This unknowingly turned out to be a bird in the hand.
About a month ago, while perusing ebay for my usual Ripken and '58 Topps searches, coming up empty and wanting to get something, I went to my watch list and picked this up, from the Sportng News Collection.
Auction Title: 1940s Babe Ruth & Yankees greats Original Photo
Photo Description: You are bidding on a 8" by 10" original photo featuring Babe Ruth with other Yankees greats. Pictured top row are Haynes, Waite Hoyt, George Pipgras, Bush, Roettiger, Babe Ruth, Bob Meusel, Dugan, Wally Pipp, Smith. Pictured bottom row are Jones, Schang, Mays, Witt, Hofmann, and McNally.
Date: 1940s
Photo Type: Type 1
Photographer: Bob Olen
BIN: $39.99 with free shipping.
I figured $40, Type 1, The Babe, how could I go wrong? I also loved the way that Ruth seems to jump out of the picture. There he is in the center, with bolder pinstripes than everyone else, seemingly bigger than life even while nearing death.
A couple of weeks go by and I post it on a pickups thread over on the ebay sports board, and a famed Ripken collector points out that Memory Lane Auction House is auctioning off the very same jersey that is being worn by Hinkey Haines (back row; first on left) in that very photo in their current auction.
So I went to look at Memory Lane to see what it was all about, thinking how great it would be to have something from the picture.
http://www.memorylaneinc.com/site/bi...p?itemid=20127
Looking at the auction I realize that the jersey that is supposedly from the picture, isn't. They have a similar picture (probably taken within seconds of mine) with the jersey indicating that it is the same jersey as in the picture. However, the style of the jersey was all wrong, as can be seen just looking at the sleeve to shoulder seam which is completely different. So I sent a message to Memory Lane indicating this and subsequently the item was removed from the auction.
The auction description however indicated that the picture was taken during a 1948 reunion of the '23 WS champ team, and That Ruth's No. 3 will never be worn again.
So with this info in hand I went looking for some further verification.
It turns out that this photograph was taken at Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948, the day that Ruth's No. 3 was retired and his final appearance at The Stadium.
Here is an additional similar photo:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mul...content.1.html
And here are some Life unpublished photos from that day that I came across. Uniform stripes matched up to those in my image as well.
http://www.life.com/image/50453928/i...nd-unpublished
So in this case, it seems that 1 in the hand was worth the retirement of No. 3.