Autographed ball help?

[henson1855]

I am in the process of acquring a collection of autographed balls and need help with the approximate value and rarity of single signed balls of Martin Dihigo and Oscar Charleston? I haven't been able to find any exemplars on the net and am not a collector of Negro/Latin league players.

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by henson1855

I am in the process of acquring a collection of autographed balls and need help with the approximate value and rarity of single signed balls of Martin Dihigo and Oscar Charleston? I haven't been able to find any exemplars on the net and am not a collector of Negro/Latin league players.

Hi Mike,
Bill Corcoran is one of the best when it comes to knowledge about Latin/ Negro league players. I would absolutely try contacting him and ask him this question. If you haven't dealt with him, Bill is a great guy to deal with and a wealth of knowledge- one of our industry's best for sure!
Please feel free to use my name as an introduction.

Bill's e-mail is: bcorcora@tampabay.rr.com

Good luck!

[scooter729]

If they truly are genuine and authentic single-signed balls, esp. of Charleston, the sky would be the limit. Even a cut of Charleston would be $5K+, so a ball would be well into the tens of thousands.

It would be sweet to see these if they were real, and not just from our friends at Coaches Corner....

[roarfrom34]

Originally Posted by henson1855

I am in the process of acquring a collection of autographed balls and need help with the approximate value and rarity of single signed balls of Martin Dihigo and Oscar Charleston? I haven't been able to find any exemplars on the net and am not a collector of Negro/Latin league players.

I hope these aren't originating from Coaches Corner Auctions........

[henson1855]

Thank you guys I appreciate the tips, they are authentic, ciirca 1930's, I had read a while back that Charleston,Pop Lloyd,and Dihigo were all pretty scarce but I have never collected them,or was even interested in trying to add them to my collection until now. Hopefully I can add them soon as part of the deal I am working on.

[RichardSimon]

Of course this is very basic but:
EXTRAORDINARY care is needed in this deal.
Be awfully careful and make sure the seller will take a return.
A sure sign of a shady seller is that he won't take returns.

[prewarsports]

The odds are 1,000,000:1 that these are not authentic so be VERY skeptical. I dont know if there is a true Negro League Single Signed ball from that era in the entire hobby. If there is, I've never seen one. Multi-Signed balls are rare enough with only a few handfuls known from the Negro Leagues in the 1930's. During the Depression, and with the Black Community hit especially hard in this County (Generally Speaking) kids would get as many autographs as they could on baseballs instead of one or two and there just were not as many people in this country seeking the autographs of these guys.

Once again generally speaking, people got autographs of men they put on a pedestal and thought they may never meet again so they took the RARE opportunity that they might bump into someone famous by immortalizing the moment with a signature. An autograph when it all boils down is the concrete proof od a moment in time. Negro League players were so engrained in the communities they stayed in (where they lived/ate/hung out) that the sense of urgency to immortalize ONE MOMENT was not the same as with Major Leaguers. This is my theory as to why some of the famous Negro Leaguers of the 1920's-1930's were SO famous yet there are essentially no autographs of them. Things change over time and both autographs and autograph seekers have changed dramatically over the last 80-100 years. This is why there is basically no collections of Sports Autographs pre-1920 that dont originate from a ballplayer himself, even in the major leagues.

Just because a ball is old doesn't mean anything either.

You never know, but I would be as skeptical on these as someone trying to sell a bridge in New York.

No offense, just my opinion as someone who knows the autograph hobby pretty well.

Rhys

[henson1855]

No offense taken, I appreciate the knowledge this forum has to offer. I have had knowledge of the collection dating back to 1986, I was primarily interested in 5 single signed balls from early hof'ers,until recently the owner expressed very little interest in parting with all or part of the collection.I don't collect Charleston or Dihigo,and know very little about them,but as a baseball rarity I would like to add them,of course with any purchase of this size ,I will have as many experts as I can ,try to verify/authenticate before the deal is done.Psa is just a few miles away,I will start there.

[earlywynnfan]

Originally Posted by henson1855

No offense taken, I appreciate the knowledge this forum has to offer. I have had knowledge of the collection dating back to 1986, I was primarily interested in 5 single signed balls from early hof'ers,until recently the owner expressed very little interest in parting with all or part of the collection.I don't collect Charleston or Dihigo,and know very little about them,but as a baseball rarity I would like to add them,of course with any purchase of this size ,I will have as many experts as I can ,try to verify/authenticate before the deal is done.Psa is just a few miles away,I will start there.

Sorry to get into this late, but yer doin' it wrong. PSA and JSA are NOT who you want to go to for these. Call Kevin Keating, he's the best, he wrote the book. Ask Wayne Stivers -- he doesn't authenticate, but maybe he'll help. Hunt down Dr. Layton Revel, he's sure to have the biggest NL collection there is.

Ken Sulik
earlywynnfan5@hotmail.com

[yanks12025]

I'm guessing their going to be fake.