picks of the week

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Posted By: hankron

I have noticed on a few prior occasions that early oversized baseball photos have sold for less than I expected, so I thought I'd point out that the following MastroNet lots are priced at reasonable levels.

#1002 Carl Horner Boston Americans with Cy Young. Seems the major defect is some repair. Horner's oversized composite photos like this are limited. Consider that Horner's cabinets (lots smaller) of common MLB players often sell over $1,000.

#1003 Lowell team with Hugh Duffy. Major defect is a light image (fatal flaw?), but the photo is rare due to its huge size. There are few 19th Hall of Famer baseball photos larger than this.

I am not associated with these lots, have no idea who is the consignor and am not prediting future eBay re-sale prices, but thought this pair woth pointing out.

[Archive]

Posted By: AdamBaxter

Both of the photos you mentioned are good deals right now. The Duffy in particular is in my opinion very reasonably priced right now at under 1000 bucks.

The are several points a potential bidder on the Duffy lot should keep in mind:

1.19th century New England League photos in general don't come up for sale that often, especially ones that can be ID'd. Most examples encountered on Ebay generally date from 1910 on. Scorecards and other ephemera are the most commonly encountered items on Ebay from this league.

2. NEL photos this size are very, very tough, I have seen two NEL cabinets on ebay in the last 2 years that were oversized (both of which I own). Both were Fall River, both were from 1905.

3.Any NEL photos depicting HOFer's (Lajoie, Duffy, Burkett,McCarthy) etc., especially from the 1800's are rare.

4. Oversized or Imperial sized cabinets if I'm correct are usually unique or are lower in population compared to smaller sized cabinets.

The Duffy is also significant as it depicts the Lowell team from the NEL's first truly official season. According to Troy Soos book "Before the Curse", Prior to 1887 the League was actually 2 seperate entities: The Eastern New England Baseball Association and the Southern. The NEL most people are familiar with existed from 1887-1949.