Collectors Guide to Authenticating Baseball Uniforms

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Posted By: Dave Grob

I am currently working on a collector's guide to authenticating game used baseball jerseys. As of this time, the working draft contains sections on tagging, use of lighting and magnification techniques, building and using your own research library, imagery analysis techniques, and using a check list that I have developed to establish and implement a methodology to evaluate and grade items. I would love feedback from other collectors on what they would find useful in a guide. The intent is create a more informed collector.

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Posted By: Nick Martinez

Dave,
I think any valid information that would help buyers and sellers
of Uniforms would be a great help!

Regards,
Nick

Please register for a free auction catalog: http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/Default.asp

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

As someone who collects vintage photographs I think it would be great if you had a section that identified the jersey and the year it was used with all of the running changes for every major league team. This would greatly help me in dating photographs.

Good luck with the guide.

Dan

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Posted By: Dave Grob

Dan,

Your are spot on. Part of the section on imagery analysis is intended to show how to "pick apart" a photo for commonly overlooked details that can help date a photo, thus the uniform in question. In some cases, I have been able to ID a date by looking at the details on the scoreboard in the background. These will often show what teams are playing and who the starting pitchers were. Much of this historical data is available on line.

You can also data a picture to a period if you understand when particular manufactuer's uniforms featured things like hole vented vs cotton elastic croch and underarm areas.

Great Comment..

Thanks,
dave

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Well, that sounds like exactly what I need. Sign me up for a copy.

Dan

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Posted By: Giants00

Dave,
I would be very happy to help as well, my knowledge and data base is really pre-1955. there are several things that are very important to see if we can sort out:
1) mfg by team by year. There are some sources, but i think it would be great to have a best opinion
2) I have noticed on Corbis that there are now more locker room photos than ever, and some reveal tagging. it is clear that not all tagging is identical, but we should at least know the majority of tagging formats (ie Cards in the tail, Giants in the neck for a particular year)
3) when did teams move from hand made to machine made unis. This is very telling for identifying outright frauds or more likely later altered jerseys.
4) number of jerseys issued...a very controversial subject
5) playoff/world series jersies. were new flannels or were regular season ones used...
6)what does the HOF have, and what do they think is the proper tagging.
there are some ancillary sources i have (spalding uniform catalogs, etc) that claim that in 1912 9 teams used spalding, but getting better and more detailed info would be really useful.
I have no idea on the modern stuff, but for the older stuff, it would be useful.
dan
dscheinm@cisco.com

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Posted By: Dave Grob

Dan,

I have looked at many of these same issues and will plan to contact you directly via e-mail as that response will be rather lengthy.. As far as the Hall of Fame, I was asked by them to come up and help out one of their graduate research assistants about three years ago on this same issue. The Hall of Fame only has about 600+ uniforms. This is sort of a small sample and does not lend itself to doing much trend analysis. The other problem is the majority of these are star players. I have found it more productive to work with commons as the likelyhood that they have been faked is much lower. I have a data base of some 3000 uniforms (1200+ flannels) that fleshes this out.

Thanks for the note and great issues..
Dave