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Old 04-23-2011, 08:25 AM
prewarsports prewarsports is offline
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The odds are 1,000,000:1 that these are not authentic so be VERY skeptical. I dont know if there is a true Negro League Single Signed ball from that era in the entire hobby. If there is, I've never seen one. Multi-Signed balls are rare enough with only a few handfuls known from the Negro Leagues in the 1930's. During the Depression, and with the Black Community hit especially hard in this County (Generally Speaking) kids would get as many autographs as they could on baseballs instead of one or two and there just were not as many people in this country seeking the autographs of these guys.

Once again generally speaking, people got autographs of men they put on a pedestal and thought they may never meet again so they took the RARE opportunity that they might bump into someone famous by immortalizing the moment with a signature. An autograph when it all boils down is the concrete proof od a moment in time. Negro League players were so engrained in the communities they stayed in (where they lived/ate/hung out) that the sense of urgency to immortalize ONE MOMENT was not the same as with Major Leaguers. This is my theory as to why some of the famous Negro Leaguers of the 1920's-1930's were SO famous yet there are essentially no autographs of them. Things change over time and both autographs and autograph seekers have changed dramatically over the last 80-100 years. This is why there is basically no collections of Sports Autographs pre-1920 that dont originate from a ballplayer himself, even in the major leagues.

Just because a ball is old doesn't mean anything either.

You never know, but I would be as skeptical on these as someone trying to sell a bridge in New York.

No offense, just my opinion as someone who knows the autograph hobby pretty well.

Rhys
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