Plummeting Value of Mark McGwire's 70th Home Run Ball is Pretty Sad

St. Louis Cardinals great Mark McGwire was the home run king back in the late 1990s, and his 70 dingers in 1998 were the stuff of legend. He beat out Sammy Sosa for the new single-season record back in that famed Long Gone Summer, and once upon a time, his final 70th home run ball sold for a whopping $3 million.

Such memorabilia loses value with time, though, and it is both shocking and sad to see what the ball is worth now.

The estimates are as low as $250,000 and as high as $400,000. McGwire's entire reputation has been tarnished because of steroids, of course, and his amazing 1998 season is considered tainted. That shouldn't take away from the excitement he provided fans, but it does hurt the value of his memorabilia in the eyes of some.

At the same time, it may have just been unwise to spend millions on a baseball.

McGwire is back in the news cycle now because of the Long Gone Summer documentary that aired on ESPN this past Sunday. Maybe this will be what it takes to push the value of his 70th home run ball back up again. However, it would take a lot for it to come close to a value of $3 million once again. It may just be an invaluable piece of baseball history now.