The 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth No. 149 card sold for $1.62 million on Thursday at a Fanatics Collect auction, making it one of the most highly prized pieces of Ruth memorabilia ever sold.
The card is just one of four Ruth issues in the 1933 Goudey set, and one of them currently resides in The Smithsonian.
“Typically, cards like this don’t come to auction,” Fanatics Live & Fanatics Collect president Chris Lamontagne told Michael Clair of MLB.com on Nov. 15. “You could say this is a once-in-a-generation-type moment, given the provenance and the history of a card like this. It’s 90 years old at this point, it’s a super high grade of a card. So, when this started to transpire as something that was going to be a thing, we were like, ‘Hey, we’ve got to share this with lots of people.'”
Per Clair, the previous owner was an anonymous New York Yankees fan and only the second person to own the card.
Ruth has always been a larger-than-life figure in both baseball and American history, and for good reason—he held the career home-run record until Hank Aaron surpassed it in 1974, and the single-season home run record until Roger Maris bested it in 1961 (both Aaron and Maris have since been surpassed as well).
Ruth also had multiple seasons when he hit more home runs than most of the teams in the sport, and from 1926-32 out-homered the entire Washington Senators’ franchise, 343-327.
There is historical context to be considered when evaluating his greatness, of course—Ruth played in a segregated form of the sport that didn’t include the top Black players of his time. The modern game also has seen a huge influx of talented players from other regions across the world, including Latin America and Asia.
But Ruth’s comprehensive dominance is impossible to ignore, and he remains one of the enduring icons of American sport.