"Missed it by THAT much"

[YankeeFan]

If you remember the 1960's TV show "Get Smart", you've heard "Missed it by THAT much" said many times by the inept Maxwell Smart whenever he almost did something right.

That's what I thought about when I saw the photo shown below.

As collector's, most of us like to add things of some historical significance to our collections. Depending on our collecting focus and budget, that may mean different things to different people. From the things we enjoy seeing here on N54 some of you have truly amazing historical artifacts from the 19th century onward. Thankfully, there are many things which have some degree of historical significance yet are still very affordable to the average collector.

Then we have the near misses, like the one below. If you've been collecting for a while, you've probably come across memorabilia that for one reason or another is close to being significant...it just "misses by that much". Which of course makes it either insignificant or at best much less desirable.

That's what I would like see in this thread. Show us your items like someone's 499th HR stub, a scored program to some star player's 2nd game, a ticket stub to a 1-hitter, a wire photo or older re-strike of a photo you wish was a Type 1, etc. Maybe you have something that is likely to have historical significance, but is lacking solid provenance. Things that make you say "I'd really have something special here if only..."

And if you have a good story to go with your item, please share that too.

I'll start off with this recent pick-up of a press photo from the Yankees game of 4-17-1951. Mickey Mantle's debut. The only problem is that Mickey is not in the picture!