Thoughts on these 2 pieces

[ruth-gehrig]

Im assuming these are real vintage cast iron pieces that people are placing lenses in them to say whatever they want, in these cases baseball related. Just my thoughts

[perezfan]

Those last ones actually look pretty good. But to Michael's point, it could well be that the lenses are replaced on some of these, for the Baseball tie-in. Makes them a lot more sought-after and expensive...

Same thing is happening with Pocket Watches. Be careful.... there was a huge influx of these on ebay recently. The seller(s) took original Waltham/Elgin pocket watches, and applied early baseball graphics to the dial. These are near-perfect copies of the originals, so be careful.

So instead of seeing maybe one of these every 5 years in a Catalogue Auction, there were over a dozen on ebay at one time (about 3-4 months ago). They look nearly identical to the original, but a big tip-off is the engraving on the reverse. Most (but not all) were engraved with a "Crossed Bats" motif on the back.

Not sure if reporting it to ebay does much good, but at a minimum, keep away! Sorry to get a bit off-topic, but it's a very similar issue.

[keithsky]

Yeah there was an Ebbets field one a couple years ago I almost bought thinking it was real but a little research on it found out it was a reproduction as one of the other guys stated I think they just take the lenses out and make up their own idea for a lens to make it a cool item. Somebody might even have access to old street lights maybe from somebody who works in the street department and actually uses the casings but just replaces the lens. So the casings may be real but the lenses are fake. Just a thought

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by keithsky

Yeah there was an Ebbets field one a couple years ago I almost bought thinking it was real but a little research on it found out it was a reproduction as one of the other guys stated I think they just take the lenses out and make up their own idea for a lens to make it a cool item. Somebody might even have access to old street lights maybe from somebody who works in the street department and actually uses the casings but just replaces the lens. So the casings may be real but the lenses are fake. Just a thought

Definitely, this.