BIDDEFORD — A baseball glove belonging to hard-swinging Babe Ruth fetched $118,000 at auction Saturday, the top item from a collection of memorabilia that included Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse ears and John Wayne’s cowboy hat, boots and spurs.
The price paid for the left-handed glove showed once again that America’s pastime resonates with collectors, said Troy Thibodeau from Saco River Auction.
A face mask and catcher’s mitt belonging to Hall of Famer Roy Campanella sold for $42,000.
Other top items were a hat and harmonica from Janis Joplin that went for $33,000 and Jimi Hendrix’s leather cowboy hat, which netted $22,000.
All told, the auction of items that once belonged to the late New York TV talk show host Joe Franklin brought in $500,000, Thibodeau said.
The items included leather jackets belonging to Steve McQueen and Marlon Brando, Laurel and Hardy’s boxing gloves, and hats from the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson.
They were put up for bid by an anonymous collector who spent years purchasing items from the collection of Franklin, Thibodeau said.
Franklin, who died last year at age 88, received many of the items from celebrity guests who appeared on his show. But he also was an avid collector who bought and traded items.
He amassed so many items that he had to rent space for all of the stuff.
Franklin, who logged more than 300,000 guests during his career, auctioned off some of the items himself in 2002. Some of those items, including Jack Benny’s stage violin, were back up for sale again as part of the collection in Biddeford, Thibodeau said.
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