A baseball glove used by Babe Ruth during the 1920s is the star lot at Saco River Auction.
It will be sold as part of an auction of talk show host Joe Franklin's Memory Lane Collection with an estimate of $250,000-350,000.
 Babe Ruth's widow Claire gave Franklin the glove |
Franklin (1926-2015) ran a long running local TV talk show in New York and acquired a vast collection of memorabilia from his guests over the years.
They included everyone from Marilyn Monroe to a tap dancing dentist (who appeared on the same show as Ronald Reagan).
The lot is accompanied by a letter of provenance from Franklin himself.
He explains he became friends with Ruth's widow Claire and invited her on the show in 1968.
He also asked if she would be willing to donate a piece of Babe Ruth memorabilia to his collection.
Franklin says: "Claire Ruth agreed, but surprised me, shocked me, by bringing numerous items with her on the day of her appearance on the Joe Franklin Show, including this - Ruth's personal Spalding Co. manufactured baseball glove from, I would say, the 1920s.
"Claire herself inadvertently impressed upon me the rarity of this glove when she mentioned to me how few of her late husband's baseball-related possessions she had.
"Ruth apparently had left the bulk of his baseball 'memorabilia' to the executors of his estate. But as I can well attest, there was very little in the late 1940s which resembled today's avid public interest in collecting memorabilia or nostalgia."
The record for a piece of Babe Ruth memorabilia stands at $4.4m, set at SCP Auctions in 2012 for a jersey he wore in his first season with the Yankees in 1920.
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