Babe Ruth Sparked The Market

How many Babe Ruth bats are left?  This is a question that was brought up in a post over on A Cardboard Problem today.

This week Topps released one of its most highly anticipated products of the year, Topps Tribute Baseball.  After watching a few box breaks and browsing eBay, you’ll find a ton of collectors that have pulled Babe Ruth relics.  Of coarse whenever you have an abundance of people pulling relic cards out of one of the best baseball players in history, your automatically going to have skeptical people saying they don’t trust the possibility that there could actually be that many Babe Ruth bats left to hack up and insert into cards.  I’m a pretty skeptical personal myself, because I think we can all agree The Babe isn’t playing anymore games and his relics are limited.  When Babe Ruth was alive, there was no market for sports memorabilia.  But even though there was no real market for sports collectibles when he was alive, Ruth still had people lining up for autographs.  In my opinion, Ruth was one of the first major sports celebrities baseball had ever seen.  He was considered collectible before there was a market.  Thats why I think companies can still find relics of him.  You don’t see Babe Ruth relics in every product.  It seems like Topps is saving Ruth stuff for some of their bigger products.  Panini is doing the same with Jim Thorpe relics, except there are much fewer Thorpe pieces left.

This morning I put in my order in for one box of ’09 Topps Tribute and I can’t wait to open it.  I plan on giving it a full review once I’m done.

The Babe did sign a few items in his day.