A baseball signed by former President of the United States John F. Kennedy fetched nearly $167,000 at auction – breaking the record for the most expensive ball signed by any American Commander-in-Chief.
The ball, sold by SCP Auctions, came from a tour that the 35th President made down to Venezuela back in 1961.
Kennedy stopped in Venezuela as part of his ‘Alliance for Progress’ plan – designed to strengthen ties between the United States and Latin America.
Authenticity of this baseball was confirmed when it matched photographs which were published in a Venezuelan newspaper at the time.
The ball was signed for a local reporter – Julia Messuti – who had been embedded with the group to cover meetings between Kennedy and Venezuela’s then-president Romulo Betancourt in the country’s capital of Caracas.
After being asked, Kennedy happily signed the ball from the ‘Asociacion Venezolana de Baseball Profesional’.
According to SCP Auctions, Kennedy recognized ‘the significance of a US President signing a Venezuelan baseball and using it as an opportunity to emphasize how the game could unite both nations.’
As Kennedy was signing it, he commented that the country should be ‘proud to have a player’ like Luis Aparicio. At the time, Aparicio was in the midst of his career with the White Sox, but he would go on to amass over 2,600 hits, won the 1966 Wirkd Series with the Baltimore Orioles, and would be voted into the Hall of Fame in 1984.
The ball was officially sold on Sunday on its 19th bid for exactly $166,818.
A baseball signed by the 32nd President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to ever surpass a six-figure sum when it was auctioned off back in 2020. The previous record for a JFK signed baseball was $47,800 which was sold back in 2013.
Source : Daily Mail
