H&B/LS Vault Sale

[yanks12025]

I read before several times that H&B had a vault sale back in 1994. Does anyone have other information about the sale. What were the costs of the bats, were their big name hall of famers in the lot (Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, etc). Thanks

[Mark]

Michael Montbriand published an article about the vault sale in SCD in Sept 1992. It includes the following:

"Earlier in the year, two New york businessmen, Art Jaffe (Left Field Collectibles) and Pete Siegel (PBS Realty) purchased at least 8,000 old baseball bats for resale. These bats were mostly Hillerich & Bradsby Co. brand bats from the early 1900's to 1930's. Mixed in were Spalding, Hanna Batrite, A.J. Reach, and maybe a few other brands."

"To put it mildly, there has been a virtual feeding frenzy since March by the bat collectors and dealers who have participated in the distribution of this large quantity of bats into the hobby. At first, some bat collectors expressed concerns that the bat market would be over-saturated with so many old bats at one time, thus depressing values of in existing collections and the bat market as a whole for the foreseeable future. Neither occurred. In fact, these old bats offered by Jaffe and Siegel have increased the demand for quality older bats."

"It is my understanding that the vast majority of these bats, maybe 90 percent, have no labeling on the barrel end, or have no labeling at all, or are common players bats. The game-used bats of Hall of Famers and star players from this 8.000 bat cache probably number about 800. That is insufficient to satisfy the appetite of the growing ranks of bat collectors seeking vintage Hall of Fame material..."

"My involvement with this smaller group of 800 older bats has been in the authentication process. I have authenticated a number for various dealers or have assisted in their authentication..... Bats of Shoeless Joe Jackson, Lou Gehrig, Speaker, Hornsby, Eddie Collins, Greenberg, Grover C. Alexander, Bob Feller, Bill Terry, Earle B. Combs, Ty Cobb, Red Ruffing, etc., etc. would show up in a continuous flow at my door....."

"And, once these 800 or so bats are gone -- sold, squirreled away in collections -- that's it. There are no more. Unless a major bat collector sells his or her collection, I doubt there will ever surface another large group of 1920's Hall of Fame game used players bats...."

Even if many of the bats were snapped up by collectors before they hit the open market, Art Jaffe did place ads for bats in the back of Tuff Stuff for a couple years. I'm looking at one of his ads from Sept 1993, and most of the 100+ bats in each ad were "game used" and from the 20's. You could get e.g., a Hod Ford for $350, a Jake Daubert for $800, Paul Waner for $1200, and the Gehrigs and Ruths and Speakers were listed at P.O.R. I believe that the asking price was around $14K. The prices for most bats were negotiable. Another ad from 1994 offers the bats of minor stars (e.g. Bordagaray, Hollocher, Frank Snyder) for $175-275. The ads always said that they had many more bats than they listed and that you should just call him up and ask about any bats that you may want.