Hank!
Full disclosure - let me start out by saying I did buy the Hank Aaron artwork.
Got it in the mail today, and I am very happy with it. I have no doubts as to its authenticity - all of the earmarks are there. There are no stamps from 1989 or Topps Vault indications. I have other pieces that were for whatever reason not kept by Topps - not sure if in some cases they were returned to the artist or simply given away, but it seems about half of the years I have seen artwork for were sold through the 1989 auction and/or the Vault, and the other half not. I think the other pieces he has for auction on the Bay run from overpriced to ridiculously overpriced, but I suspect his achieved price on the Aaron will blind him of that for a while. The Kaline is nice - the others I would be surprised to see sell for much over $50, probably closer to $30 for most of them, but again, they are truly 1 of 1, so I could always be surprised, and the value on these is highly subjective. Aaron was one of my favorite players growing up, and I do collect some of the Topps artwork when I see it. The 1954 Topps Aaron rookie is such an iconic card, and a holy grail for me in the 70s, that I had to take a shot at getting the art for it. I was happily surprised that the other bid stopped at the initial bid.
Thanks for the info on the artist, Dave - looking at the piece, and comparing it to other drawings by Irwin Hasen - I would say that he is very likely the artist. In addition, "Henry Aaron" is written on the back in pencil, and I saw a sample of Hasen's handwriting, and it would appear that Hasen may have written the name on the back as well based on my crude(!) handwriting analysis. The missing text on these, as Mike pointed out, is interesting. Since the captioning of the comics on the card backs was not lettered by an artist in the 1954 set, I assume that the final paste up text was typed and pasted just the same way the stats and bio were for these cards.
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