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Babe Ruth’s 500th home-run bat sells for $1,000,800 at auction

That’s right, the Bambino’s baseball bat which he used to hit his 500th home run during the 1929 season sold for $1,000,800 at SCP Auctions to an unnamed bidder on Saturday, December 14, 2019.

But this enormous sum of money isn’t nearly the highest amount paid for a Ruth item.

In June, a New York Yankees jersey worn by Ruth between 1928 and 1930 fetched $5.64 million at auction, making it the most expensive piece of sports memorabilia ever sold. That smashed the previous record set when his 1920 jersey sold for $4.4 million.

However, the sale of Ruth's 500th home run bat did not break the record for the most expensive bat sold at auction. That title belongs to Ruth's home-run bat from Yankee Stadium's opening in 1923, which sold for a record $1.265 million at SCP Auctions in 2004.

Simply put, Babe Ruth is the greatest icon in American pop culture history.

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Permalink Reply by James on December 17, 2019 at 1:44am

Ruth gave the bat to a friend named Jim Rice in the mid-1940s, and it had been in the possession of his family ever since, SCP Auctions said. The auction house called the bat a "national treasure" and said it was one of the most important discoveries in sports memorabilia.