1874 Amory Hodges Cabinet (RARE)

[joeadcock]

This cabinet recently listed in Ebay, of Amory Hodges(minor league). As noted, dated by SGC as 1874. This would make it one of the older baseball cabinets out there. Went for under $200 which seems rather cheap for such as cabinet.

Anybody in the forum know about these? Unclear, how SGC would have accurately graded it as Amory Hodges also.

Is it possible that this cabinet slipped under the wire in terms of getting sold so cheap(IMO)?

[bmarlowe1]

SABR lists him as an NA/NL umpire 1874-1877 with no known images. Neither they nor baseball-reference have a minor league record for him, though BR lists him as a minor league player.

I believe he does appear in an 1874 Harvard team photo - the guy in the cabinet could be him.

[scooter729]

I saw this one and the other one sold at the same time. It seemed like it potentially was a bit of a leap in ID'ing these - I wondered if SGC based the ID solely on the pencil notations on the back.

I did bid (think I was underbidder) but went conservative on it, since I wasn't too sure about the ID...

[prewarsports]

They are legit, they originated from me somewhat. I bought an 1874 Harvard complete album full of Harvard students. It was one of those 19th century albums where the individual cabinets slip through windows in the pages so they can be viewed and held in place. I bought it because there were (11) Notman studio cabinet photos of the earliest of Harvard Football players which I sold along with the original album to a Football collector. Each of these was identified in the book under each image and I VERY careful identified each and every person in pencil on the back as I pulled them out for no mistakes to be made. I still have a photo I made of the index page from the album which clearly shows Amory Hodges listed and this along with other photos I gave to the person I sold it to helped ID these with SGC I am sure. I DID NOT get them graded myself, all that was done after I sold them but barring any funny business after they left my hands, the ID's are 100% correct!

Rhys Yeakley

[joeadcock]

Thanks for the insight Rhys

The ebay seller who sold the Amory Cabinet bought them in a Hunt Auction(I would guess, as the Hunt lot included several Cabinets he was selling).

[spec]

Hodges and Columbus Tyler, whose cabinet photo was auctioned by the same seller who had Hodges, were players for Harvard University in the early 1870s. I did biographical research on both years ago as part of a SABR project identifying 19th century umpires and I am quite certain neither played professionally nor had any connection with pro baseball other than umpiring occasionally (it was common practice in the National Association to use amateur players as umpires and apparently their teams did not object). I notified the eBay seller of these cards that these men were not professional players, but he did not modify his descriptions, and I was reluctant to post this information on Net54 for fear of "outing" the auction. These also are not the first known images of Hodges and Tyler since both were pictured in Harvard University publications at the time they played as well as years later in retrospectives. Incidentally, these two cabinets, plus one of a Harvard football player, were part of a small lot auctioned by one of the major auction houses only weeks before they appeared on eBay.
Bob Richardson