Babe Ruth Print
 

I just had this Babe Ruth image framed . It is the same image used for the Ruth 1948 Leaf card ( which I would love to own some day). The paper stock is a little thicker than a magazine and it is blank backed which made me believe it wasn't cut out of a magazine. I would like to know if there is a known supplement or premium of this image? I pulled this out of my fathers scrap book he did as a kid and most of the clippings are from the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians 1948 season , which is the year of the Leaf issue and also the year Ruth died . I always assumed this may have been from a publication from around the time of his death. Any info would be helpful . Adam

There is this. Yours seems more washed out for some reason, not sure if it's the way you photographed it.

Thanks for the information ! That is the one. Yes, mine has faded over the years probably from the acid of the paper in the scrapbook . Adam

Gary,

Very Hansom Lookin PSA 1... And a Keeper to boot Aye! ;)

Gary that is a beautiful premium and the grade wouldn't do it justice. They should almost grade these large paper supplements differently than cardboard. I am sure not too many exist in high grade. Mine was pulled out of scrapbook and is actual size (hasn't been trimmed) but had some corner tears so when I had it framed I matted the tears out. At any rate here is a better photo there is a little glue on the photo from being glued to a scrapbook. How my Dad got this premium because buying packs of baseball cards would have been few and far between because there was little money in the house. Scrapbooking was an affordable thing to do at that time and my Dad put his scrapbook together while at a boarding school in Cleveland. He was one of the poorest kids at the Academy and cleaned horse stalls to pay for tuition. Some of his friends were from elite families in the Cleveland area including one of the Sherwin's of the painting family. Maybe the premium was given to him by one of the more fortunate kid's or maybe Dad bought the last pack in the store from part of his earnings (he was only 12 years old) and was lucky to get this premium.

Thanks for the kind words (and yours too, Denny!). Unfortunately, there is a tear on the premium near the bottom left corner, which is the reason for the technical grade. These premiums tend to be very fragile as you said, so edge tears are common. They are also fairly rare, so I'm happy just to have this copy. Your copy looks great framed.

Love the Ruth Leaf Premium. The examples above are beautiful.

Has anyone ever seen any information on the Ruth Premium with the blue background. Haven't been able to find any reliable info on that variation. Have been looking to buy one for a while. Someone has one on eBay now in poor condition and they are asking $4,995, which is a nice price to assure that it will sit on eBay for many many years.

None of the Leaf Premiums are common, but I believe the no text box Ruth is the most common. The next most often seen is the text box version, which I've attached here. I used to own this heavily trimmed copy, but eventually sold it off. The blue background version is definitely the most rare, and doesn't come up very often for auction. I've seen it before in a Lew Lispet auction, and I thought I saw it in Legendary before and perhaps also on ebay auctions a couple of times. If I knew it was that hard to obtain, I'd probably have tried harder to pick up a copy. Saying all of that, I really don't think that a poor copy is worth $5K either. I'm definitely not going into that stratosphere.