Where has all the 19th century baseball memorabilia gone?

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by ruth-gehrig

Perhaps I sound a bit naive when I say this but I believe there are still alot of great baseball antiques out there that haven't been discovered. Maybe I'm to optimistic but hopeful . There used to be a poster on the board that seemed like all he had was 19th century baseball that was part of his family's collection. Incredibly high grade amazing stuff if I remember correctly! I have a few lemon peels, a belt ball and some bats along with some advertising but not a ton of 19th century. I think alot of collectors have a little from the timeframe so it's spread out quite a bit. Like most collectors I enjoy my collection. I don't sell a lot but definitely more inclined to hang onto the items that would be the most difficult to replace. 19th century fits that bill.

I think both things are true: a lot of cards and memorabilia has dried up (collected up) and getting tougher and tougher to find, AND there is lots more to be discovered and put into the marketplace. But think of cards and how rare major "finds" are these days, and that provides a clue as to the relative percentages of stuff found and stuff yet to be. Thousands of dealers and collectors have been beating the bushes for 50 years now, and few people in the general population don't know that grandpa's old cards and stuff is worth something, but that doesn't mean there still aren't old trunks in attics and basements that no one has opened in decades, so that aspect of the hobby is not over yet, but getting less frequent. Soon it will pretty much be the recycling of collections on the selling side, if we're not there already.