Williamson Cardinals Stan Musial Photograph

[GGterps]

Found this in a 1939 book of newspaper clippings and a few photos. The book seems to have followed mostly Harrison Wickel and the Williamson class D Cardinals farm system. I have little doubt about the authenticity but would like to hear your thoughts. Are there other Williamson photos around of Stan? Any guess as to the value? The pictures are of facing pages in a book. The picture on the left and two news clippings on the right, one of which is about Stan...the "Keystone Kid."

[drc]

It's an old fan's snapshot. Kodak snapshots in general from the period aren't that big of a deal, but due to its early minor league age and nice image and pose, it's desirable. A nice pickup. I don't follow Musial's career closely and don't know what kind of other minor league material there is out there-- but Pre-rookie minor league photos of a Hall of Famer are always desirable and usually scarce to rare. And, luckily for you, the fan took a really sharp and full of character photo. As you might expect, many fans' at the park snapshots can be of less than eye pleasing-- imperfect focus, poorly cropped, shot from too far away, other

[thecatspajamas]

Nice find! I would second David's statement about that shot being far and away better in terms of clarity than many (most?) "snapshot" photos I have seen. As for value, I would think if you could get it in front of the right two bidders, you would do quite well. As David said, early pre-majors photos of star players in uniform generally do quite well. Anonymous or lesser-known players, not so much, but these early photos of stars before they were stars are a bit of a curiosity enjoyed by fans of the players who went on to make a name for themselves, and the relative obscurity of 1930's D-level minor league baseball being what it is, there weren't too many people snapping photos of these guys at that level, making the surviving originals all the more rare (and desirable) now.

[packs]

I bet old Stan would love it if you sent that picture to him to sign.