APPRAISER: Hi, thanks for coming in today.

GUEST: Thank you.

APPRAISER: You brought us a wonderful object here.

Tell me a little bit about how this came to be in your possession.

GUEST: Well, probably somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago, I went to a house sale and this baseball was in the, in the box, and it had all these, uh, wonderful signatures on it.

But what intrigued me was it was from a girls league, so I bought it for probably a quarter.

APPRAISER: Wow.

GUEST: Took it home, put it in a drawer, and when the, uh, movie A League of Their Own came out, I said, "Where is that baseball?"

APPRAISER: (laughs) GUEST: And I went and dug it out and sure enough, it's from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

APPRAISER: Your story is just absolutely wonderful about it.

Um, you have, of course, as you say, a signed baseball from the official professional girls league.

And it's signed from the team in the year 1950.

And then everyone who was on the team as well.

Um, you have the wonderful signatures here of-of some of the great stars.

Beverly Hatzell.

When you think of sports memorabilia, 90% of the market is, of course, baseball.

But it's all Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: And all the great stars that we know who are men.

Um, and this is, this is terrific-- do you, um, have any idea, did you try to find out what this was worth?

GUEST: I've been to, uh, some of the sports memorabilia shows and they look at it and then they, they can't give me any idea, because they've never seen one either.

(chuckles) APPRAISER: Well, certainly the women's leagues were a very important event in baseball.

Um, hotly contested, as you would imagine, by the men, um, to have them enter, and, um, they often started by hitting to the minor league teams as well... GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ... um, pitching for them.

Um, I have only actually seen a ball like this come up once before at auction, and it was not as good as this.

It was, in fact, shellacked.

Um, very often balls have a yellowish appearance to them... GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...and that's because the balls were shellacked, and the shellac actually, over time pulls the, um... ...the different autographs and signatures off... GUEST: The signatures, oh... APPRAISER: ...onto the varnish, and they in fact, begin to discolor tremendously.

And so this would be in really, really very, very nice shape with all the anecdotes, and, uh, all the signatures on them.

Do you yourself have any idea of what it might be worth?

GUEST: I have no idea.

APPRAISER: Well, I-I have to say I think you did a little better than a quarter.

Um, I... (chuckling) GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: ...the ball that was sold at auction about three years ago, um, had a pre-sale estimate of $2,000 to $3,000 on it.

GUEST: Oh, my God.

APPRAISER: And it actually sold for $4,200.

GUEST: Oh!

That's astounding!

APPRAISER: So you have, um, a very rare collectible here... GUEST: Oh, my God.

APPRAISER: ...and, um, I... something that certainly is very valuable and something that's worth holding onto.

GUEST: Well, it's going into the vault now!

APPRAISER: Thank you!

GUEST: Thank you very much!