They share traditional values

Convention offers a paradise for sports-memorabilia collectors

This weekend's National Sports Collectors Convention is billed as having something for everyone.

And like a Las Vegas casino with $10,000 poker tables next to nickel slots, the NSCC lives up to the hype.

Casual sports fans can peruse 400,000 square feet of sports memorabilia for just $17.50 today through Sunday at the International Exposition Center in Cleveland, while high rollers will shell out $100 just to feast their eyes on some of the world's most valuable sports collectibles at Mastro Auction's live auction at 8:30 p.m. Friday at the House of Blues.

More than 80 items from all major sports will go up for sale, including Mickey Mantle's 500th home run ball (opening bid of $100,000), a circa 1912 Ty Cobb tobacco tin ($10,000) and Dale Earnhardt's 1996 Daytona 500-winning race-worn uniform ($30,000).

"If I was a kid in a candy store and nobody was around, I'd take everything I could get my hands on," said renowned sports collector and Denver-based attorney Marshall Fogel. "It's the same with this auction. It's just amazing how much truly high-end, museum-quality items they have for sale here. It's a true event."

Fogel, whose baseball memorabilia collection was featured in the Smithsonian book "Inside the World's Finest Private Collections," certainly knows the meaning of "high end."

His collection boasts items such as the bat Babe Ruth used during his 1927 60-home run season, and the bat used by Lou Gehrig when he became the first player to hit four home runs in a single game on June 3, 1932.

But Fogel's real love is what he considers the "art of baseball."

Over the course of 18 years, Fogel assembled a collection of 20 black and white photos of Ruth and Gehrig, which the Denver Art Museum thought highly enough to put on display this summer.

New York City collector John Brigandi looks for baseball oddities such as the all-black 1910 White Sox pennant valued between $2,500 and $5,000 that he is watching this weekend.

"Baseball is America," Brigandi said. "To understand America, you need to understand baseball. . . . If you love history, this is the best form of it."

Whether viewed as history, art or just plain junk, sports memorabilia is certainly big business.

Mastro Auctions, the northern Illinois-based brainchild of Bill Mastro, held its first auction in 1996 and sold $784,000 worth of memorabilia. In 2006, Mastro Auctions held four live events in which more than $10 million changed hands at each auction.

"The prices just keep going up, especially on baseball items," Fogel said. "Mastro is unique because most items that are museum quality are in really strong hands. The only way to get them is to wait for the owner to die, get divorced or lose all his money."