Umpire cards and collectibles
 

Seeing more umpire cards showing up on eBay, some even autographed. Is there really an umpire market? Usually some variation on "this is the guy who called the game when [insert magical baseball moment]." Are there really collectors into the niche in a big way? Not seeing the emotional or sentimental connection to some umpire who happened to be behind the plate when babe hit his 60th home run. But, to each his own . . . .

Extremely scarce for that reason, some are also in the HOF. I have seen maybe two in the last few years in ebay decently priced sell. I havent been as diligent in looking though

Where I'm from (SW Michigan) we've actually produced more major league umpires in recent years than any other area ( I know six of them) so there's some interest in the subject here.

There is the 1955 Bowman umpires subset . . . People have collected umpire autographs from some time.

I like the 55 Bowman set and am around a dozen cards from finishing it. I would like it a lot more though if it didn't have any umpires in it.

Umpire collectors say 'Yer Out!"

Brian

Besides there probably not being a lot of umpire collectors to start with, there aren't really a lot of main-stream umpire cards/items that were produced either. The '55 Bowman cards immediately come to mine. I think some umpires were also included in the 1950-56 Callahan set as well. And having umpires in the HOF, there are HOF plaque postcards that people collect also. There is something like 10 umpires currently inducted into the HOF I think.

As far as pre-war issues are concerned, I know there were umpires on Playball cards from the '40 set. Not sure about the other two years off the top of my head. The earliest, and probably one of the coolest, umpire specific collectibles I'm aware of is from the M101-2 SPorting News Supplements. The 3/31/1910 issue of the Sporting News included a double page supplement fold-out featuring four major league umpires; Wm. Evans, "Silk" O'Loughlin, William Klem, and Wm. Johnson. I believe Evans and Klem are members of the HOF. Anyone know of something even earlier?

It's ALL about the HALL. (At least for me). Here's all 10 of 'em.

I've got a game used uniform and umpire kit. Umpires are a critical part of the game, so my game used collection seemed a little incomplete without a game used umpire uniform.

Def have seen some Exhibits. Exhibits are cool, no way to deny that.

Umpire cards are cool! A while back I got really interested in them and did some research!

The first umpire cards were produced in the 1887-90 Old Judge set. It includes Wallace Fessenden, Jack McQuaid and “Honest John” Kelly.

Next, I think there's one in the 1909 Cabanas set

As mentioned earlier in the thread there are some M101-2 umpires! This is the first Hall of Fame umpire card.

There are some in the 1922 Exhibit set: HOFers such as Klem and Evans are included.

There are some in the extremely rare 1934 Al-Demaree die-cuts set. Klem is currently the only known HOFer in the set so far. There are 6 umpire cards in total. I suspect there are two more which are undiscovered at the moment one of which I suspect could be Bill McGowan!

I believe there are a couple in the '35 Schutter-Johnson set.

As mentioned earlier there are two Play Ball umpire cards: 1939 Play Ball Dolly Stark, and 1940 Play Ball Stark.

Those are the pre-war ones that I can remember, there might be a couple others which I didn't mention plus some obscure postcards or premiums.

Hope this helps!

-Owen

Nice Ken! Good McGowan! This is one of the few stubs I own but I got it because it was "God's" major league debut.

You know, Doug Harvey.

I like the umpire cards, im trying to get one card from each umpire in the HOF which this set has some in its ranks.

Some people really like umpires. Did you know that there is a whole Umpire Ejection Fantasy League?

The umpire cards in the old judge set are amazing, some of my favorite cards. Even neater are the player cards with the umpire in the background.

Yes those are some great images.

I rarely see umpires listed on old generic RPPC's but this guy in the back row, on the far right, is identified as an ump....we just don't see many umps listed on these....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/early-1900-s...UAAOSwA3dYNFQ~

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Here are some of my umpire cards and photos. The non-card is a 1902 cabinet photo of Tommy Connolly.

O'Day and Hart with Wheat and Bancroft.