Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0018/00184.txt

Text File | 1993-12-31 | 28KB | 426 lines

$Unique_ID{BAS00184}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Baseball Collecting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Halper, Barry
Madden, Bill}
$Subject{Collecting Collection Collections collector collectors American Card
Catalog Goudey Gum cards autographs bats balls uniform uniforms photos press
pins publications books hobby hobbies }
$Log{}

Total Baseball:  The Game Off the Field


Baseball Collecting

Barry Halper with Bill Madden


     In the early 1970s baseball began to take on a new dimension--one that
would transform the hobby of a dedicated few into a national phenomenon and,
incidentally, a multimillion dollar industry.
     The game's first century did not produce many collectors of baseball
memorabilia.  Oh, sure, there were a few baseball cards as early as the 1860s
and extensive sets by the 1880s; even in the game's infancy there was always
that legion of autograph-seekers waiting outside the players' gate at any
given ballpark.  But the cards were seldom saved (as evidenced by the scarcity
today of early cards, even those produced in great quantities in the 1950s)
and the autographs were a fancy of one's idol-worshiping days.  There were no
prices attached to such mementos of youthful infatuation, just as there was no
business of collecting.
     But then, in 1967, a man by the name of Jefferson Burdick published The
American Card Catalog--a guide listing the origin, description, and estimated
value of every card (baseball or otherwise) ever printed.  It was a monumental
volume, which took years of painstaking research.  What his catalog did was to
transform the informal and undocumented hobby of baseball card collecting into
the more elevated and established rank of stamp and coin collecting.  Prices
and values, scarcity and condition--these commercial considerations, once they
were applied to cards, quickly moved into just about anything associated with
baseball:  autographs, bats, balls, uniforms, photos, press pins, chinaware,
publications, you name it.


Cards

     In the beginning, though, there were the cards, and today they remain at
the center of the baseball collecting hobby.
     The most extensive early card set (it remains the largest ever issued,
with 520 players in one to seventeen variants each!) was the Old Judge
Cigarette Brand series of 1887-89, catalogued by Burdick as N172.  These
insert cards were really photographs mounted on board, in the same manner as
the cartes de visite that were all the rage in the 1860s.  In terms of
interest today, however, the most popular early baseball card set was the
1909-11 tobacco issue that Burdick catalogued as the T206.  These 523 cards,
approximately 2 1/4 by 1 1/2 inches, were inserted in packages of Sweet
Caporal, Piedmont, Sovereign, Cycle, and assorted other cigarette brands of
the American Tobacco Company.
     Included in that T206 set are two of the most valuable cards in the
history of collecting--the Honus Wagner and the Eddie Plank.  Both cards are
extremely rare for different reasons.  According to legend Wagner, a
nonsmoker, became incensed when he discovered that his picture on a card was
being used to promote smoking.  As a result, he ordered that his card be
removed from the T206 set.  (Evidently, though, he must have had a change of
heart years later, as he is depicted in the 1948 Leaf Gum card set with at
least two packs of chewing tobacco stuffed in his jaw.)  Today, there are
believed to be no more than twenty-five or so T206 Wagner cards in existence.
The Plank card is believed to be equally as rare--a result of the printing
plates for it having been accidentally destroyed back in 1909.
     Burdick, acknowledging the scarcity of both cards, lists the Wagner
card's value at $50 and the Plank card at $10.  The rest of the T206s are
listed at ten cents apiece.  Today, the common T206 lists at $100 mint, a
Plank at $25,000, and the Wagner at a peak of $451,000.
     Besides the T206s, the most popular early lithographed tobacco cards then
and today are the 1887-88 Allen & Ginters (N28, N29, and N43) and the 1911 T3
Turkey Reds.  The Allen & Ginters maintain their value and popularity from
their sheer beauty.  The same size as the T206s, the N28 and N29 series were
magnificent watercolor paintings of baseball players, printed on glossy stock.
The N28 is generally considered the first of the tobacco card baseball sets
and it includes ten players, among them Hall of Famers Cap Anson, John
Clarkson, Charles Comiskey, King Kelly, John Montgomery Ward, and Tim Keefe.
The N29, or second series, adds six players, among them Hall of Famer Buck
Ewing.  The Anson card is the most expensive today, listing at $2,000 mint.
Burdick listed the average Allen & Ginter card at ten cents.
     The T3s are classified as cabinet cards in that they measured a much
larger 5 3/4 by 8 inches in size and were obtained by sending in coupons found
in Turkey Red, Fez, and Old Mill brand cigarettes.  They, too, are beautiful
cards, depicting players in full-color portraits.  All told, there are 100
baseball players in the Turkey Red set of 126 athletes, averaging $150 for
commons and considerably more for Hall of Famers (Ty Cobb lists at $8,500).
In 1967 Burdick listed the price of T3s at $1 apiece.
     In the 1930s the tobacco companies gave way to the gum and confectionery
companies as the prime dispensers of baseball cards.  The most prominent of
those companies was the Goudey Gum Company, which issued significant sets in
1933-41.  These cards, like all the gum/confectionery cards of the 1930-50
era, measured 2 1/2 by 3 1/4 inches.  The most popular of all the Goudey sets
is still its initial 1933, effort which was comprised of 240 cards including
one of the rarest of all, No. 106, Napoleon Lajoie.  For some reason, the
Lajoie card was inadvertently omitted from the original 1933 Goudey set, and
when collectors inquired about the absence of card No. 106, the company
offered it as a premium the following year.  As a result, the few Lajoie cards
that exist today contain the 1934 Goudey card design.  Burdick listed the
common R319 1933 Goudeys at twenty cents apiece and the Lajoie at a dollar.
Today, the commons list at $150, the numerous Hall of Famers in the set at
$250 and upwards, and the Lajoie at $30,000.
     In 1939, Gum Inc. of Boston entered the baseball card field, issuing the
first of its three Play Ball sets.  The 1939 and '40 Play Balls were sepia
toned, while the 1941 went to color.  The 72-card 1941 Play Ball set is the
most popular of the three, listing at $14,000 in mint condition.  It also
features the first color cards of Joe DiMaggio (mint today $2,500) and Ted
Williams ($2,000).
     World War II prompted a shutdown of the baseball card industry, and it
did not renew production until 1948, when the Chicago-based Leaf Company
issued its 168-card set of colorized photo cards with gum.  That Leaf set,
which contains a number of less-distributed cards, lists at $13,000 in mint
condition today, the DiMaggio and Babe Ruth cards listing at $500 each, and
the Satchel Paige, because of its alleged scarcity, at $800.
     In 1950 the Bowman Gum Company of Philadelphia displaced Leaf as the
number one baseball card manufacturers.  They remained atop the field until
1952, when the Topps Gum Company of Brooklyn began making big inroads into
this burgeoning industry.  Topps, which began modestly with two fifty-two-card
sets in 1951, as well as a pair of now extremely valuable premium sets called
Connie Mack and Current All Stars, broke historical ground in 1952 when it
issued a 407-card set.
     The 1952 Topps remains the Holy Grail of modern-day card sets for
collectors, if only because of the difficulty in completing it.  Cards number
311-407, it seems, were issued late in the year by Topps and reportedly only
in the New York area and Canada.  As a result, they are considerably harder to
find.  Burdick listed the 1952 Topps from 1 to 310 at ten cents apiece and 311
to 407 at thirty cents in 1967.
     But making that final series even more valuable is the fact that Topps
included many of the game's superstars of that year in it, including Mickey
Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Bobby Thomson, Eddie Mathews, and Roy
Campanella.  All of them list today at over $1,000 mint, and the Mantle card,
number 311, at $7,000-$10,000, is considered the piece de resistance of all
modern-day baseball cards.  The 311-407 commons list at $150 apiece.
     When Jefferson Burdick published his American Card Catalog, baseball card
collecting was limited to just that--collecting.  It was not until the
mid-'70s, when card values began to be known nationwide, that baseball card
shows and flea markets began to crop up across the country.  Prior to that,
there had been only a small network of what could be considered hard-core
baseball card collectors:  Frank Nagy of Detroit, Buck Barker of St. Louis,
myself, and a few others would trade cards among ourselves.  There was never
any selling of cards within that network, although on many occasions the
trading would branch into other fields, such as trading an autograph for a
suitable card or cards.
     All in all, in 1972, there were about ten card dealers who would meet
once a month in New York on Friday nights.  No money ever changed hands.  It
was strictly trading.
     A couple of years later, however, the hobby began to grow and groups of
dealers began putting together once-or twice-a-year baseball card conventions
in church basements around New York City and, soon, other large cities.  These
conventions served to arouse the public interest in baseball cards, rekindling
the childhoods of many whose cards had long since been thrown away.  As the
demand for old cards increased and the prices of them quickly began to rise
accordingly, the church basement card shows evolved into much larger
productions held in hotels, convention centers, and even ballparks.
     As an added attraction for these larger baseball card shows, promoters
began bringing in old-time and current ballplayers to sign autographs at a
modest price.  From that was born the phenomenon that exists today:
spectacular baseball card/autograph shows in which as many as ten or twelve
Hall of Famers can be found signing autographs at upwards of $10 per item.


Autographs

     For the longest time, baseball autographs were something to be personally
treasured but not necessarily valued.  No one, for instance, put a value on a
Babe Ruth autograph even twenty years after the Babe's death.  For one thing,
a Ruth autograph was still one of the most common of all Hall of Famer
autographs, simply because the Babe signed willingly for everyone he came in
contact with.  A Lou Gehrig, by contrast, was not nearly as common, although
until the advent of the autograph-collecting boom--which occurred at the same
time the baseball card boom hit in the mid 1970s--collectors paid little
notice.
     Today Ruth, simply because of who he was and what he is to baseball,
remains one of the most sought-after and high-priced baseball autographs.  Of
the living players, Joe DiMaggio is still commanding top dollar on the
autograph circuit, with Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays not far behind.  But as
autograph collectors will testify, it is the turn-of-the-century Hall of
Famers such as Pud Galvin, Tommy McCarthy, King Kelly, John Clarkson, Roger
Connor, Candy Cummings, and Cap Anson whose signatures rightfully command the
highest prices.  These are players who have been dead for well over sixty
years and whose autographs are far more scarce than a Ruth, Gehrig, or Ty
Cobb.
     Perhaps the best way to sum up the modern-day baseball autograph craze is
to recall an incident at the 1980 New York Yankees annual Old Timer's Day
game.  As usual, all the Yankee living legends, from Joe DiMaggio to Mickey
Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford, were on hand for the occasion and,
accordingly, were besieged throughout the day for autographs.  Reggie Jackson,
the Yankees' star right fielder at the time, was attempting--at least for
public consumption--to express dismay at all the autograph badgering around
him.  "I don't understand all this idolatry," Reggie told the assembled
writers.  The next day, however, in the New York Daily News coverage of the
Old Timer's Day festivities, there was a picture of Reggie Jackson--getting an
autograph on a baseball from Joe DiMaggio.


Press Pins

     Press pins from the World Series, the All Star Game, and Hall of Fame
induction ceremonies are about the only baseball collectibles that are totally
separated from the players themselves.  They have nothing to do with the
actual games themselves, other than being displayed on the sports coats of
attending sportswriters, and they can't be autographed.  Nevertheless, in
conjunction with the baseball collecting boom of the 1970s and '80s, press
pins have become among the most sought after (and subsequently highly valued)
memorabilia items.
     The origin of the baseball press pin dates back to 1911.  According to
legend John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, had invited many of his
cronies to attend the hotly contested games of September 1908.  However,
because of the scarcity of tickets, McGraw assigned his friends seats in the
press box, where they became rowdy, distracting the members of the working
press.
     It was because of this unwelcome intrusion into their working domain that
the Baseball Writers Association of America was formed.  And as a part of this
new union, press pins were used to establish proper identity for the World
Series, when every seat was spoken for.  No one was permitted into the press
boxes without a press pin.
     As years went on, press accreditation for the World Series became far
more sophisticated, but the press pins continued to be a tradition.  Each
World Series team designed its own press pin for the games in its ballpark and
though most sportswriters kept their pins through the years, they didn't look
at them as valuable collectibles.  Again, it was not until the early 1970s,
when collectors began to realize how genuinely scarce all those old press pins
were (because of limited distribution and the fact that so many of them were
thrown away through the years) that they suddenly became a valued baseball
collectible.
     The earliest press pins are now valued at upwards of $10,000 apiece.  But
even the press pins from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s have considerable value.
Of these, the most valued of all the World Series pins is that of the 1956
Brooklyn Dodgers--primarily because it isn't a pin at all; it's a tie clasp.
For some reason, that year the Dodgers chose to break tradition and issue to
the working press tie clasps with a blue Brooklyn cap affixed to it.  Probably
because the tie clasps were actually worn by the writers long after the Series
was over (instead of being stuffed away in a drawer with all the old press
pins), a good many of the tie clasps vanished from the scene.  As a result,
today the Brooklyn Dodgers 1956 World Series tie clasp has commanded as much
as $3,000 in collectors' markets as opposed to the $300 that the 1956 New York
Yankees World Series press pin generally sells for.
     In 1937 baseball extended its press pin tradition to the All Star Game
and those pins, too, have risen greatly in value.  (The reason no press pins
were issued prior to 1937 is that the All Star Game's creator and founder,
sportswriter Arch Ward, had envisioned his "gala" as being a one-time event.
(Actually, even the 1937 pin, from Griffith Stadium in Washington, may, in
fact, be a one-of-a-kind item since only the one in the Halper collection is
known to exist.)
     The prices of All Star press pins vary greatly, based primarily on the
issuing city.  One of the hardest-to-find All Star press pins--and
consequently one of the most sought-after and most prized--is the 1948 pin
issued by the host St. Louis Browns.  It is a beautiful pin depicting the
white Brownies cap with the brown bill and gold piping; it is dated 1948, and
it lists for upwards of $3,500.
     Finally, in 1982, the Hall of Fame got into the press pin field.
Beginning that year the Hall of Fame issued commemorative press pins, listing
the names of each year's inductees.  Because there is a far more limited
number of media personnel covering the Hall of Fame ceremonies, the
distribution of the pins is believed to be about one-tenth that of the World
Series pins.  As a result, the Hall of Fame pins have quickly shot past their
contemporary World Series and All Star pins in value.  That first Hall of Fame
pin in 1982, engraved with the names of inductees Hank Aaron, Happy Chandler,
Frank Robinson, and Travis Jackson, was going for $650 in the collectors'
market.
     In the early years of press pins, the Dieges & Clust Company of John
Street in New York was the primary manufacturer.  In 1946 the Balfour Company
of Attleboro, Massachusetts, assumed the contract from Major League Baseball
to produce the pins.  They remain the prime producers of pins and rings for
the World Series and All Star Game, although some teams have, in the interest
of cost-cutting, sought local companies to produce their pins (the workmanship
of those pins, particularly the colors and the enamel, has suffered
noticeably).
     The advent of the playoff system also caused economic problems for the
contending clubs that were compelled to commission press pins.  It had long
been the custom of clubs to date the pins for each year's World Series.  In
many cases, though, the club would not make it to the Series and those press
pins produced for the event were rendered unusable for any future Series.  As
such, these so-called "phantom" pins, such as the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers (who
lost out in a playoff to the Giants on Bobby Thomson's historic home run), the
1938 Pittsburgh Pirates (victims of the Cubs' Gabby Hartnett's memorable
"homer in the gloamin'"), or the 1949 Cardinals are harder to come by and
just as valuable as the "official" Series press pins of those years.
     As John Scarpellini, Balfour's longtime representative to baseball
recalled:  "The elimination of the dating of the pins came about when Dick
O'Connell, general manager of the Red Sox, was asked by us about the kind of
press pin he wanted designed for the 1975 World Series.  Instead of committing
himself, O'Connell opened up a closet door in his office and produced what had
to be nearly 50,000 press pins.  "Look at these," he said.  "They're all dated
and therefore no good to us.  I've got all these pins, which we've paid for,
and we can't do anything with them.'
     "After that, we came up with the idea of labeling the pins with the
phrase 'Our Second World Series' or whatever number that particular World
Series was for that particular team.  That way, if the club was beaten out in
the playoffs, but had already had to produce their pins, they could just put
them away in a vault and use them whenever they made it."


Uniforms

     In the entire spectrum of baseball collecting there is probably no item
more personal or intimate than a uniform.  Unfortunately, the collecting of
uniforms from modern-day players has oftentimes become a risky venture because
of the increase in counterfeits on the market.  Because the modern-day
doubleknits are so easy to manufacture, it is very difficult to tell a
counterfeit from the real thing.  That's why the source of such uniforms is so
important.
     More often than not, the source for legitimate modern-day uniforms is the
clubhouse man for the major league ballclubs.  This, of course, has created a
serious problem for Major League Baseball.  They are aware of how little
clubhouse men are paid and, as such, how they can become easy prey for dealers
in baseball memorabilia.
     In some cases, the players themselves can be sources for uniforms.  Pete
Rose, for example, reportedly had a deal with the Cincinnati Reds that he be
given twenty-five or more uniforms during the course of the season to do with
as he wished.  And in the game in which Rose tied Ty Cobb's all-time hits
record, he wore a different uniform top for each at bat.  Presumably, Rose
sold all those uniform tops to different collectors.
     Similarly, Gaylord Perry, in winning his 300th game against the New York
Yankees, wore two different Seattle Mariner uniforms.  The reason I know that
is that Perry had promised his uniform from that game to me.  But a couple of
days before he pitched, I got a call from the visiting clubhouse man in
Baltimore, who was also a dealer in memorabilia.  The clubhouse man offered me
Perry's Seattle uniform from his 300th-win game.  It seems that Gaylord had
decided that two uniforms were better than one when it came to maximizing his
profit on 300 wins, and he decided to make a change after four innings.  I
wound up having to make separate deals with both Perry and the clubhouse man
from Baltimore in order to have what was surely the uniform in which Perry won
his 300th game.
     The values of modern-day players' uniforms vary greatly.  Naturally, the
uniforms players wore performing historic feats such as Perry's 300th win or
Rose's 4,192nd hit (both of which are in the Halper collection) are of
considerably more value than just an everyday game-worn uniform.  In the
uniform-collecting hobby of the '90s, common players' uniforms were selling in
the $200 range, star-quality players' from $750 to $1,200, and superstar/ Hall
of Fame-caliber players' from $2,000 up.
     Old-time uniforms are a far more challenging hobby, one that has been the
most satisfying and exciting aspect of my collecting career.  Why?  Because I
never believed so many of these old uniforms, particularly the ones from the
pre-1900 Hall of Fame players, could still exist.  And exist in such
remarkable condition!  Through the years, I have managed to amass some 964
uniforms, which I have stored on a dry cleaner conveyer belt that is
computerized to stop at whichever uniform number I punch in.  Included among
those 964 are uniforms of every Hall of Famer who played or managed, and even
some minor league uniforms of Hall of Fame executives (such as longtime Yankee
business manager Ed Barrow) who never wore a major league uniform.
     As one might expect, values for the oldest, turn-of-the-century uniforms
far exceed those for any of the more recent Hall of Famers of the '30s on up.
I have had values in excess of $100,000 each placed on uniforms of Babe Ruth,
Lou Gehrig, and Ty Cobb--all autographed--in my collection.  But I could not
even begin to put a value on the uniforms of turn-of-the-century Hall of
Famers such as Pud Galvin (Buffalo, 1879), John Clarkson (Saginaw, 1883), King
Kelly (NY Giants, 1893), Charles Comiskey (Cincinnati, 1893), Hoss Radbourn
(Boston, 1886), Roger Connor (NY Giants, 1893), Joe McGinnity (NY Giants,
1904), and Cy Young (Boston, 1903)--most of which are almost certain to be the
only ones worn by those players that still survive.
     The existence of these uniforms only adds to and rounds out the lore and
history of baseball.  How they were uncovered after all these years--the
treasure hunt--is the most fulfilling aspect of collecting baseballiana.
     It was during a conversation I once had with Pete Sheehy, the venerable
New York Yankee clubhouse man from the days of Ruth in the '20s right up until
the Don Mattingly-Dave Winfield Yankees of the '80s, that I got my most
valuable tip in regard to uniform collecting.  I asked Sheehy:  "Pete, where
are all the Pete Sheehys of yesterday?  The clubhouse men who kept a vigil
over all the old uniforms?"
     Not surprisingly, in his days as Yankee clubhouse man, Sheehy did become
friends with the clubhouse men from other clubs and they would correspond
frequently.  Most of his contemporaries had died when I talked to him about
this, but he kept track of many of their relatives.
     One person Sheehy put me in contact with was a man from Coxsackie, New
York, who, Sheehy thought, was in possession of most of the old Yankee
uniforms from 1927, the year of Murderers' Row.  Sure enough, upon getting in
touch with the man, I was able to acquire the 1927 Yankee uniforms of Ruth,
Gehrig, Earle Combs, Waite Hoyt, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig, Bob Shawkey, and
about a half dozen others.  Sheehy also put me in contact with the relatives
of the equipment manager at Columbia University during the early '20s when
Gehrig played there.  It was through that contact that I was able to uncover
Gehrig's Columbia uniform and the first uniform he ever wore as a
professional, with Hartford.  He had played there under the assumed name of
Lewis in 1921 to protect his amateur standing at Columbia; that name is sewn
into the bottom flap of the shirt.
     All the uniforms from that pre-1920s period are identified by the
players' names sewn somewhere on them since numbers did not come into
existence until 1929.  The Yankees that year introduced numbers on the backs
of their uniforms in the order in which the players appeared in the batting
order.
     Another valuable source of old uniforms was Dick Bartell, the pepperpot
New York Giants and Detroit Tigers shortstop of the 1930s and '40s.  Bartell
put me in touch with Ollie O'Mara, an old ballplayer, then in his 80s, who
lived in Reno, Nevada.  O'Mara had had a brief major league career with the
Brooklyn Dodgers from 1914 to 1919, a team that was managed by Hall of Famer
Wilbert Robinson.  Apparently O'Mara had maintained a close friendship with
Robinson.  That is the only explanation I can offer for the fact that he had
in his possession the 1894 Baltimore Orioles uniforms of Robinson, Joe Kelley,
Wee Willie Keeler, Dan Brouthers, and Hughie Jennings--Hall of Famers all.
O'Mara never did tell me how he got the uniforms or why he had kept them all
those years in near-perfect condition.  In 1989 he went to his grave with that
secret, but baseball historians can be forever grateful that he preserved so
much of the game's valuable past.


Bats, Balls, Books

     Until recent years vintage bats, balls, gloves, and other gear were a
neglected area for collectors.  One could find an antique glove or ball in a
thrift store or flea market for just a few dollars; without an autograph or
major-league player "association", the items were simply not viewed as
desirable.  The same could be said of baseball books and photos, though
scorecards, guides (Spalding, Reach, Beadle, etc.), yearbooks, and
programs--especially World Series programs--did attract collectors before the
1980s baseball-card boom.
     A handful of early-baseball enthusiasts, myself included, picked up as
many of these early items as we could, from club constitutions of the amateur
era to thick-handled bats with "mushroom" knobs, from gold-painted trophy
balls of the 1860s to sepia-toned photographs of unknown teams.  These sorts
of items increased in value over the years but not as spectacularly as, say,
the cards of the 1950s.  Where a 1952 Mickey Mantle card, of which many fine
examples exist, might fetch $8,000, a genuinely rare 1868 book by Henry
Chadwick might bring only $3,000.  However, as card prices continued to soar
sophisticated collectors and devoted fans who have been made nervous by the
explosive speculation of the 1980s are beginning to see relative safety in the
pursuit of older collectibles, where "the market" is driven by true scarcity
more than widespread demand.
     Despite dire predictions of a collapse in the market, I remain convinced
that collecting baseball memorabilia is a hobby that is still in its infancy.
Prices may go up or down with general economic conditions, but the lure of
baseball and its collectibles is a constant.