James Armstrong had one of the largest collections ever assembled, Most of his photos are of him posed with the player, My guess is that in the Cobb photo there is a short fellow having a "bad hair day" posed next to him. That's Armstrong , he used to also place a duffle bag at his feet in the photos that said something like "James Armstrong Autograph Collector" , Photo was likely taken at Cooperstown as he was a regular there every year.
After he died in the 1960's his family sold his collection, The rumor was that Joe DiMaggio wanted to buy it for his restaurant and another collector got it instead. There was an article written about the collection that supposedly had MANY THOUSANDS of signed baseballs , Most single signed. I was told it took two semi tractor trailers to haul everything away.
As a weird coincidence I was contacted by Armstrong's kids back about 20 years ago. They had found an old box that had several autograph books from the 1930's & 40's and about 30 signed baseballs. That used to belong to him that somehow got missed when the collection had been sold. They showed me the newspaper clippings from back in the 1950's and the collection was amazing !!! What was kind of sad is that they told me I paid more for the small box of forgotten "goodies" , than their mother had sold his ENTIRE collection for. I realize it was 25 years later but still.......
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