to Baseball Reference, his International League hitting season was 28-for-121 (.231) with 14 extra-base hits, including one homer, and 26 strikeouts. Granted, he did profile as a top pitching prospect with a 22-9 record in 242.2 innings, though his ERA in the dead-ball era was just decent: 3.26.
“With this card, you have Ruth having been a ward of the state for more than two-thirds of his life, not knowing much about the world and certainly not knowing what he was going to become. (That’s) what this card symbolizes,” Dwyer said at the time the card was sold.
What can be more “rookie card” than that — an all-time player captured in pose as a man child seemingly oblivious that he was about to become the king of the world.
But the “true rookie card,” according to rules that came into acceptance about 85 years after these cards were issued, is the 1916 Sporting News version. This connects Ruth to fellow Yankee legend Mickey Mantle in being the rare player whose most valuable card is a non-rookie. And not one 1914 Baltimore News Ruth needed to be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean to free up storage space to earn this distinction.
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By 1916, Ruth was a third-year big leaguer and one of the top hurlers in baseball, as well as a World Series champion. That year, he led the Majors in starts (40) and ERA (1.75), firing a loop-leading nine shutouts among his 23 complete games (323.2 innings pitched). His pitching Wins Above Replacement that year was 8.8, third among all MLB pitchers, trailing only Grover Cleveland and Walter Johnson, both pitching immortals (790 combined wins) in their primes (age 29 and 27, respectively). The 21-year-old Ruth had an OPS that year as a pitcher 22 percent above the league average, adjusting for differences in ballpark dimensions, though his hitting drew scant notice.
Within just two years of being issued, Ruth was a home-run champ and still an ace hurler with a 2.22 ERA and 18 complete games in 19 starts. He again was a World Series winner and hero (2-0 in the Fall Classic, including a six-hit shutout of the Cubs in Game 1).
Unlike today’s rookies, who can ebb and flow for years before their career paths stabilize, the owner of the Ruth card knew within two seasons that he was not a mere star but a superstar. So it’s no surprise that versions of this card remain so relatively well preserved with an 8 (Near Mint-Mint) and three 7s in the graded population. They soon became cherished icons of the nation’s greatest hero.
The 1916 Ruth is expected to fetch a small fraction of The Baltimore News “first” card despite being more highly graded (PSA 3.5, or Very Good-Plus). Both will have been sold by REA. The starting bid on the 1916 “true rookie” is $150,000 and, given the rarity of the Morehouse backing, the estimated sale price, according to Dwyer, is $500,000.
The backstory is fascinating. These cards were issued as coupons to get a jump rope or a miniature bat and ball. According to the back of the cards, 50 of them “with no two alike” had to be taken to the baking company’s office in Massachusetts in order to receive one of the prizes, though kids were allowed to keep the cards they had collected, as well. That’s why the one for sale and most of the others have “canceled” stamped on the back. According to REA, the Morehouse back is the rarest version of the card, with only 110 graded for all 119 players (including 24 Hall of Famers) in the set.
In April, a PSA 5 (Excellent) graded 1916 Ruth with a somewhat rare Gimbels ad on the back fetched $762,500. That one was the M101-4 (later) variation. According to the auctioneer (Bonhams), “The consignor’s grandfather – a 10-year-old Milwaukeean at the time – acquired the card over a century ago during a 1916 promotional giveaway of baseball cards featuring the top players of the day put on by Gimbels Department Store.”
In 1916, children didn’t go to department stores for baseball cards, then mainly a product for men in tobacco packages. They went there for the hottest toy of the year: Lincoln Logs. The highest sold price for Lincoln Logs on eBay the past six months? $300 — far more valuable than a jump rope, the coveted item that 1916 Ruth cards were originally seen as a tool to acquire.
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(All photos: Robert Edwards Auctions)
