The sports memorabilia market has been booming. Items from Tom Brady, LeBron James, Patrick Mahomes and Michael Jordan have sold for millions in recent years.
A memorabilia record was broken Saturday. A mint condition 1952 Mickey Mantle card was sold by Heritage Auctions for $12.6 million. Anthony Giordano, a New Jersey waste management entrepreneur, originally purchased the card for $50,000 in 1991. The sale surpassed the $7.25 million total that a T206 Honus Wagner card, a holy grail collectible, sold for earlier this month.
The record for highest-selling sports card has changed three times since January 2021. It has been held by two different Wagner T206 cards and another 1952 Mantle card.
Baseball cards aren’t the only piece of memorabilia to set new milestones. Here’s a list of recent record-breakers.
JERSEYS
Athlete jersey — overall
Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God” Argentina jersey
Price: $9.28 million
When it sold: May 4, 2022
The shirt worn in the epic 1986 World Cup quarterfinal has its own strange origin story even before Maradona scored two iconic goals while wearing it.
The shirt was made specially for that quarterfinal, played on June 22, 1986, in the blistering Mexico City sun. The story goes that Argentina’s cotton jerseys were too heavy for the heat, so manager Carlos Bilardo and Ruben Moschella, the team’s technical assistant, searched for an alternative option.
They came back with two choices, one a darker blue and the other a lighter shade. The decision was made by Maradona, who strolled in, saw the lightly striped, blue number and said: “We’ll beat England in that one.”
Second place: Babe Ruth’s 1928-30 Yankees jersey
Price: $5.64 million
When it sold: June 15, 2019
Hockey jersey
Wayne Gretzky’s final Edmonton Oilers game jersey
Price: $1.452 million
When it sold: June 5, 2022
Present during a true turning point in NHL history, it was the jersey worn the last time Wayne Gretzky hoisted a Stanley Cup. It was his fourth in Edmonton. According to Gretzky’s autobiography, he was told two hours after the Cup-clinching game ended that the Oilers were planning to trade him. The jersey was probably still wet with champagne.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at www.espn.com – TENNIS…