Chicago Cubs: Big money in broken bats, programs and memorabilia

Since 2016, the Chicago Cubs fanbase has been shelling out countless dollars on memorabilia. But how do you know if you’re getting the real deal?

I thought about Chicago Cubs fans as I watched the World Series this week. Similar to Cubs fans in Wrigley Field, throughout Fenway Park those waves of Boston Red Sox hats and jerseys got me thinking about all the memorabilia collected during the series.

Private sports collecting has been big business for many folks throughout the States for years. When I visited Sloan Park this summer, I ran into one of these collectors who was waiting outside the team’s Sloan Park dugout for a signed broken bat.

For anonymity sake, I will call this guy, Mike.

Mike told me in order to get real game memorabilia, it was important to have a relationship with the managers in the dugout. During spring training, Mike said he was getting broken, then signed bats, from all the Chicago Cubs.  However, if he couldn’t get it signed in the dugout, Mike knew where the Cubs stayed and what time they practiced. He knew what hotels they stayed in from Phoenix to Los Angeles. The business of memorabilia, especially with a popular team like the Cubs, can mean big dollars.  Shira Springer of WBUR News reported just this week about what collectors are after.

Lineup cards and broken bats — the typical remnants of your typical baseball game. But the fact that they played a role in a Major League Baseball game makes them special. Cool, in fact — and collectible.

With hundreds of broken bats and lineup cards floating through the collectible system, how do buyers know they are getting something real and not a forgery? What has MLB done to protect its treasured items?

Chicago Cubs: Proving memorabilia is real

Collectors like Mike are slowly being phased out by MLB authenticators. No one wants to buy an autographed bat unless they know it’s real and will hold the value of its purchase price. This is where the league has really been wise, they finally have understood that they have the power to not only sell the merchandise but authenticate it.

The hologram sticker and the logging of the item in the authenticator database means that it is now and forever part of MLB history and as Springer says, that’s where the money is.

Game-used memorabilia is sold at every Major League ballpark. At the Red Sox souvenir shop you can buy an autographed, authenticated, game-used Mookie Betts jersey for $3,000, a game-used base for $300, a bottle of field dirt for $20 and countless other collectibles big and small.

Just this week, a baseball program from the first World Series in 1903 was in the news. The program is from Game 7 between the Boston Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates. The program is expected to sell for between $150,000 to $250,000.

Earlier this year, a jersey from Joe DiMaggio netted almost $400,000 in an auction while an anonymous donation to Goodwill of a signed baseball with autographs from New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra and former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is expected to fetch $700.

It’s good to know when you have the dollars to spend, MLB is doing its best to make sure you are getting quality, authenticated items. Just look for the hologram/barcode when you are thinking about purchasing your next piece of Cubs history. Which reminds me, I have a great Ted Williams original baseball card for sale to anyone interested – non-authenticated, of course.