OTish - Vintage Basketball / Newspaper Collecting

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Posted By: Alan Elefson

Hi-
I recently bought a grouping of more than a hundred well cutout newspaper clippings consisting of Baseball (Major League mostly, some minors/college), Football (college and h.s.), and Basketball (barnstorming teams, and college/college prep) from the late teens to the early 1920s. I was wondering what this board thinks about their collectability?
Please ensure, I will by no means send these to the fake grading companies and attempt to pass them off as odd ball "cards" but I personally like them for a couple of reasons. They are affordable (my "hoard" cost less than 10 dollars), and sometimes depict players that you have no other way of attaining a contemporary image of (I guess except for the possibility of purchasing the original press photos, which I do realize are highly collectable). For example please see the two scans below. One depicts the early 1920s Barnstorming Celtic team from New York that the Boston Celtics were named after (I believe) and the second depicts all Americans from the same time period. I have personally never seen promotional photos or other items related to the original Celtics, but please feel free to post anything you might have.
Additionally, I have decided to combine some of these clippings with others I have found and add them to a HOF collection I am trying to assemble. Instead of attempting the lofty pursuit of a contemporary card (if available) of every HOF player (some of the collections I have seen displayed on the Card side of this discussion board are absolutely amazing) I will build a collection using newspapers and clippings. Please note, this is not a wanted ad for newspaper clippings, I have quite enough to be getting along with for the forseeable future. In the group I recently bought there were also at least two Blacksox players as well (including a nice, well cut image of Shoeless Joe), so I might try to build a set of those as well.
I have several general questions:
1. Does anyone else collect these type of items (either full papers or clippings)?
2. What is the most you have paid for one (excepting 19th century for the moment)?
3. I was considering storage in ultrapro type sheets, good or bad idea?
4. Of Baseball HOFs, which ones would be the most difficult? I will try and answer my own question here by postulating there will be some correlation to card availability (e.g. 19th Century pioneers and owners are tough as well as early Negro Leaguers).
Sorry for the long and somewhat Off Topic Post but I figured I would see what this board feels about these types of collectables.
Alan Elefson
aelefson@meditech.com

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Posted By: Joseph

In terms of historical interest, for me nothing beats an old baseball scrapbook assembled by a fan of, say, the Detroit Tigers in the 1930s. Years ago, I was an avid and active collector of such items and have a couple hundred of them. Occasionally the books would have ticket stubs and such, but for the most part, they were newspaper clippings which I've spent many hours persusing. Fascinating stuff, which would only be available in many cases by a trip to a library in, say, Detroit.

Value? Generally the joy and info one gets is the real value. Pictures--Sunday color supplement photos--might be worth a bit more--and obviously stubs and cards more than that--but I'd say the average price I paid for one was somewhere between 10 and 20 bucks. Frankly, there's a part of me that kinda wishes the place where they are housed would burn down.

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Posted By: Jason Mishelow

I have always felt that newpapers are extremly under appricated. You are still able to get 1850-60 papers like the Spirit of the Times with great baseball content for 10-15 dollars per issue. A glance at the pervious three month of Lelands shows that even bound editions covering an entire year in the 1860's will only run you about $250. I cannot understand the despartiy between somthing like a newspaper from the 1860 and a Baseball guide from the same period. Is the guide so much rarer that it justifies prices 100X what the newpaper goes for.

If this area of collecting does interest you I would suggest that you simply tipe old newspaper or rare newpaper into a goolge search- a number of seller with very interesting inventory pop up ands the prices are very low


Jason