Awesome autograph collection

[brob28]

Hi Gents,
I have a pretty amazing (at least to me) story and autograph find that I wanted to share with the board. This may be more appropriate to post on the autograph side, but I thought I’d share it here first since so many of us who enjoy cards also enjoy other aspects of baseball history and collecting and I really think this is something special. Leon, feel free to move this wherever you feel appropriate.

I have a friend who has told me of his Aunt and her autograph collection for a few years. He has tried to set up a meeting for me with her for quite a while and I recently had the pleasure of meeting her and seeing her collection. I was expecting a few autographs, but was shocked by what I saw.

She is in her early 80’s and the collection was put together by her late husband (who was 16 years her senior) as a boy in the mid-thirties. Apparently, he lived by the train station that the teams traveled through when playing in New York and would wait with his notebooks to get signatures when the players disembarked the train.
There are close to (maybe more) a thousand autographs 99% baseball players. I’d say 30% unfortunately are in pencil, but still very nice, the rest are ink. They are mostly in notebooks, no baseballs or 3x5 cards. She didn’t really know what she had as no one has ever told her the history of some of these players and she only knows the ultra-famous Yankee players. She told me someone once offered her $1,200 for the entire collection, thankfully she declined. I think you’ll all agree she has something special.

The collection is a who’s who of mid-thirties baseball, I’m still putting it all together but I’m sure it contains almost all the players featured in the Goudey sets. Below is a list (not complete) of some of the key autographs she has. She has 2 and 3 of many of these (pictures to follow)

Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Tony Lazzeri, Dizzy Dean, Connie Mack, Lefty Gomez, Pepper Martin, Mel Ott, Rogers Hornsby, Bill Dickey, Luke Appling, Rabbit Maranville, Joe DiMaggio, Vince DiMaggio, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons, Heinie Manush, Charlie Gehringer, Mickey Cochrane, Schoolboy Rowe, Rip Collins, Carl Hubbell, Gabby Hartnett, Frank Crosetti, Al Lopez, Leo Durocher, Earl Combs, Hank Greenberg, Ted Lyons, Moe Berg, Joe & Luke Sewell Jimmie Dykes, and last but not least Walter Johnson!

It’s going to take a while to get through and identify all of the players.

Now for some autographs, hope you enjoy.