Weekend Reading is a short Friday column on the stories behind the cards people collect and what they bring at auction. It’s October, so this week it’s three postseason nights and the cards of the players who had them.
Ten Strikeouts and Three Home Runs
Try to picture the box score. A year ago tomorrow, on October 17, 2025, Shohei Ohtani started Game 4 of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium and did two jobs at once. On the mound: six innings, two hits, no runs, ten strikeouts. At the plate: three home runs, the first one leading off the game. The Dodgers won 5–1, finished a four-game sweep of the Brewers, and Ohtani was named the series MVP.
Now look at his 2018 Bowman Chrome rookie card. Angels red, mid-swing, a long way from any of that. In his six seasons in Anaheim the Angels never played a postseason game. The October everyone remembers came about thirty miles up the freeway, in a Dodgers uniform, years after this card was printed.
A PSA 10 of that card brought $5,856 at Heritage’s September auction, buyer’s premium included. And if you’d rather have the Angels years than the card, Heritage has a piece of them in its sale next week: a helmet Ohtani wore in 2021, his first MVP season, photo-matched to 37 of the 46 home runs he hit that year. Bidding on it closes Saturday night, October 24.
The Week After
First, a reminder of what the last few seasons looked like. Ohtani is a four-time MVP, and all four votes were unanimous. In 2024 he became the first player in major league history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. The Dodgers won the World Series that year and again in 2025, and the October night that opens this column is a large part of why. Nothing that happened this week rewrites any of it.
This column was written before the week played out. On Thursday, October 15, Milwaukee beat Los Angeles 6–4 in Game 4 of the NLCS to finish a four-game sweep, the same Brewers Ohtani struck out ten of a year earlier, and the Dodgers’ season ended. Ohtani led off and hit a three-run home run early. He didn’t produce late. The Brewers are headed to their first World Series since 1982. Their opponent was still to be decided on October 16, when Cleveland led Tampa Bay two games to one in the ALCS with Game 4 that evening.
It has been a hard stretch at the plate. On October 9, the Associated Press reported that Ohtani went into the playoffs with right biceps and left knee injuries, that he had spent time on the injured list in September for the first time as a Dodger, and that he has said he is not fully healthy. He went 2 for 13 in the division series against Atlanta. That he got this far while hurt makes the fall harder to read, not the career any smaller.
His cards have cooled a little, though asking prices have moved more than sales. By our count, the typical asking price (a trimmed average of live eBay listings) for the 2018 Bowman Chrome PSA 10, one of the thirty-nine cards we follow, was about $9,645 in mid-August and about $8,500 as of October 16, roughly 12% lower. Asks are what sellers hope to get, not what buyers paid, and the most recent public result we hold, the $5,856 at Heritage above, came in higher than the card’s previous Heritage result in January. One sale is not a price, and none of this says where the card goes next.
Behind all of it, baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1, 2026, and Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he is concerned the talks will end in a lockout. That is a question for the winter. We note it and leave it there.
Midnight at Yankee Stadium
Halloween night, 2001. Game 4 of the World Series, Arizona up two games to one, and Tino Martinez ties it with a ninth-inning home run. On to extra innings. And then the clock does something no major league game had ever seen: it rolls past midnight.
When Derek Jeter stepped in against Arizona closer Byung-Hyun Kim in the bottom of the 10th, with two outs, it was the stroke of midnight, the first November at-bat in major league history. The scoreboard in center field said so: “Welcome to November Baseball.” Jeter fouled off the first pitch, ran the count full, and ended the game with a home run, 4–3. Somewhere in there the Fox cameras found a fan holding a sign that read “Mr. November.” By the time Jeter got to home plate, it wasn’t a sign anymore. It was his name.
His rookie card is the 1993 SP Foil, a shiny, delicate thing that chips if you look at it wrong, which is a big part of why a clean one is so hard to find. A PSA 10 brought $312,000 at REA in May 2024.
Gehrig Hit .545
Ruth gets the headline from the 1928 World Series, and he earned it: three home runs in the finale, October 9 in St. Louis, a 7–3 win that finished a four-game sweep of the Cardinals. But look at who was hitting right behind him. Lou Gehrig batted .545 for the series, with four home runs. His slugging percentage was 1.727, a World Series record, which is a fancy way of saying he got nearly two bases every time he came up. At one stretch he reached base nine times in a row. Ruth was the show. Gehrig was the numbers.
Goudey Gum put him on a card five years later, in 1933, in those same pinstripes. A PSA 7 brought $85,400 at Heritage’s September auction, buyer’s premium included.
On the Block
Three sales are open or about to close, and here’s what caught my eye in each.
REA, closes Sunday, October 18. A T206 Ty Cobb with the Cobb back, graded PSA 1. Low grade, still a T206 Cobb. A 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie in PSA 10, one of the thirty-nine cards we follow. A 1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski rookie in PSA 9. And a 2003–04 Ultimate Collection LeBron James rookie in PSA 9 with a 10 on the signature.
Mile High Card Company, closes Thursday, October 22. A 1935 Goudey uncut sheet with Ruth, Foxx and Dean on it, 19 Hall of Famers in all, which Mile High describes as one of three full production sheets known. A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, No. 311, in MBA 2.5, the same card as the Mantle on our list. A 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson, No. 79, in MBA 4, which is ours too. A 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, No. 149, in PSA 5.5. And a ticket stub from Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962.
Heritage, closes October 23–25. Besides the Ohtani helmet, there’s a 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, No. 144, in PSA 6, the Ruth on our list. A 1958 Topps Mickey Mantle in PSA 9 and a 1968 Topps Mantle in PSA 10. A 1952 Topps Willie Mays in PSA 8. A T206 Honus Wagner, graded Authentic. And an unopened 1986 Fleer basketball wax box, 36 packs, from the set that gave us the Michael Jordan rookie.
Four cards from our list that turn up in these sales. These are our own photographs, not images of the lots being sold.
None of these cards was made for the night that made it famous. Goudey printed Gehrig five years after his series. The Jeter came out eight years before his midnight. The Ohtani shows him in the wrong uniform entirely. Collectors put the card and the night together anyway. A card is just cardboard until somebody knows what happened. Then it’s the night.
— Greg
