Glass plate negatives revealing Babe Ruth’s 1916-17 contract with the Boston Red Sox are being offered on eBay.
Ruth signed his first full Major League contract in 1916 with the Boston Red Sox . Before the days of Xerox machines, it was common practice for the teams to photograph original contracts and documents should they need to make photographic duplicates for future usage. In many cases the contracts were destroyed and non-existent and only the negative, such as this one, was kept on file with the league office.
Rick Steele, co-founder of Phoenix-based Select Shops, a home fashion outlet, is offering the piece of baseball history to the high bidder, with the auction slated to close May 12. In a news release, Select Shops touts the negatives as the only surviving proof of Ruth’s contract. The whereabouts of the actual contract are unknown, possibly lost to time. It’s also not known when the images were taken by the photographer.
The four pages of the contract are depicted in four photo negatives, encased in glass plates, each measuring 6.5″ x 8.5″. The contract bears the signatures of Ruth, team owner Joseph Lannin and American League founder and president Ban Johnson. Detailed in the contract are Ruth’s $3,500 annual salary and his ultra rare signature using his formal name, George H. Ruth, Jr. Two of thePhotographer’s envelope holding Ruth contract negatives negatives are cracked at the center and are carefully taped together; the other two are in excellent condition. They have been kept in a torn envelope with a stamp and remarks.
The earliest known Ruth contract ever sold was the 1918 contract that once resided in the Halper collection and sold at Sotheby’s in 1999 for $51,750. Sotheby’s also coordinated the sale of the $1.26 Million dollar contract that sold Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees.
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