Signed baseball goes for record amount
 

The ball contains the signatures of Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, George Sisler, Walter Johnson, Connie Mack, Nap Lajoie, Eddie Collins and Grover Cleveland Alexander.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/greates...163015935.html

Wait a minute! I bought a baseball exactly like that one at Coach's Corner for $250.

Do you think Todd McFarland would trade his $3 Million McGwire HR-record Ball for it? :D

I worked for Guernsey's on that auction which included a number of other items. Authenticating and cataloging.
On auction night I was working and managing the phones and assigned a young woman a bidder name Todd McFarland. I sat next to her as the bidding went into the stratosphere and she trembled every time the bid came back to her. The losing bidder was a new business that wanted to use the ball as a promotion to promote their new product. Ties, yes ties. There would be a coupon inside one of the tie boxes and that could be redeemed for the McGwire ball. They had three people at the auction and everytime the bid came back to them, they went into this long huddle to decide what to do. It was kinda funny watching these people at what seemed to be their first ever auction. They took a lot of time in their huddle but Todd just took about 1 second to keep raising his bid. He was not going to lose it. Nobody actually in the hobby was close in the bidding. Several had indicated that they might bid $1 million but did not.

What a really cool aigned ball that is.

Great story. Thanks for sharing, Richard.

I kinda regretted not assigning Todd McFarland to myself. Would have been a little more fun for me :).

The article implies that there's another ball just like this one around somewhere. Or at least was.

"Greenberg brought two baseballs with him so he could get the signatures of the 11 living legends being honored that weekend. But in a biography of Owen written by his sister, Owen said that Greenberg was too nervous to ask any of them for their autographs. So Owen volunteered to do it, and Greenberg let him keep one of the balls as a thank you."

Bill

Exactly what I was thinking, where is the other ball ? In the Greenberg family ?

Today's paper mentioned this ball, stating that the only missing member was Gehrig. Very ignorant comment given that Gehrig wasn't in the HOF when the induction ceremony took place. He was inducted later in the year after he was diagnosed and it became obvious he would never play again.

Scott, reread the article in the link. It does make reference to that fact. Perhaps the paper you read did some editing.

"Those 11 baseball figures were all elected throughout the first four years of the existence of the Hall of Fame (1936-1939), but as the only living members of the original 25 inductees (not including Lou Gehrig, who wasn’t inducted until December 1939), they were invited to an official induction ceremony to celebrate the opening of the physical Hall of Fame building. The signatures were all gathered during that first induction weekend."

Anyone think the Taft baseball from the first presidential opener in 1910 might be in this league?

Just to keep the record straight, the man's name is McFarlane, not McFarland. Todd McFarlane.

I should have mentioned that our local newspaper (Seattle) is frequently the only news source that screws up something that most everyone else gets correct. Our editing is horrible since the sports editor was promoted to chief editor of the entire paper. They even mentioned that Gehrig was about to be diagnosed with ALS, which meant he was not yet retired and no one knew that he had little time left, thus why would an active player be in the HOF at that time? Yet they insinuated that the ball was flawed because his autograph was missing.

A really fun editing gaff a couple of days ago regarding the playoffs - the headline of the article read something like: "Three teams fighting for four playoff spots". (the 'three' teams are Houston, NYY, Oakland and Seattle). Playoff spot 'four' is apparently one that will be created in the future.

But I'd rather have poorly-presented news than no news.