In case anyone's interested: My new column at Sports Collectors Daily
 

I now write a weekly (or so) column (as does forum member Rich Klein) at Sports Collectors Daily. Mine is on authenticity and identification topics-- card and non-card, sport and non-sport. Forum member and renown autograph expert Jim Stinson kindly let me quote him in my most recent column on provenance.

Authentication and Identification Advice

Thank you for using my item at the top. I feel a little like Bob Uecker.....

The Wagner article was fascinating and informative. i wish you well with future writing on sports themes, as the information is invaluable. Presently i am looking at the black light article.

Nice!...I'll read them all.

Thanks. I'll add this to my required reading list. :)

Welcome
 

Fellow Columnist :)

I'm very interested. Bookmarked.

Great article on provenance. The personalized index card Dr. Davis used for his autographs was a really great idea.

Read it this morning. Good stuff as usual. Thank you!

Dr. John Davis Jr. (died 2002) was a Topeka optometrist and well known old time/old school autograph collector. He carried his custom personalized index cards with him in his pocket. He got his first in person autograph when he was ten– President Calvin Coolidge. When he was 72, a newspaper reporter asked why he collected autographs and he said because it’s a hobby you can enjoy whether you are ten or 72. In that interview he said he never sold his autographs, though he donated his Supreme Court collection to the Washburn University School of Law where it is on public display.

A particularly interesting old time/old school autograph collector was M. Watt Espy. His day job was an Alabama lawyer and death penalty researcher, and he and was, and still is, considered the world's foremost authority on the history of capital punishment. His name and researched is commonly referenced in academic articles and scholarly books. But, as a hobby, he collected thousands of autographs, mostly through the mail, from everyone from Ty Cobb to John F. Kennedy to Elizabeth Taylor, many personalized to him. And it should be neat to have a politician's, movie star's or Nobel Prize winner's autograph personalized to a noted historian.

I've been enjoying them. Thanks for the black light tip.

david
 

congratulations on the new venture.
I'm eager to take a look at these articles.
all the best,
barry

I'll have to check it out for sure

Congratulations, and best of luck. I look forward to reading your columns.

In case anyone's interested: My new column at Sports Collectors Daily
 

Good Luck, always reading on the site - Rich does a great job!


Jimmy

I remember reading Rich's column in Beckett years back. He was a hobby 'name' to me.

By sport and non-sport, I mean some subjects have crossover. News photos can apply to baseball and political subjects. The provenance article was a sport and non-sport subject, but most of the examples I used were sports related. It's a sports site, so I'm not going to write an article on Ming vases-- and not just because I know nothing about Ming vases.

I once joked that to change a guide on baseball photographs to a guide to football photographs you merely change the book pictures. And it's really not a joke. A cabinet card is a cabinet card and a tintype is a tintype.

Which reminds me of the joke about the successful antiques dealer who said several years earlier he wasn't making enough money running a junk store so changed it to an antiques store. "How'd you do that?," someone asked. "I changed the sign," he said.

Excellent work
 

as per usual. David has written numerous times on the subject and I think it is some of the better material on the matter available to collectors.