NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The document purported to have "cursed" the Boston Red Sox for 86 years ended up causing some new disappointment Tuesday when an attempt to sell it for charity failed to fetch a high enough bid to complete a sale.

Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein sought to sell the original 1919 contract in which the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 by fetching bids on eBay.

But after seeing some bids for more than $1 million as recently as Monday, a number of the top bids were withdrawn by eBay, either due to "administrative cancellation" or "entered wrong bid amount," according to the bid history for the item on the online auction site.

That left the top bid at only $470,100, far short of the $1 million reserve price that Feinstein had set below which he did not intend to sell the contract.

"I'll have to discuss it with my board," he told CNN/Money Tuesday shortly after the bidding closed at 12:08 p.m. ET. "This contract raised a great deal of money for charity when I sold copies for $30. I think it has even more value now. I personally would not want to sell at this price."

Feinstein said that even without a sale, he will continue to raise and donate money for the House of Hope, a homeless shelter in Warwick, R.I., that would have seen most of the proceeds of the sale.

Feinstein said he hadn't gotten his hopes up with the earlier $1 million bids because he knew they hadn't all been qualified. But he's disappointed that the contract did not produce qualified offers for $1 million or more, though he held out hope that a last minute bid still being verified by eBay could lead to a sale.

"We don't want anyone to bid who we're not positive can afford it," he said. "I am surprised there are three or four people who put in bids who weren't prepared to keep their words."

In addition to the contract, a successful bidder would receive a 4-page feature story about the curse that kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series, and a letter from Hall of Famer Ty Cobb describing Ruth as baseball's greatest player.

The Feinstein Foundation's Web site says Feinstein, who made his fortune as a financial newsletter publisher, wants to name the House of Hope shelter for a late Sister of Mercy nun, Fran Conway, who was a die-hard Sox fan. It says the shelter for needy families was in danger of closing before he stepped in and promised to raise $100,000 to keep it operating.

The 73-year-old Feinstein told the New York Times that he has raised another $2 million for charity by selling copies of the contract for $30 each. He bought the contract in 1993 for $99,000, or only $1,000 less than the Red Sox were paid for Ruth.

The item description says that right after Feinstein donated the contract for the auction last month, the Red Sox won the eight straight games. That streak let the Sox become the first major-league team to come back from down three games to none in a best-of-seven series to beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

The Red Sox then swept the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series title since 1918 -- which, of course, was the year before Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees, which some fans believe led to Boston's baseball curse.

"Maybe all the good that came from the sale of these contracts made the gods smile," Feinstein told the Times. "From good comes good. Maybe someday, these kids will tell their grandkids, 'We helped break the jinx on the Red Sox.'"