General

Of all the players of the Deadball Era, Christy Mathewson is among the most revered among hobbyists.  The legend of the “Christian Gentleman” as exactly that – a college educated gentleman, playing a sport at the time often reserved for miscreants, led him to be one of the most popular and well-liked players of his […]

Dennis Clotworthy’s outstanding book Al Kaline’s Last Bat Boy is a wonderful memoir of his growing up around the Detroit Tigers, filled with warmth and humor, and fascinating anecdotes about his time as the team’s batboy in the early 1970s.  During the 1974 season, Clotworthy witnessed the end of an era, with the release of fan favorite

Along with the Series 8 card of Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Casey Stengel card is one of the two key rarities of the T210 Old Mill issue.  The first pro card of the future “Old Professor” is depicted here as an outfielder with the Maysville Rivermen of the Blue Grass League.  Stengel would play three

Expectations were high for the New York Yankees entering the 1979 season.  Coming off two consecutive World Series victories and one of the greatest comebacks the game had ever seen, the Yankees had an All-Star lineup, had added All-Stars Tommy John and Luis Tiant to their pitching staff, and had a strong bullpen anchored by

Since our last catalog auction, we’ve made a number of references to the Dennis Clotworthy Collection.  With our spring auction right around the corner, it makes sense to provide a more formal introduction to the collection. Born in Malta, Dennis Clotworthy came to the United States with his family in 1963.  Settling in Detroit, he

It took twenty seasons of American League baseball for the Cleveland Indians to capture their first pennant; a 98-56 record was sufficient to lead the second-place White Sox by two games and propel the club to its first World Series, against Wilbert Robinson’s Brooklyn Robins.  The club’s regular season success was marred by the death

One of the most amazing components of our recent Texas Find was a massive cache of autographed 1952 Topps cards. Not enough to be a complete set (no Mantle, for instance), the collector clearly acquired many duplicates to be used as trade bait.  The result is this enormous box of cards, each one autographed. There

After going through the entire 1971 Topps set card-by-card, we were emboldened and decided to dig into another extremely condition-sensitive issue: 1962 Topps. The “woodgrain” borders of the ’62 set are prone to chipping, much like the black-bordered 1971 Topps cards.  Atrocious centering exacerbates the condition issues with this set, as do 1960s Topps print