From Pele's shirt to a $3m baseball, with a quick detour for Donald Bradman's baggy green, our pick of collectables
1) Baseball's holy grail - The Honus Wagner card
Though technically not the world's rarest sports collectible, the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card is certainly amongst the most valuable and desirable. Issued between 1909 and 1911 by the American Tobacco company as part of a set of 523 baseball cards, the card depicts a Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop called – you may have guessed this – Honus Wagner.
The problem with the card was that Wagner himself was vehemently anti-smoking and immediately requested that the company cease production of his own card lest it be seen as a passive approval of children buying cigarettes. That Wagner would discourage children from smoking might mark him out as a thoroughly decent guy, but it's also made him the bane of many collectors' existence. Wagner personally destroyed the offending cards himself but a small number (around 200) escaped his shredding session and estimates of the number remaining now hover around the 30 mark. In near-perfect condition the card can fetch up to $3m, but even damaged examples command seven figures.
The most famous of all T206's is the "Gretzky Wagner", the story of which is cloaked in an appropriate level of mystery for a card that's the hardcore collectors' equivalent of Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket. It was original purchased by memorabilia dealer Bill Mastro for $25,000 from a duo of collectors from Hicksville (you couldn't make that up) before being on-sold to Wayne Gretzky and then LA Kings owner Bruce McNall for a whopping $410,000. It then passed through a succession of owners at gradually-inflating prices.
By 2007, Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick had paid $2.8m for the "Gretzky" card but doubts began to emerge regarding the near-perfect appearance of the card, which far exceeded that of any other known example. Following an FBI Investigation, an ESPN documentary and amid other fraud charges stemming from his memorabilia dealings, Mastro eventually admitted (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/19373712-418/dealer-admits-he-altered-most-valuable-baseball-card-ever-sold.html) to altering the card by trimming its edges, thus increasing its grading and value.
None of this should be too alarming to owner Kendrick though – memorabilia experts have almost unanimously agreed that the publicity generated by the story and the card's famous provenance has only served to increase its value.
2) Don Bradman's baggy green
Though the cult of Australian cricket's baggy green has only gathered serious steam in the past two decades, there is no doubting the commercial heft of the item in a marketing sense and in the high-end auction houses of England and Australia. The most coveted and valuable of them all is the cap worn by Sir Donald Bradman during the 1948 Invincibles Ashes tour.
Well if we're to be precise it's better to use the plural, because the attention drawn by the $420,000 (approximate) sale of a 1948 Bradman cap served to uncover the fact that there are two such relics in existence, both gifted by Bradman to friends. Some experts had been under the misapprehension that each player received a single cap for the tour, but evidence has long existed that players were issued anywhere up to three at once and with none of the ritual or ceremony that now surrounds the honour. As late as the 1970s the baggy green was afforded no more prominence in the issue of Australian kit than sweaters or shirts.
The first Bradman cap to surface had originally been gifted to the son of Bradman's English friend Richard Robins after The Don had noticed the boy playing backyard cricket with a far less fetching piece of millinery. The baggy green duly arrived in the mail and stayed in Robins Jr's possession until sold to Australian collector Tim Serisier in 2003.
In the wake of the sale, the State Library of South Australia was shocked to be in contact with another Englishman offering to donate them a 1948 Bradman cap. Like the Robins cap, it benefitted from impeccable provenance and its owner, retired lawyer Kevin Truscott, was willing to donate the cap to the Bradman Collection. Truscott's father Edgar had received the cap from Bradman in thanks for his assistance with Bradman's banking affairs in London during the '48 tour. Incredibly, it sat on display at Truscott's old school Haileybury from 1991 until 2003, when publicity of its value and security concerns led to Truscott making the State Library an offer they couldn't refuse. And thus it made its belated voyage home in Truscott's keeping, hand delivered to become the crown jewel of the Bradman Collection.
3) The mysterious Nicky Winmar jumper
When it comes to public scuffles over the ownership and authenticity of Australian sports memorabilia there are not many stories to rival the trials and tribulations of Nicky Winmar's St Kilda jumper. In the past 10 years a number of parties have come forward claiming possession of the jumper that Winmar defiantly lifted in front of racially abusive Collingwood supporters in 1993 to signify the pride in his indigenous identity.
The public battle over the retrieval of Winmar's jumper began during the 2005 disbanding of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, who had previously received a jumper from Winmar. It was the one Winmar believed he had worn in the famous game at Victoria Park. When controversial ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark was alleged to have taken the framed jumper and other items from the commission's offices, questions arose as to the rightful ownership of the body's art and memorabilia collection. The imbroglio also served to highlight the fact that the jumper was most definitely not the real McCoy, as historians and Saints fans could immediately tell from its logos and design.
The search was on for the real thing. Winmar appealed to the public: "That's the next thing we're going to do. We're going to find out where it is. Somebody might have it out there." That somebody turned out to be former Washington Generals basketballer (again, you couldn't make this stuff up) and would-be Winmar documentarian Tim O'Brien. O'Brien said Winmar had swapped the jumper for one of O'Brien's own playing jerseys in 1994 when the pair had both done work for ATSIC. Hoping to raise funds for the documentary, prospectively titled 'Silent Shout: The Nicky Winmar story', O'Brien put the jumper under the hammer at Sotheby's. With an estimate of $100,000 to $200,000, bidding stalled at $95,000.
Museum Victoria eventually stepped in, purchasing the jumper for $100,000 despite the debate surrounding its authenticity. O'Brien's film has not yet surfaced.
4) Johnny Manziel signs away
Texas A&M quarterback and winner of the 2012 Heisman Trophy for the best player in college football, Johnny Manziel also found himself at the centre of an unwelcome media storm in August this year. When details emerged that Manziel had been signing piles of professionally-produced sports memorabilia, questions arose as to whether the young star had compromised his amateur status by profiting from the sales. If found guilty, Manziel faced ineligibility and the stripping of wins from Texas A&M's previous season.
Within days of the scandal hitting the news, a number of memorabilia dealers came forward claiming that Manziel had also signed items for them, adding fuel to the fire. The question became not whether Manziel had signed the items, because he clearly had, but whether he had received payment for doing so.
Eventually, A&M senior associate athletic director Jason Cook revealed that the NCAA and A&M had uncovered "no evidence that Manziel received monetary reward in exchange for autographs." This did not stop the NCAA from sending a "strong message" and suspending the quarterback for the first half of the Aggies opening game, one of the more amusing slaps on the wrist ever dished out by a sporting body.
The episode also served to inflame pre-existing debate on the fairness of collegiate sports raking in billions of dollars in broadcasting and merchandise revenue while its players remain unpaid. There's no doubt that the NCAA's laughable punishment was influenced by growing public resentment of the inherent hypocrisies of big-time college sports, where coaches and administrators feast on multi-million dollar contracts but the star attractions go home empty-handed, save for free tuition.
5) The Mark McGwire home run ball
If you think about the cultural and historical significance of sports and those who play them it's probably surprising that high-end sports memorabilia prices have not yet hit the stratospheric heights of the art world. There are some notable exceptions to the rule though.
ESPN documented the sale of James Naismith's original rules of basketball for $4.3m in 2010, yet that record price was later outdone by the $4.4m paid for a New York Yankees jersey worn by Babe Ruth in the 1920s. But as far as sports collecting bun fights go, it's hard to go past the $3m paid for Mark McGwire's then-record breaking 70th home run ball from the 1998 MLB season by comic book mogul Todd McFarlane. McFarlane was also the man who stepped up to the plate five years later with $500,000 for the ball Barry Bonds slugged for his 73rd and final homer of the season.
McFarlane himself has an interesting take on the purchase of the McGwire ball, revealing that it wasn't all about the love of the game. Winning the bidding on the famous ball positioned him as a heavy-hitter and had "bought me some meetings."
"People tend to equate money with success: Hey, that guy spent $3m for a baseball! Bring him in! It's like buying into a poker table. But then it's what you do once you're at the table. Anyway, I could have spent money on a couple of Super Bowl commercials, but you think anybody would still be asking me about them years later?"
Though it proved to be a shrewd business decision, McFarlane also hit upon a sentiment that is surely common amongst many collectors of sporting memorabilia: "You get to be a boy in a man's body. Hmm: who's got the McGwire ball? Why, that would be me. Who's got the Bonds ball? Uh, me again! I can't hit all these homers, but isn't that kind of cool? That's the warped logic that gets me through the day."
Despite the shadow cast over both the ball and the record by subsequent PED scandals within the sport, it was a win-win for McFarlane and the seller Phil Ozersky, who was able to use the proceeds of the sale to build a handicapped-accessible home for his ailing father.
For McFarlane like many others, it's a madness, devotion and desire to become part of the story that lays at the heart of the collecting. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin once summed up the incurable condition of the collector when he noted, "ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them."
I must try that line the next time my girlfriend intercepts an eBay package from the postman.
6) Pele at the top of the pile again
One factor that always intrigues with the sale of sports memorabilia is the role that luck often plays in the seller obtaining the item. Tales abound of baggy green caps being Frisbeed to friends and acquaintances, or of sportspeople who unthinkingly gave away everything associated with their careers.
Among the most romantic of all are the stories of jerseys, jumpers and caps swapped on the field at the conclusion of games, whether it be the St Kilda players celebrating their only premiership triumph in Collingwood jumpers or the record-breaking price set for Pele's 1970 World Cup final shirt that he'd swapped with Italy's Roberto Rosato.
Making a mockery of Christie's pre-sale estimate of £50,000, Pele's shirt eventually fetched £157,750. In the lead-up to the sale Brazil's coach from the tournament, Mario Zagallo, publicly doubted the authenticity of the Rosato shirt, claiming that he and team trainer Admildo Chirol owned the two shirts that Pele had worn during the match.
Zagallo blustered, "At half-time, Pele gave me his shirt. Afterwards, Chirol got the other. This is some kind of trickery." Whatever the whereabouts of the respective shirts, it is amazing to think that at half-time of a World Cup final the Brazilian coach was apparently on the hunt for souvenirs rather than providing his team with pointers for the rest of the game.
In the end, experts concluded that Pele may well have worn three shirts in the game; one during each half of the game and another again to receive the trophy once he'd swapped with Rosato. Ten years on and bearing in mind the original figure paid is dwarfed by the weekly salary of many world-class footballers, the Pele shirt actually seems like a steal, right?
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