1916 M101-5 Sporting News Babe Ruth #151 RC

A card any business could call its own

The cards came from Felix Mendelsohn, a printer in Chicago. Each of the 200 cards shows a sharp black-and-white photograph with the player's name, position, team and number, on a slip of card stock 1 5/8 inches wide by 3 inches tall. The players are numbered alphabetically, which is how Ruth landed at #151.

Mendelsohn sold blank-backed cards in sets and sheets, and he also sold them to businesses that stamped their own names on the back to use as promotions. Eighteen businesses did, among them newspapers, clothing and department stores, bakeries, breweries and a theater. The best known was The Sporting News, which is why collectors call these 'Sporting News' cards. Mendelsohn advertised full sheets in the April 6, 1916, issue of The Sporting News, and that summer the paper began offering the cards with its own name on the back.

There are really two sets. Collectors catalog them as M101-5 and M101-4, but researchers believe M101-5 came first, around February 1916, with M101-4 following about two months later. Most players appear in both under different numbers, but thirty cards kept the same number in each, and Ruth's #151 is one of them. A Sporting News back appears only on M101-4 cards, so a Ruth with that back is clearly M101-4. A blank-back Ruth, like this entry, cannot be assigned to one set or the other from the card itself.

Before he was the Sultan of Swat

George Herman Ruth was born February 6, 1895, in Baltimore and grew up largely at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, where he found his place on the pitcher's mound. Baltimore Orioles owner Jack Dunn signed him in 1914, and the older players called him 'Dunnie's Babe.' Dunn, struggling against a rival league, sold him to the Boston Red Sox that same year. Ruth debuted in the majors on July 11, 1914, at 19, pitching seven innings to beat Cleveland.

In 1915 he went 18-8 with a 2.44 ERA as Boston's third starter and helped win the pennant, though he did not pitch in the World Series. In 1916, the year of this card, he was one of the best pitchers in baseball: 23-12, a league-leading 1.75 ERA, 40 starts, 23 complete games and nine shutouts, also a league high, in 323 2/3 innings. He did not allow a home run all season.

The card shows him as that pitcher, years before the Red Sox sold him to the New York Yankees after the 1919 season for a reported $100,000. In New York he became the game's great slugger, hitting 54 home runs in 1920 and 60 in 1927. He finished with 714 home runs and a .342 average, and as a pitcher went 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA. He entered the Hall of Fame in its first class in 1936, named on 215 of 226 ballots, and died August 16, 1948.

Boston, 1916

Ruth's Red Sox won the 1916 World Series over the Brooklyn Robins, four games to one, between October 7 and 12. Boston played its home games at the larger Braves Field, and the final game drew a then-record 43,620 fans.

Ruth's one start was Game 2 on October 9. He pitched all 14 innings of a 2-1 win, allowing a single run. It began a World Series scoreless-innings streak that reached 29 innings by 1918 and stood until Whitey Ford broke it in 1961.

The country beyond the ballpark was edging toward war. Pancho Villa's men raided Columbus, New Mexico, in March. In July, sabotage blew up the Black Tom munitions depot in Jersey City. That August, President Wilson signed the law creating the National Park Service, and in November he won reelection while Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.

From mid-five figures to seven

For decades the Ruth rookie drew surprisingly little attention. The set was large, issued in several versions through scattered local businesses, and Ruth appears as a slim pitcher in black and white rather than the round-faced Yankee slugger people knew. As recently as about 2008, a high-grade copy could be bought for mid-five figures. An auction executive put it simply in 2023: collectors finally 'realized they didn't need the rest of this set.'

The public record shows the climb. One PSA 4 blank back sold at auction for $50,000 in August 2012 (a contemporary article reported $59,500 with the buyer's premium), $53,325 in 2013, $49,000 in 2015 and $132,000 in October 2017. A PSA 5 went from $191,200 in February 2016 to $336,000 in May 2017. PSA 7 blank backs brought $200,169 in January 2012 and $717,000 in August 2016; one PSA 7 sold for $552,000 in May 2017 and again for $384,000 in April 2018.

The million-dollar era followed. In November 2021 a PSA 7 blank back, catalogued as M101-4, sold at auction in Colorado for $2,460,000, a record for the card. In February 2023 an SGC 7 copy with a Sporting News back, the first such Ruth that auction firm had taken past seven figures, sold for $1.77 million. On March 7, 2026, the PSA 7 blank back in this entry's record sold at auction for $1,415,200 after 25 bids, with three copies graded higher by PSA.

Not every copy has come from a collection. In 2019 a Maryland woman sold a blank-back Ruth for more than $130,000 after finding it, with more than a hundred other cards, hidden inside an old player piano she had bought at an estate sale in 1992 for $25.

How to read the card

The front shows Ruth in a Red Sox uniform, in the act of throwing, with his name, position, team and the number 151. The photo is black and white. The back is either blank or carries one business's advertisement. Blank backs, sold by Mendelsohn himself, are the most common; Sporting News backs are also fairly plentiful, while some advertisers' backs survive in only a dozen or two cards across the whole 200-card set.

PSA notes the card is often found off-center. Its population is tiny compared with tobacco-era cards: in PSA's M101-5 blank-back listing there are three copies at NM 7 and three at NM-MT 8, with nothing higher, and only a few dozen in all grades.

Ruth is not the first card of Ruth ever printed. A 1914 Baltimore News card shows him with the minor league Orioles, and one sold for $7.2 million in 2023. The 1916 card is his first major league card, which is why the hobby treats it as his rookie card. Its set also holds rookie cards of other Hall of Famers and the only major league card of Jim Thorpe, #176, found only in M101-5.

A grail that took a century to be noticed

The M101 cards were never national issues the way tobacco cards were, and long-time collectors say they are far harder to find than T206 cards from the same era. That obscurity kept the Ruth rookie cheap for most of the last century.

Its symbolism eventually won out. The card catches Ruth at the hinge of his career: a pitcher on a champion Red Sox team, a few years before the sale to New York that Boston fans would blame for an 86-year World Series drought. Where it was once seldom mentioned alongside the T206 Wagner or the 1952 Topps Mantle, it now takes its place among the hobby's grails.

The numbers

1916 pitching

23-12, 1.75 ERA (led AL), 44 G, 40 GS (led AL), 23 CG, 9 SHO (led AL), 323 2/3 IP, 230 H, 0 HR allowed, 118 BB, 170 SO, 158 ERA+

1916 World Series

1-0, 14 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 0.64 ERA; Game 2 complete-game win, 2-1 in 14 innings

1916 batting

67 G, 136 AB, 37 H, 5 2B, 3 3B, 3 HR, 16 RBI, .272 BA

1915 pitching

18-8, 2.44 ERA, 32 G, 28 GS, 16 CG, 217 2/3 IP, 112 SO

Career pitching

94-46, 2.28 ERA, 107 CG, 17 SHO in 163 games

Career batting (1914-1935)

22 seasons, 2,503 G, 2,873 H, 714 HR, 2,214 RBI, .342 BA, .474 OBP, .690 SLG

Hall of Fame

Inaugural class, 1936; 215 of 226 ballots

Timeline

1. Feb 6, 1895

   George Herman Ruth is born in Baltimore.

2. Jul 11, 1914

   Ruth debuts with the Red Sox, pitching seven innings for a win over Cleveland.

3. Feb 1916

   Researchers believe the M101-5 cards are issued around this time.

4. Apr 6, 1916

   Felix Mendelsohn advertises full sheets of the cards in The Sporting News; M101-4 is believed to follow about now.

5. Oct 9, 1916

   Ruth pitches all 14 innings of a 2-1 World Series win over Brooklyn.

6. Oct 12, 1916

   The Red Sox win the World Series, four games to one.

7. 1936

   Ruth is elected to the Hall of Fame in its first class.

8. Aug 16, 1948

   Ruth dies at 53.

9. Jan 26, 2012

   A PSA 7 blank back sells at auction for $200,169.

10. Aug 28, 2016

    A PSA 7 blank back sells at auction for $717,000.

11. 2019

    A blank-back Ruth found inside an old player piano sells for more than $130,000.

12. Nov 12, 2021

    A PSA 7 blank back catalogued as M101-4 sells for $2,460,000, a record for the card.

13. Feb 25, 2023

    An SGC 7 with a Sporting News back sells for $1.77 million.

14. Mar 7, 2026

    A PSA 7 M101-5 blank back sells at auction for $1,415,200.

The world in 1916

• Mar 9, 1916

  Pancho Villa's forces raid Columbus, New Mexico.

• Jun 5, 1916

  Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.

• Jul 1, 1916

  A string of shark attacks begins along the Jersey Shore, killing four by July 12.

• Jul 15, 1916

  William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products, later the Boeing Company.

• Jul 30, 1916

  Sabotage destroys the Black Tom munitions depot in Jersey City.

• Aug 25, 1916

  President Wilson signs the law creating the National Park Service.

• Nov 7, 1916

  Wilson is reelected, and Jeannette Rankin becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. House.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1916 M101-5 Sporting News Babe Ruth #151 RC is number 4 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (11 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Ruth's rookie card shows him as a pitcher; in 1916 he led the American League with a 1.75 ERA and nine shutouts.
• Ruth did not allow a single home run in 323 2/3 innings in 1916.
• The card was sold blank, and 18 different businesses, from bakeries to a theater, stamped their names on the backs.
• A blank-back Ruth cannot be assigned to M101-4 or M101-5 from the card alone, because #151 is Ruth in both sets.
• Ruth's 14-inning complete game in the 1916 World Series is the longest pitching outing in postseason history.
• One Ruth rookie turned up inside a player piano bought at an estate sale for $25, and sold for more than $130,000.
• Jim Thorpe's only major league card is in the same set, as #176.