The ring Tom Seaver kept from the New York Mets' first championship has changed hands for $854,122 at Heritage Auctions, making it the third-most expensive championship ring ever sold. Only Babe Ruth's 1927 Yankees ring, which brought $2.1 million in 2017, and Kobe Bryant's 2000 NBA championship ring, at $927,000, have fetched more.

Seaver earned the ring in 1969, when he led a Mets team that had long been baseball's laughing stock to a five-game World Series win over the heavily favoured Baltimore Orioles. The franchise had lost 120 games in its first season in 1962; seven years later, Seaver stood at the centre of one of the sport's great turnarounds. He kept the ring for the rest of his life, and it remained in his personal collection until his death in September 2020 at the age of 75.

Known as "Tom Terrific", Seaver spent 12 of his 20 major league seasons with New York, collecting 12 All-Star selections, three Cy Young Awards and three National League ERA titles. He finished his career with 3,640 strikeouts, the sixth-highest total in baseball history, and entered the Hall of Fame in 1992.

Other pieces from Seaver's collection found buyers in the same sale. His 1973 National League championship ring sold for $201,300, while a Mets uniform he wore during the 1974 season attracted $56,120. The result shows how far the market for sports memorabilia has travelled: a single ring from a pitcher who defined a franchise's greatest moment now commands a price once reserved for fine art, and the wider collection proved that collectors still pay a premium for objects tied to a story they remember.