Another chop-shop destroys baseball history

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Posted By: ramram 

Everybody knows the stories about some of the baseball card companies that destroyed some of baseball's most beloved memorabilia in order to use them as inserts, well now this one even hurts more (IMHO). In the recent Mastro's auction I was one of the bidders chasing the 1883 Harry Wright scorebook. Now it's a piece of history -

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5100690859&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I saw this coming when they auctioned it off and made a big deal about it having 24 separate pages of his autograph:

http://www.mastronet.com/index.cfm?action=DisplayContent&ContentName=Lot%20Information&LotIndex=36577&CurrentRow=1

The guy paid $21,000 ... so he needs to get over $1,000 per page to come out ahead ...

but it is sad that the whole thing will no longer be intact.

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Posted By: jay behrens

This is an invaluable piece of baseball history that will now be lost forever. Hopefully, someone from SABR was able to get photocopies of the pages so that it's numbers can be reconsiled with historical numbers.

I sent the seller a nice little email telling him what a scumbag he was for destroying a piece of history all for the sake of a few dollars.

Jay

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Posted By: ramram

Just as a small gesture of the board's appreciation of this guy's work, it would be nice if everyone would send the scumbag an email.

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Posted By: Jason

If you were all concerned with what would happen you should have bid high enough to win it. I would think since he paid $21K for it he can wipe his arse with it if he wants. I hear bitching and moaning about the cut up Ruth Jersey that Donruss bought, but bottom line is that they paid the $500K for it. I hate to see this stuff cut up too, but they reserve that right because they shelled out the cabbage for it.

Jason

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I don't see this as the equivalent of chopping a Babe Ruth jersey into tiny pieces. Unlike the jersey and bat trashing, the scorecards do seem to stand alone nicely as collectibles. I know that valuable old folios and books are often parsed out and sold (e.g., the Da Vinci Codex). In our hobby we see this already with the albums from Allen & Ginter.

Would you prefer that one private collector have the entire thing to hold in a dark box somewhere or would you prefer that 21 collectors have a sheet each that could ostensibly make their way to market from time to time?

I do agree that anyone with documentation like this should make the data available to the HOF, SABR and other similar record-keeping institutions.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

With the juice + S/H the total for that item was about $24K. An enterprising person would have thought to do this, a historian would never have thought of doing this. As you know there are a few of these books out there and this just happens to be the first (that most may know of) being dismembered and parted out for profit. Sad to say that you have to figure that a Harry Wright signature on something like this will garnish a few bucks. If you don't like it then don't bid on it. Obviously it matters not what the seller thinks because they already destroyed the document. Writing them about what an A$$ hole they are probably wouldn't hurt their feelings because obviously they don't care. It's the almighty $$ that drives them. There is another thread out there about $500 a pack Upper Deck stuff. Now this is the type of stuff that would make those stupid packs worth it.

Sometimes free enterprise is very offensive (like this) but at least most of us can feel better because we can answer the question - "why didn't I think of that?"

As much as I would like a nice Harry Wright signature I will not bid on any of these pages. The cool part of doing something like this is that maybe, just maybe it will make destroying history unprofitable for the next person.

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Posted By: ramram

this is just one more reason that autographs suck! Sorry, but unless you're a kid and you get it in person I don't see how it holds much interest. In many instances, the document as a whole is what is historically important but many have been cut and destroyed for the autographs. I know that's not most people's opionion, but... Anyway, I think the killer of this episode is that it was an original team SCOREBOOK from the earliest years of baseball. You just don't see much of that (in fact, Wright's are some of the only ones I know of). Not only that, but the continuity is ruined as well. These cut-up pages contain a lineup from a different game on the back of the pages so that the front and back don't even constitute the scoring for a game. I believe somebody else did this a few years ago to one of Wright's scorebooks but at least they left them in complete sections (there are several sections within each scorebook) so at least the complete games were still there. I don't think there is any problem parceling out historical items within reason but you have to have some moral obligation for the truly one-of-a-kind items. Nobody owns them forever. You're just renting them until your time comes due.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I'll repeat this until I am blue in the face, you can cut up the Mona Lisa so that everyone has a chance to own a piece of it, but it's the whole that is what makes it special. Having a small piece of it is meaningless.

And yes, I know that sending my email to the seller will fall on deafd ears, but I feel better for it. Besides, if no one says anything to people like this, then they will just go on thinking that what they are doing is OK by everyone. People are not locked into their beliefs, if enough people get their case, there isa chance that they may see the error of their ways. But I won't hold my breath. Money grubbing whores are worse than heroin addicts when comes to needing their fix.

Jay

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Posted By: barrysloate

Let me add a bit to this discussion. A group of four of us, myself included, purchased the estate of Bruce Foster in January of 1990. An eccentric, Foster had a house filled with hundreds of empty cat food cans stinking in his kitchen, about a hundred cats, years worth of newspapers piled to the ceiling, and about 10,000 books of pornography. He also had one of the very great baseball collections, featuring thousands of rare and pristine baseball books, documents, photographs, and eight Harry Wright scorebooks. This is the source of all the books that have come to market to date. The first one I kept for my collection is the 1883 copy that is being ravaged probably as we speak, though over the years I handled most of them. We always suspected that one day a book would be sold and broken up into sections, as they are really no more than the commercial scorebooks that Wright sold himself at his sporting goods store and had professionally bound together for posterity. But to think some spineless idiot is ripping pages out like they were green stamps in a coupon book is reprehensible. I know the book is already destroyed, but maybe he could at least be stopped so that the sections remain intact (I actually sold a few sections from 1890 myself, a year that was incomplete because Wright's health was beginning to deteriorate).
Couldn't this miscreant find something else to break up, like a T206 set or a 52 Topps set? Is a few extra dollars so important that he had to destroy an historical artifact? I would like to know who it is who is perpertrating this ( I haven't checked the board yet to see if he has been identified) and hope he spends eternity shovelling hot coals into a blazing furnace, if you get my drift. I hate to sound like an old crank, but this is no longer the hobby that I once loved. Every golden goose has been cut open to extract every last possible golden egg. Sad indeed.

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Posted By: barrysloate

P.S. I too sent him a scathing email; he may have a small conscience, but I doubt it. And I am glad someone ponted out that a single page constitutes the home team from one game and the reverse the visiting team from a different game. Also, some pages were initialled, and some had no identification at all. When he is down to selling the lesser pages for next to nothing after flooding the market with these things, maybe he will recognize his error. Incidentally, I recently sold my 1879 Harry Wrigtht scorebook privately to someone who will keep it for many years. I want the buyer of the 1883 book to know that this book contained 42 signatures; also, that the 1880 book contains about 60 more. I say this so educated buyers will know the signatures he is selling are not particularly rare. Hoefully, that will help the value of them plunge precipitously.

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Posted By: Marc S.

I was not aware that his signatures were so relatively common for an 19th century HOFer. My favorite 19th century item in my collection is the hand-written Contract Extension on Philadelphia National BallClub stationary to then Phillies Phenom Chas. Ferguson. Unfortunately, this one page piece was not signed by Ferguson, but it features a beautiful Wright signature, and it is completely hand-written by him. I like the piece for many reasons: That Ferguson was one of the Phillies first stars (before typhoid fever took him away...), that it speaks to the history of baseball's greatest team of futility, the Phillies, and that it is ex-Halper, as I had the privilege of viewing his collection in late 1992/early 1993. It is still one of my favorite items - and I paid a lot of money for it from Sotheby's. I imagine it has to be worth a few thousands dollars to this day. What I struggle with is how to best preserve/display such a piece. (e.g. to be able to display it but ensure that there is no degredation of the contract.)

MS

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Posted By: Rob L

Nice trim job on the scorecard. Good thing it can't be graded by PSA....

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Posted By: ramram

Outstanding item! Could you just imagine if this guy got a hold of it. He'd clip the signature and sell the Harry and the Wright as two autographs. Then he would clip the letterhead and sell it. Lastly, he'd probably wipe his a** with what's left of the document. Please, take great care of it!!!

Rob

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Did Bruce Foster have a copy of Chadwick's 1868 "The Game of Base Ball" in his cat zoo ...

and if so, is it the one you still possess?

Does yours have an asking price? I promise NOT to cut out the pages and sell them separately.

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Posted By: hankron

Luckily, the value of a MLB contract is directly related to its wholeness. Irrelevant to any signatures, the contract itself is significant. Cutting it up would be akin to cutting up a team signed baseball to get some cut signatures.

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Posted By: barry sloate

Yes, he did have a Chadwick book, and through a circuitous route it eventually became the one that was in my collection. However, my copy has been sold.

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Posted By: ramram

Now you just gave some of these knuckleheads a new idea! Next weeks ebay special "cut autographs on leather"!

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Posted By: Rob_L

I am willing to cut up for the price. I bet I could get more for the individual autographs combined then I paid for the original ball. Any takers?

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Posted By: Adam M

I take a cut sig. from a 1934 Yankees ball. I have been searching for an AUTNENTIC Gehrig cut sig for eight years now.

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Posted By: Adam M

I mean AUTHENTIC not AUTNENTIC (LOL)

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Posted By: Rob_L

Sold. However, the Gehrig signature is fairly light, probably a 2 or so.

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Posted By: hankron

The talented but disturbed 1940s-50s boxer Jake LaMotta was in need of some major cash in order to make bail and stay out of jail. He took a hammer and knocked the jewels off his world championship belt. The local jeweler later explained to LaMotta that, while the jewels were nice, it was the belt as a whole that was rare and held the value. LaMotta didn't make bail.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

It happened and was depicted in "Raging Bull"

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Posted By: jay behrens

I just got an email from the seller of the pages. He says that all the score books have been digitally archived. As I told him, that's all fine and good, but digitally archiving the Mona Lisa, then cutting up so everyone can enjoy it just isn't the same as seeing the whole thing.

Jay

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Posted By: barrysloate

I've been exchanging emails with him too, and I agree with Lee completely. It is archivally acceptable to take a book completely apart, photograph the pages, and then have it sewn back together. That is done sometimes when rare books need to be cleaned and restored. But ripping out the pages and selling them is not acceptable. I sent him a long and detailed message and the response I got this morning was "Thank you. Good luck." That didn't strike me as a satisfying explanation.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I meant to say I agree with Jay, not Lee. Same last name, brain lock. Sorry.

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Posted By: jay behrens

The last email I got form him said that he is only selling off the pages from one book and that the other 5 he is have preserved and rebound in leather. Still doesn't excuse destroying one book.

Jay