#173 Old Judge Cabinet Blue Mount?
 

I currently have in my collection Old Judge cabinets with black, dull brown, bright brown and red mounts, in addition to the usual tan/salmon color mounts. I seem to have a recollection of having once (more than twenty years ago) seen one with a blue mount.

Has anyone else ever seen one with a blue or other color mount, other than those listed above? Anyone have one?

Dan

Great question, and one that Joe Gonsowski and I talked about when we were working on that section of the Old Judge book. I had heard of a blue mount but had never seen one. It is probably out there but I don't know where. I have seen a few with a greenish tinge to them but I assumed that that shade was some type of discoloration. BTW, as I am sure you know, the red mounts are very scarce also.

Hi Dan- it's been a long time. Hope all is well.

I remember a group lot of N173 in a Leland's Auction about 15 years ago that had different colored mounts. If I ever saw a blue one, it was in that group. But I can't remember for sure.

Hello Dan,

Good information from Jay & Barry as usual.

While neither Jay nor myself have seen a blue mount cabinet, there have been a couple dealers (Terry Knouse being one) and collectors that recall hearing of, or seeing, a blue mount but it has been hidden for a long time. One advanced collector even shared that he believed it was a cabinet of George Gore and was once offered for sale by Lew Lipset in his old "Four Base Hits" catalog days. I checked my back issues but couldn't find it.

Blue mount aside, I've been tracking colored mounts for several years and would like to learn more about which players you have (either publicly or privately).

Could there have been a blue mount offered in the Dennis Goldstein collection? Again I'm going by a faint memory but I remember he had a very deep 19th century collection, and it was sold in 1994. That would be the right time frame.

Barry-Was that one of Lew's auctions?

When Jay asked me about blue mounts when the book was being written, I could have sworn that they existed, but I could not find an example anywhere.

I still have not been able to find evidence of a single example.

I went back through the old Leland's catalogs (1994-96 era - Goldstein, Harry M. Stevens, etc.) and could not find anything. The Goldstein sale did have a collection of Old Judge cabinets, but nothing about a blue mount is noted nor pictured.

The only reference that I can come up with now is Lew Lipset's Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards. Me mentions "blue or black mountings," but makes no mention of brown or red. I think that I have all of Lew's old catalogs. When I have time, I will go back and see if there is any mention of an N173 Gore with blue mount.

That is I that I can come up with.

Leland's auctioned the Dennis Goldstein collection. Maybe it was a different auction that had the lot of colored mounts, but it still would have been around that time. It was when Leland's had the live sales in NYC.