50-50 Home Run Ball Hit $4.392 Million
Shohei Ohtani stands alone as the only MLB player ever to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season.
Ohtani, a Japanese native, is now also the only MLB player to have a home run baseball fetch $4 million.
The historic baseball Ohtani hit for his 50th home run on September 19 after already collecting his 50th stolen base that same game sold at auction on Tuesday night. With huge international appeal, the home run ball fetched a record $4.392 million at Goldin.
That mark shattered the record for the most ever paid for a baseball, surpassing Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball that sold for $3.05 million in 1999—the Ohtani baseball is the highest sale price for any ball of any sport.
“I’m thrilled,” Goldin founder and CEO Ken Goldin told RIPPED. “My consignor going into this wanted to get a million dollars or more, so the most important thing is we more than quadrupled his desire and expectation. When I saw the attention the ball was getting worldwide, and all the requests kept coming in from media outside the United States, in Korea, multiple in Japan, and even in Europe, I thought this could break the McGwire ball record. As we got closer, that was my goal.”
The ball from the Los Angeles Dodgers star had an opening bid of $500,000 when it opened on September 27. It hit $2.806 million on Tuesday night just before extended bidding commenced. There were 13 bids during the extended time as the price soared to $4.392 million with the 22% buyer’s premium.
“We had multiple bidders. It’s not like two, three, four, five guys,” Goldin said. “We had more than two interested parties who were participating at 9 PM to extended bidding.”
Winner Remains Anonymous
Renowned authenticator Steve Grad, who appears on the History Channel’s hit show Pawn Stars, was happy to see the Ohtani ball set a record price.
“Just amazing for the hobby and for collecting,” Grad said. “I thought the ball would do about $3 million, but what it sold for is still staggering. High-end collectibles, 1-of-1 items like this are so desirable that people will pay whatever it takes to land it.”
PSA’s principal autograph authenticator, Kevin Keating, is a home run baseball collector who has amassed over 200 baseballs. He was intrigued by the sale price of the historic Ohtani ball.
“I think the high-water mark for the value of the ball was last night,” Keating said. “Whoever owns the ball, if and when they go to sell it again, I think they’ll be hard-pressed to get anywhere close to what they paid for it for various reasons. When you look at the home run baseball market, the market itself has proven that time and time again, when balls have gone for crazy amounts of money and then later they go back into the market, they don’t go for anything close to what they went for originally.”
Goldin isn’t revealing the name of the winning bidder. However, Goldin made it sound as though the person might come forward in the near future.
“I can tell you it is not his first item he has won at Goldin,” Goldin said. “At present, they have asked me not to release any information until they decide what, if anything, they’re going to do from a publicity standpoint.”
Goldin wouldn’t specify which region of the world the winning bidder comes from. But Keating has an inkling the bidding war had some international flavor.
“I was saying this all along — I can’t validate this — but I think what probably drove the price up was money from Japan,” Keating said. “I’ll bet there were bidders from Japan with unlimited funds as opposed to American collectors.”
Impact on The Hobby
Longtime hobby pundits agree that the rich price of the Ohtani ball will impact The Hobby.
“It’s certainly going to help all Ohtani merchandise, including trading cards, because you now have an item that you can say is the most expensive Ohtani item ever sold,” Goldin said. “I think it will help the game-used market because people will say, ‘Wow. If a ball can go for that, what would his jersey go for? What would the bat that he used go for?’ It’s another high-profile item in the game-used business with great authentication.”
The Ohtani ball sale follows another record-setting MLB historical piece: Babe Ruth’s jersey, which he wore during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series when he hit his “Called Shot” home run. The jersey sold at Heritage Auctions for $24.12 million at the end of August.
“The (Ohtani ball) sale certainly sets the bar high,” Grad said. “I’m not sure you can really go much higher than this, can you? What happens next season when he’s 60-60? Is that a $6 million ball?”
