A 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card sold for $7.2 million, including the buyer’s premium, just after midnight Monday, the third-highest sum ever paid for a sports card. It narrowly missed the $7.25 million paid for a T206 Sweet Caporal Honus Wagner card in August 2022.
It’s the most expensive Ruth item of all time.
In 1914, a 16-year-old Baltimore paperboy named Archibald Davis collected baseball cards of his favorite Orioles — then an International (minor) League side — distributed in daily papers. He was fond of one depicting a 19-year-old pitcher born on Emory St. named Ruth. This is that card.
Davis’ cards, 15 in total, would be passed down in the family for generations — often played with by children before they knew what they had — for 107 years. The family loaned the cards to the Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum in Baltimore in 1998. They were on display until 2021, when they were sold privately.