Terrible news to hear of Jerry’s passing. He was truly a “gentleman and a scholar”. His knowledge about our shared interests such as W600 and Rose Postcards and Baseball Currency was unparalleled and not just helpful but amazing to me. I always learned from him about the sets in his focus, and he was always thrilled to help with information for auction writeups.
Jerry was very amusing about his approach to dealings at times. I remember when the “make-your-own” Rose Postcards of the Springfield Ponies Team of the Connecticut State League surfaced. Some were auctioned by me and they wound up on checklists not noted as being different from traditional Rose Postcards (Rose also sold the cards with photos and identification plates “blank” so non-Major League teams could order kits to make their own cards.) The checklisting confusion was like a dagger in Jerry’s heart! He wanted this noted, corrected, emphasized...if he could have had a plane flying with banners over the National Convention about this he would have...he was on a mission to fix this checklisting injustice! (as the “make-your-own” style cards truly were made totally differently and deserved to be distinguished from traditional Rose postcards featuring Major Leaguers as printed by the company). No one - and I mean no one! - cared about this in quite the same way as Jerry! As usual, he was right. It was part of his charm and (for me) part of the fun in communicating with him that he expected everyone else to be as outraged.
Another classic Jerry Spillman story I will always remember: Once, years ago (2013), we were reviewing items he was thinking of auctioning. One group he had at that time he was thinking of selling was a “set” of baseball currencies: One each of the eight different basic known styles. Included were a couple REALLY rare ones (1888 St. Louis and the 1893 All Stars currency).
Jerry wanted them all to be auctioned individually but I said “No, Jerry! This is incredible! No one has EVER auctioned a set of these before. They’ll go wild!” The common styles were not a hot commodity - currencies were just not on the radar of most collectors because they are not “cards”. And the rare ones - who had ‘em? No one! My thinking was that collectors who never gave this set any thought would realize the “error of their ways” and trip over themselves to bid. “We’ll give it a two page spread, Jerry. No one will miss it! And we’ll put a minimum bid of $5000 on them.” A $5000 minimum, I explained, would show great respect for them in terms of value but be low enough that anyone with even a passing interest - even just for resale - could bid away with reckless abandon. WITH GREAT RESERVATION Jerry went along with me on this. Kicking and screaming but he was on board.
I don’t have to tell you what happened...the lot practically died. The collecting world at this particular time wasn’t ready for a set of nineteenth century baseball currencies. I was stunned. I remember trying to point these out to serious collectors and this particular week all anyone wanted was cards. Normal cards! Cards yes. Currencies no.
Here’s the lot listing. The set sold for $7110. And that included the buyers premium.
https://robertedwardauctions.com/auc...ncy-collection
After the auction I wasn’t really looking forward to talking to Jerry about this result.
Usually auction results are great. But not this time, not this lot! When Jerry got me on the phone you could have heard a pin drop. Now, Jerry was a “big boy” and this was minor in the context of his many more significant successes in our many other dealings. But every time I talked to him for the next year, the currencies and their poor auction performance came up..and had to be discussed. Every time! Finally one day he asks me if now I think it was a mistake to auction the currencies as a set. I told him “Yes, I wish I had known they would do so poorly offered as a set. I was wrong on that one, Jerry. I meant well but I’d have to call my approach to the currencies, in retrospect, a mistake.” He then said “OK, that’s what I wanted to hear. I appreciate you saying that.” And he never mentioned them again!
RIP Jerry. Deepest condolences to Jerry’s friends and family.