Rare SPALDING EXECUTIONER Football Mask

[vintagesportscollector]

Here is the orginal listing...thanks Ron. I couldn't find this before. You certainly get a better view of the mask in the original listing, and I take back what I said in that it wasn't completely missed by the sports crowd, albeit not listed as football. Like how it was listed under "weird stuff". Still very curious of the opinion of the football folks on the forum. If I had seen it I would have gone way higher than $250. Being Spalding, I could see this going $3-5K+ maybe more?? Or maybe I am just way off...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/131609023272...272%26_rdc%3D1

[travrosty]

this has happened before with this type of mask, one was at a garage sale and someone always got it for nearly free several years ago, but the seller figured out it must be valuable and ended up not selling it for a song at that time.

[Duluth Eskimo]

I have not seen this style of mask before. I would be interested to hear what a football helmet expert would say. How can one be sure it's a football mask? I can see why people would think as its kind of a combo mask / nose guard, but couldn't it also a early mask from another sport? Hopefully someone can provide more detail. Thanks

[vintagesportscollector]

I have seen this before. It's definetly a football mask/nose guard...that much I know. Here is a Spalding adv....see the guard on the bottom right.

image.jpg

[vintagesportscollector]

Here is an image from Chris Hornung's football website, and the Tibi collection.

image.jpg

[pgellis]

No doubt, absolutely football.

[Duluth Eskimo]

So is this just a portion of those displays? Was this worn then the helmet on top or was it connected to the helmet?

[Huysmans]

Hey Joe and Ron,

I think some of the confusion regarding this mask stems from the fact that Clint Benedict wore a similar example due to an nose injury in 1930. Oh, I should point out for our Baseball-centric friends that Clint Benedict was a Hall of Fame goaltender in the 1910's/20's for the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Maroons. I would assume he wore an example of the type of football mask being discussed, but the fact that this early goaltender was known to have worn it, the obvious conclusion would be that it must be a "hockey" mask, hence the confusion and lack of intetest/knowledge among most collectors. As mentioned, this is just an assumption on my part.