I had the pleasure of finalizing a deal with a fellow local collector for two items with a great collecting story attached to them.
The items themselves are two scarce 1908 "OUR HOME TEAM" Postcards published by H. E. Smith Publishing, St. Louis. and include one Chicago Cubs version and one Chicago White Sox version (five teams are known to exist). They are very elaborate postcards done in a unique style that vintage collectors love. When you see the postcards I bought, however, they are far from EX condition. In fact, I'm not sure what their technical grade would be, but assuming POOR. But read on and discover why they are the way they are.
These postcards were indeed elaborate. The front and back panels are the same. When opened like a book, the inside includes a smaller panel door with an "Our Home Team" baseball on it. Open that hinged door and the team name is printed along with a schedule of home games for the club. Then, that panel hides an accordion-folded 8-panel strip of player photos, with players from the team printed on both sides of the panels. In all, the postcards should look like this:
Now, the postcards I bought have a pretty obvious and intentional damage to them:
Yes, many of the fold-out player panels have had the players cut out of them. Such a travesty, right? Who could do such a thing?
As it turns out, a young boy named Alan Jackman.
Alan Jackman was a very early autograph collector. As a boy, he and his brother David spent 9 years (1902-1912) assembling a scrapbook with photos of just about every player, manager and umpire in the majors. The boys cut photos out of Spaulding Guides, newspapers, and - you guessed it - these "Our Home Team" postcards. When it was finished in the fall of 1912, they began taking it to Pirate games in their hometown of Pittsburgh and also traveled by train to other parks in order to get as many of the photos autographed as possible. Their successes included Honus Wagner, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and at least 34 other HOFers. Ty Cobb, according to legend, stopped a game and had all his teammates sign for the boys.
Alan became the custodian of the scrapbook and kept it in his possession until 1975. Towards the end of his life, Mr. Jackman donated the incredible scrapbook to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It was "enthusiastically received by the director and librarian 'who could think of no compilation of autographs to match it'." I like the anecdote that only one player ever refused to sign for the young boy (identity unknown), and he was a non-hall of famer, so in Alan's words "he missed out on his chance to be in the Hall of Fame!"
I'm excited that I've had the opportunity to add these items to my PC - purchasing them from a local collector that bought several items from Mr. Jackman's collection in the 1970's and has had them ever since. The postcards have the "Alan Jackman" stamp he used on items in his early collection. I intend to keep these items together and take them with me to the Baseball HOF, where I hope to match them up to the cutouts in Mr. Jackman's donated scrapbook. What a great photo that would make to have them side by side! I hope to make my HOF trip sometime in 2016, researching this item and their files on my PC guys Cap Anson, Hack Wilson, Rabbit Maranville and Carl Lundgren.
The scrapbook itself still resides at the HOF. In 2002 it was a part of a traveling exhibit of HOF treasures. Last October, a reference to it was made in an article posted on the HOF website. Rockstar Jack White, on a personal tour of the HOF, said "The scrapbook from 1912 that those two brothers made is not only one of the most interesting things in the Library archives, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen in my life."
http://baseballhall.org/news/jack-white
Thanks for reading. It's very satisfying personally owning something that directly relates to our collecting hobby's history from more than 100 years ago. I'll always look at these items with a smile towards the young boy that was so dedicated to collecting when he took his scissors to them so long ago!
