auction

Talk about easing the blow. The Canadian father-son duo that secured not one, but both home run balls that doomed the Toronto Blue Jays team they rooted for in Game 7 of the World Series turned the evidence into some serious U.S. currency Saturday night.

Dodgers fans will never forget those baseballs hit by Miguel Rojas in the ninth inning and Will Smith in the 11th flying over the left-field wall and into the first row of seats beyond the Blue Jays’ bullpen.

John and Matthew Bains — sitting side-by-side — will never forget the balls ending up in their hands. John, 61, caught Rojas’ 387-foot home run in his glove on the fly. Two innings later, Matthew, seated next to his dad, saw Smith’s blast land in the bullpen and bounce directly into his hands.

Novices they were not. John has been a Blue Jays fan since the team’s inception in 1977 and purposely sits where he does for proximity to home runs. In fact, he caught one during the American League Division Series against the New York Yankees a few weeks earlier.

Both men brought baseballs into the stadium that they threw back onto the field, giving the Blue Jays faithful the impression the Bains did the honorable thing when, in fact, they did the smart thing for their bank accounts.

On Saturday night, the balls were sold at auction. Smith’s homer, which provided the Dodgers with the winning run, sold for $168,000 while Rojas’ blast that sent the game into extra innings fetched $156,000.

A third unforgettable Dodgers home run ball from the 2025 postseason eclipsed the Game 7 balls. The second of Shohei Ohtani’s three home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series sold for $270,000 in the same SCP Auction.

It was the longest of his three, landing on the Dodger Stadium right-field roof 469 feet from home plate. And it was a key element in what is considered perhaps the greatest performance in baseball history. Ohtani struck out 10 in six innings on the mound in addition to his offensive exploits, sending the Dodgers to the World Series.

Carlo Mendoza’s story of how he ended up with Ohtani’s ball is no less head-shaking than that of the Bains boys. The 26-year-old Los Angeles man said he was eating nachos in a food court behind the right-field pavilion and saw Ohtani hit the home run on a television monitor. He heard the ball hit the roof, dashed toward the sound and retrieved the ball from under a bush.

All three balls were authenticated by SCP Auctions through notarized affidavits and lie detector tests. SCP owner David Kohler said Mendoza was so apprehensive about handing over the ball that he insisted meeting Kohler in the parking lot of the Long Beach Police Dept.

“We authenticated through polygraph and eyewitnesses due diligence,” Kohler said. “From the time we announced we had these baseballs until now, no one else has come forward and said they have the balls. There’s been no contention.”

Nov. 23 (UPI) — A gold pocket watch owned by Isidor Straus, a first-class passenger who died with his wife when the famed ship sank, has sold for $2.3 million at auction.

Straus, a German-born American businessman and politician who co-owned the department store Macy’s, had been offered a seat on a lifeboat because of his age but chose to let others go first as his wife, Ida, stayed arm-in-arm by his side.

The Strauses were depicted in James Cameron‘s fictional retelling of the shipwreck, played by Lew Palter and Elsa Raven.

The 18-carat Jules Jurgensen watch was purchased in 1888 to mark Straus’ 48th birthday, the same year he and his brother became co-owners of Macy’s.

“The watch quite simply represents one of the finest and rarest objects from the Titanic story in existence, a piece which was a treasured personal possession from one of the most respected and high-profile men from the Titanic story,” the Henry Aldridge and Son auction house said in a statement.

“At the turn of the 20th century, a pocket watch was one of the closest things to the heart of a gentleman of the era, and this watch embodies this as a gift from one half of the most famous couple on the Titanic to the other.”

The watch was recovered from Straus’ body after the ship sank and remained in the family for more than a century before its sale Saturday at the auction house, which is located in the British town of Devizes. Ida’s body was never recovered.

The lot had been listed with a high estimate of more than $1.3 million but ultimately sold for nearly double that, becoming the highest price ever paid for Titanic memorabilia, according to the auction house.

While the watch sold at auction, it is currently being exhibited at The Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Other items auctioned Saturday include a letter written by Ida aboard the Titanic, as well as a passenger list and other memorabilia.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane … it’s a Superman comic beyond most of our price range!

A pristine copy of “Superman” No. 1 sold for $9.12 million at Heritage Auctions on Thursday, making it the most expensive comic book ever sold at auction. The closing price smashed the record previously set by another Superman-related comic, a copy of “Action Comics” No. 1, which sold for $6 million through Heritage Auctions in 2024.

The first issue of “Superman” was among a small trove of comic books found by three brothers in Northern California who were sorting through their late mother’s belongings. The collection had been tucked under a pile of old newspapers and cobwebs in the attic of their family home, according to a press release from Heritage Auctions.

The copy of “Superman” No. 1 was graded 9.0 on a 10-point scale by the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), a third-party service that authenticates and grades collectibles, including comics, trading cards and video games. It’s the highest-ever graded copy of the 1939 comic book. (That newspapers helped preserve the comic’s condition would make reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent proud.)

Superman made his comic book debut in 1938 in “Action Comics” No. 1. The anthology comic is often credited as kicking off the superhero genre in comics. The popularity of the Man of Steel — created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster — led to the launch of his own comic book series in 1939.

In addition to the launch issue of “Superman,” the mother’s comic book collection included issues of “Action Comics” Nos. 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21.

According to Heritage Auctions, this copy of “Superman” No. 1 is one of just seven known copies with a CGC grade of 6.0 or higher. A CGC graded 8.0 copy of “Superman” No. 1 sold for $5.3 million in 2022.