Dating Indianapolis Clowns Broadsides
 

As a longtime collector of Clowns items I felt I could provide a bit of education about dating some clowns items. I see a lot of clowns items being sold via ebay and major auctions (there is a great broadside currently in Leland's) and one thing that keeps coming up is that the items being sold as 1940's items are often much latter. I think that the Leland's lot would be 1957 at he earliest. I have attached a couple of scans for some preliminary broadside drawing for games that occurred during the middle 1960's. I do not think that this is being done with malice but simply that people do not understand the Clowns long history. While it is true that the Negro Leagues basically came to a close in the late 1940's or early 1950's the Clowns kept on going into the 1980's (yes 80's that is not a misprint) There are two great books "Barnstorming to Heaven" and "Some are Called Clowns" which chronicle the latter years of the team. Here are a couple of guideposts to best judge what year (or period) clowns items come from.

If they are referred as Ethiopian Clowns -pre- 1944
If they are referred to as Cincinnati Clowns 1944
If listed as Official League game 1946-52
If King Tut is listed as main headliner 1940-1955ish
If Nature Boy Williams listed as main headliner 1957-62ish
If Owner is listed as Ed Hammner then later 1950's - 1970's

The Clowns were a important and interesting teams and even some of the latter items would be great pick ups. But collectors need to understand what there are buying and mot just assume that if its negro league then its from the 1940's

Great information thanks for sharing.

Great info and interesting broadside.

Rob M.