Babe Ruth glove fetches record $1.53M at auction

A shot mitt personally donated by Babe Ruth to St. Louis Browns 3rd baseman Jimmy Austin sold Saturday astatine the 19th yearly Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory auction for $1.53 million, shattering the grounds paid for a shot glove.

The erstwhile grounds is believed to beryllium $387,500 for a Lou Gehrig mitt sold with Sotheby's successful 1999. In 2013, a Jackie Robinson mitt believed to person been utilized successful some the 1955 and 1956 World Series sold for conscionable implicit $373,000 by Steiner Sports.

The Ruth mitt was manufactured by Spalding for Ruth's usage circa 1927-1933. An audio signaling from 1964, utilized successful "The Glory of Their Times," captures Austin discussing the mitt and pounding its leather with his hand.

"My puerility memories with my 'Uncle Jim' are highly beloved to me," Susan Kolokoff, niece of Jimmy Austin, said successful a connection from Hunt Auctions. "The mitt had rested successful a container for the past 30 years until we learned of its past and heard the astonishing audio recording."

According to Hunt Auctions, which handled Saturday's sale, the mitt was primitively believed to beryllium a vintage Babe Ruth store exemplary erstwhile submitted for consignment. But the provenance and authentication process -- including a imaginable photograph lucifer to a Ruth representation bearing the aforesaid exemplary mitt with identical baccy staining -- yielded thing overmuch more.

"This monumental mitt is genuinely [one] of the astir historical pieces of its mean to person ever been offered astatine nationalist auction," David Hunt, president of Hunt Auctions, said.