This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/15/2020
It's been almost exactly a century since Babe Ruth first donned the pinstripes in New York and it seems as though any given point over that those past 100 can be marked by a Yankees standout that carried on the dynasty. Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Reggie ... all of them followed "The Babe" in succession and made their mark on a franchise that had earned an unfathomable 33 American League pennants and 22 World Series Championships going into 1995. Impressive numbers for sure, but without a championship since 1978, it appeared the dynasty had reached its end. But then along came Derek Jeter. Jeter was not a legendary slugger like the Yankees icons that came before him, averaging only about 14 round-trippers per year, but the 15th Yankees captain earned his place in pinstripe history by consistently excelling in every other aspect of the game and providing leadership to a once-great organization that had lost their way. Over his 20-year career that included seven American League titles and five World Series championships, Derek Jeter’s 3,465-lifetime hits rank him #6 on the all-time list. In the field, Jeter was equally as skilled, earning five Gold Glove awards. Of course, you don't become a Yankees legend without the ability to raise your game in the postseason, and Jeter accomplished that so well he earned the nickname "Mr. November", batting .308 with 20 home runs in 650 career playoff at-bats. And just a few months ago, Jeter surpassed the great Yankees icons that proceeded him by entering the Hall of Fame with 99.7% approval, just one vote shy of a unanimous selection. Jeter appeared in several baseball card issues from 1993-95 that many consider “rookie” cards, but his 1993 SP foil issue is the most coveted for its combination of visual aesthetics and sheer scarcity, with GEM MINT examples severely scarce due to the vulnerable nature of the borderless foil edges. The card featured here has hit the mark, a virtually flawless PSA 10 specimen that earned its status well before collectors started buying up unopened boxes in a frenzy to find the next diamond in the rough. Though the card has been reholdered to sport the new PSA holograms, its lineage as a GEM MINT specimen can be traced back at least as far as 2012, when it was labeled as part of the esteemed Dmitri Young collection (who ironically has his own foil rookie card in the series) and sold at public auction. Because of the limited production of the SP series and the reflective foil that exposes any and all flaws, the number of 1993 SP Jeters that have reached the summit is a mere 21 examples. That's 0.12% of all SP Jeters graded by PSA, roughly one out of every 800 submitted to PSA. The 1993 SP series contains 290 cards, but about 70% of all cards from the set that have been submitted to PSA are of Derek Jeter, a tribute to the most coveted production of the last 30 years and one of the greatest of all-time. As for the card, you'd be hard-pressed to find any flaw whatsoever, projecting virtually perfectly right to the very tips of the endpoints. The surfaces are immaculate and, when viewed in person, you know immediately that this example is truly something spectacular. With a museum-quality piece like this, there's no such thing as a vintage collector or modern collector. To any collector, it's simply a masterpiece!