The Wee Willie Keeler Letters

[JimStinson]

I buy autograph collections all of the time and sometimes I never know what I am going to find. In the 1980's the local newspaper in Ocala Florida where I was then living ran a story about a baseball autograph collector who as it turned out lived just a few miles away from me. We became friends, he was then in his 70's was still very attached to his collection but promised me that whenever he was going to sell it he would give me an opportunity to buy it.
He had collected in two phases, as a youngster growing up in New Jersey in the 1930's he had written to many old time Hall of Famers as well as active players requesting their autographs, In this way he secured autographs through the mail of Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Cy Young etc. and hundreds of others all neatly signed on 2x3 linen cards that he sent to them through the mail. He stopped collecting sometime in the 1940's and in the 1950's took a job in Southern California. In the early 1960's he rekindled his collecting and since most of the old timers he already had he focused his collecting on writing to family members of long deceased mostly 19th century players. He recieved responses back from Cap Anson's family who supplied a couple Anson signed letters for his collection and from Christy Mathewson's family who gave him several "Matty" signed items including an early signed document and personal check signed by Mathewson.
He eventually retired in central Florida. Around the mid 1990's he elected to "test the waters" and put his Anson and Matty signed items in auction. He was none too pleased with the results and told me he had wanted to sell the entire collection outright. We talked about it and he concluded that he would offer it to four seperate dealers and go from there. Of the four two never responded to his letter and the 3rd made an offer so low it was laughable at best and insulting at worst so I ended up buying the entire collection.
Along with all the autographs he had which I had seen multiple times he had a large filing cabinet in which he kept all of the hundreds of responses he had recieved from family members of all of the long deceased ball players he had written to in the 1960's. He was a prolific letter writer. There were no autographs in the filing cabinet and he gave threw it in the deal if I would haul it off along with the collection I had just bought.
SO ......now onto the subject of Wee Willie Keeler. It was a few months before I was able to go through the filing cabinet and there was some very interesting letters written from son's, daughters, cousins, nieces, nephews of famous ball players all basically stating they had no autographs on hand. Among them I found a letter written by a relative of Willie Keeler around 1965 in which he mentioned he had several letters written by Keeler that had been in his family for years but was not interested in selling any of them but included in his letter was a photo copy of one of them ....I was astonished , It was evident to me that since the letter had been written 30 years before its discovery that the Keeler family member who wrote it was probably deceased and there was no return address.
I was never able to locate a lead that might produce more information about the Willie Keeler handwritten letters and eventually gave up and figured that someday, somewhere they would surface. To my knowledge they never have and that is the mystery.
Several years ago I ran a series of classified ads , in newspapers , periodicals and SCD trying to find them and to date not a single lead has surfaced. The letters obviously would be worth a considerable amount of money today. If they were still around and I would suspect they are out there SOMEWHERE.
Has anyone ever heard of ANY Willie Keeler letter ever being offered for sale anywhere ? Or any of the above mentioned letters surfacing in either public or private sale ? To this day it still baffles me.
_____________________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs
jim@stinsonsports.com

[HOF Auto Rookies]

Awesome story, thanks for sharing. I have not ever heard of them before until now. Sorry, but good luck

[mighty bombjack]

I have never heard of a Keeler letter, and I would certainly remember if I had.

Do you still have the photocopy of the one letter? I'd love to see a scan.

[JimStinson]

Yes, I have the photo copy of the letter but its the only detailed handwritting of his I've ever seen anywhere and for obvious reasons I have never shared it with anyone. The same is true for Hall of Famers Jose Mendez and Cristobal Torriente.

Without going into too much detail I once had a super rare autograph and sample of handwritting but held it for 10 years because I could not find a known example of both the signature and handwritting. Finally I was able to verify both , then sold it and miraculously saw at least three others offered for sale within 6 months ....maybe just coincidence

[David Atkatz]

Jim, Keeler's daybook/diary, which had been owned by his nephew on Long Island, sold a few years back, at auction, for $60-odd-thousand.

The diary had been described by author Burt Solomon in his book, "Where they Ain't."

(And there were copious pictures published both on the web, and in the printed catalog, so there are reliable samples of Keeler's handwriting in circulation.)

(I contacted Solomon during the auction, before I bid, and he told me that, yes, that was the diary he had seen at the nephew's house years earlier.)

[JimStinson]

Thanks and very interesting about the journal, as it was a nephew who possessed the letters , maybe it was the same nephew but if he cut loose one seems like he would have cut loose the others. Keeler was unmarried and had no children so his brother would have been his next of kin upon his death.
Willie Keeler once owned a considerable amount of New York real estate but was almost penniless and sharing a NYC apartment when he died
_____________________
Buying and selling Vintage autographs
jim@stinsonsports.com

[JimStinson]

Found it , it sold for $83,000 in 2010 , there were other Keeler personal affects in the auction too so I would have to guess the letters sold through private sale at some point between the 1960's and 2010.

[David Atkatz]

I bought the miniature baseball and glove which was given to Willie to commemorate his Testimonial Dinner – February 21st, 1910.

[thekingofclout]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

I bought the miniature baseball and glove which was given to Willie to commemorate his Testimonial Dinner – February 21st, 1910.

Boy David... That is a truly remarkable piece! Let me ask you David, how much more of your collection hasn't been shown as of yet? Do you at least have your stuff online so we can view/drool over it?

[GrayGhost]

FABULOUS Keeler stuff

[JimStinson]

Wow ! Within 24 hours of my post it looks like CASE CLOSED ...
The letters WERE found a few years ago and the only reason they have not hit the market yet is the owner appears to be attempting to negotiate a deal with several interested parties , My guess is that at this point the stakes have gotten so high he MIGHT swap them even up for a large continent , Antarctica not included.

He was leafing through a chest of drawers that belonged to his late father recently when he came across a trove of baseball memorabilia. The photos and programs that his dad, saved made his eyes grow wide, but not as wide as what he found laying beneath them.
His father was the nephew of "Wee" Willie Keeler, and on the bottom of the drawer lay dozens of letters that Keeler wrote in the summer of 1892, when he was barnstorming through the Northeast,
_________________
Always Buying and Selling Vintage autographs
jim@stinsonsports.com

[sayhey24]

I have the exact same ball and glove (also have the box, but not pictured) from the 1910 Willie Keeler dinner. I believe they gave them out to a number of people that night.

Greg

[David Atkatz]

Im sure everyone at the dinner received one, Greg. (Yours is in beautiful shape, BTW!)

[sayhey24]

I'd like to know who was at that dinner!

Greg

[JimStinson]

Finally ! One of the Keeler letters
____________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

[David Atkatz]

Nice!

[isaac2004]

Originally Posted by JimStinson

Finally ! One of the Keeler letters
____________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

Did you find or buy, or just get a scan from someone?