Destroying Lou Gehrig's Pants

[Beercan collector]

Originally Posted by yanks12025

Game used cards have to be one of the biggest jokes in this hobby. Nothing like destroying historical items for a card. Probably less than 5 Gehrig pants left and now one is completely ruined.

Yeah I can understand it with modern players who probably wear 10 plus pants a year but leave the rare stuff alone.

+1 and it’s not a piece of pants anymore , the Pants are gone forever .
And we’re taking card companies word that is what it is .
I don’t see the purpose unless you can collect every piece and stitch the pants back together ,
If somebody shows me a card says hey look a piece of Babe Ruth’s bat - I says prove it

[Topnotchsy]

I'm not one to tell anyone how they should feel about this, and I definitely think that cutting up GU jerseys is a real travesty.

I don't feel nearly as strongly about pants. I've been to Cooperstown. And I've seen a ton of pictures of people's collections over the 30ish years I've been collecting. In all that time, I don't recall ever seeing anyone displaying a pair of Game-Used Pants, except as an accessory to a jersey.

Looking at the market for GU pants, the Gehrig pants sold for $73K. I suspect, though obviously cannot confirm, that that price was due to multiple card companies competing for them. Certainly the top bid was from a card company.

A Gehrig jersey was recently auctioned at Heritage. The reserve for the auction was $5.5M. It did not meet the reserve, but IIRC, it was at $3M or so (someone can correct me). In 2022, a Gehrig jersey sold for $2.19M

$70K/$2.19M is just a hair above 3%. Meaning that, even with the card companies competing for them, it sold for 1/33rd of what the last Gehrig jersey I could find, sold for (and that sale was after the COVID peak).

Similarly, a pair of Clemente pants sold for $30K recently. Addie Joss's pants sold in 2019 for $12K (to a card company).

To me, and I'm not saying anyone should agree with me, the market reflects the reality that pants (like stirrups, undershirts etc) simply don't have the historic resonance that jerseys, bats, balls and caps have.

[Snapolit1]

Tough call.

Is it better that one dude with half a billion dollars owns a pair of Gehrig’s pants and has them on display in his house (to his close friends only), or 4,000 schlubs like me owns a card with a small swatch and hopefully a pin stripe?