What's value? 1953 World Series National Announcer Gene Kelly Hand Scored Scorebook!

[KC Doughboy]

Gene Kelly was the Phillies radio announcer from 1950-1959. He was tapped by Mutual Radio as the Play-by-play announcer for the 1950 & 1953 World Series.

All of America listened to his calls in the 1953 World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers & NY Yankees.

I have Gene Kellys personal hand-scored scorebook for 1953. It includes the Phillies regular season from June 27, 1953 through the end of the year, but more incredibly, it has all six games from the 1953 World Series!

Here are a few images:

[Jantz]

Cool "One of a Kind" item!

As far as value, I have no clue. Whatever someone is willing to pay I guess.

It would be a keeper for my PC if I owned it.


Jantz

[KC Doughboy]

Thanks Jantz... It is an amazing item! It literally gives me chills flipping through it, looking at the World Series, knowing that each pencil mark was added as history was being made.

Baseball was king of the World in 1953 and the TV broadcast was only available in limited markets around NYC, so the rest of humanity was on the edge of their seats, listening to Gene Kelly describe each and every play.

I purchased a group of items from Gene Kellys personal collection, but went in 50/50 with a fellow collector, so unfortunately I can't just hold onto it. I will enjoy it for the 3, 6, 12 months, or however long it takes to sell.

I hope someone can give me some direction to head to find a fair market value!

[GoldenAge50s]

Terrific item that needs to be offered by one of the auction houses to realize it's full value.

[doug.goodman]

Wow!

[conor912]

Great piece! I agree with Fred....if you had to sell, you'd have to put it on the block and let 'er rip. You could tell me $200 or $20k and I'd believe you either way.

[KC Doughboy]

I'm just a little hesitant in choosing the auction house route. I just got done "giving away" a lot of nice stuff through a major aution house (1952 Topps Mantle 4.5, 1933 Goudey Set, 1941 Play Ball Set, 1960 Topps NM-MT+ set, along with several graded DiMaggios from the 40's, including some auto'd, plus several other high end collectibles), and the burning sensation from that experience hasn't faded yet!
Does anyone know of any "experts" in this arena that could at least give me a ballpark price and maybe share what some comparible items have sold for?

[ramram]

Eric,

I collect rare scorebooks and have a few dozen of them. That said, pricing can be all over the place. There's not too many people that collect them for one reason or another, so they can go very cheap or for quite a bit depending on the content and if you have at least two very interested bidders. I'm fascinated by them because they often capture the only detailed play-by-play of some important games/teams.

Interestingly, similar to what you have, I have a few hundred bound scoresheets from Philadelphia radio announcer Claude Haring which cover games at Shibe Park from the 1940's to the early 1960's.

Rob M.

Stachel Paige's first Major League win on 7/15/48 as noted in Haring's scorebook. "Page" (sic) won in relief against the Philadelphia A's -

Scorebook Satchel Paige game.jpg

In the front of one of his binders is that oh so famous announcement that was made before every game:

FullSizeRender.jpg

[KC Doughboy]

Thanks ramram... and thanks for sharing yours. You have some great pieces!

[GoldenAge50s]

Originally Posted by KC Doughboy

I'm just a little hesitant in choosing the auction house route. I just got done "giving away" a lot of nice stuff through a major aution house (1952 Topps Mantle 4.5, 1933 Goudey Set, 1941 Play Ball Set, 1960 Topps NM-MT+ set, along with several graded DiMaggios from the 40's, including some auto'd, plus several other high end collectibles), and the burning sensation from that experience hasn't faded yet!

Eric--

Are you saying you didn't recv anything "close" to the going rate for those cards?
Will you share which auction house you used so we can be alert to keeping our "eye" on them?

[KC Doughboy]

I want to keep this thread focussed on the scorebook, but if you want to know about the auction, read below.




Many of my items set record low or near record low prices, based on my research. I dont want to get into a pissing match with the auction house in this thread (he is a member here). If you'd like to know the company, you can check my message history and see it right away.
I would be happy to PM you the item #'s and final sales prices.

[joshleland]

As the other gentleman said score books are simply not commercial unless it is really something special from someone important or from really important events. Also things that are pre 1880s are quite good but the books they are in are more important many times than the scoring itself unless again it qualifies for importance by the scorer and event. The Henry Chadwick scoring material scoring material I have seen were fake so be careful of those. There are Harry Wright scorebooks that have been floating around for years. Originally these were true Grail items but over time they have become less interesting. Most of the reason there is that they were sadly broken up to sell to autograph collectors for the "HW" scorer initials on each game. It also made them more commercial as most people would rather pay 800-1200$ for one game versus a whole book. In turn the prices of these have really come down so you can get them for half what they were 20-30 years ago when they first came out. That's amazing when you compare them to the rise in value for similar things. The buy of those was interesting. It came from a shut in old timer who was a hoarder in a house wher you could not move. There was a group of like 4 or 5 of the most important 19th century collectors who went in on them together so each could get one which would never happen today. The slightly nefarious lead guy ended up screwing the rest of them by keeping one of the scorebooks that he never told the others about. They of course found out pretty soon after. You can hide a lot of things but not a Harry wright scorebook.

I digress. I have had several scorebooks like the one you have. It is a nice one with the name custom printed. Good detail to the scoring, this guy was a pro. But he's not a huge name and the event is cool but the were a lot of World Series and there will be a lot more. Yankees and Brooklyn are always good but there were a lot of them relatively so we are spoiled. 1953 is great but doesn't stand out like 55, 47 and Jackie or specifically the Larsen perfect game. It's good but just not great. A cool thing to own but not commercial. Probably 2-300$ at auction. You should sell it to the guy who wouldn't be surprised at 20k.

[doug.goodman]

I collect just about anything "scored" and have thousands of programs and scorecards and a few dozen scorebooks. I have also accumulated quite a few Lanny Frattare scorecards, from his time as the announcer for the Pirates.

I think Josh pretty much nailed the pricing on this one.

Doug

[KC Doughboy]

Hey Josh,
Thanks so much for the great information!