Rare St. Louis Cardinals Memorabilia up for Auction

I received a heads up on a pretty cool auction this past weekend from sports collectibles expert Michael Barnes - President of Barnes Sports. Barnes brokered the sale of Barry Bonds' HR #73 baseball that set the all-time single season record in 2002 as well as Sosa's #66 HR and McGwire's #70 HR ball in 1998. Ironically comic book and action figure mogul Todd McFarlane owns all three of these baseballs. The auction Barnes told me about kicked off this past weekend and is centered around the theme of the St. Louis Cardinals winning the 2006 World Series. The auction is highlighted by items from the personal collection of Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson including his actual 1964 player's contract. Additional pieces include items from the old Busch Stadium (like the last pitching rubber ever used) many of which are autographed by Cardinal greats and Hall of Famers. One of my favorite items up for bid is a 1926 St. Louis Cardinals World Series program with two tickets - pretty rare stuff. The auction is being run by Lelands.com and is live now through Dec.21st. All you baseball historians and St. Louis Cardinals fans out there should check this auction out. By the way while we are talking about historic memorabilia here is a list of the top grossing HR baseballs of all-time. If Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's all-time HR record this season it will be interesting to see where that baseball ranks on this list: McGwire's 70th HR - $3MHank Aaron's 755th HR - $650 000Bonds' 73rd - $517 500Murray's 500th - $500 000Mantle's 500th - $250 000McGwire's 500th - $250 000Sosa's 66th - $175 000Ruth's first at Stadium - $130 000Fisk's World Series shot - $120 000

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