I don't think there is much question about whether they are the same or not. I believe they are absolutely the same. The big question is, is David's the original one? For this artist to make a replica of this ball; he either had to have possession of the original ball while doing so, or he would have to have very detailed close up images of the original in order to make a replica as detailed as that one is.
I did do a pretty thorough search through all of the major auction houses in the last 10 years to see if any of them had sold that particular Babe Ruth ball in the past and I was not able to find it. In order for the artist to get close up detailed images of the original Ruth ball he had to have gotten them from somewhere. There are not any on the internet of the original. If David has had possession of the original this whole time, where did this artist get such detailed pictures to make the replica? This ball looks like it would be a 50K+ Ball. It is usually not very difficult to find the Ruth's that sold for that much.
As much as it is going to kill many people on this forum for me to say, a simple PSA or JSA letter would be the end of this conversation. This is one of the exact reasons why I believe they are so important in this hobby. These replica's that are being made are actually pretty dam good. You really need to have the ball in person to know for sure. If you are just looking at pictures on the computer it can be very difficult to know the difference. The "indentation" of the pen really only shows up in person under magnification, or if somebody has extremely good vision they can tell the difference easily with the naked eye. But still needs to be done in person to know for sure.
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