Negro League Postcard on E-Bay
 

I thought my $4K max bid on e-bay for this postcard would be good enough with room to spare. Guess I was wrong, although the next highest bidder after me was at $1,500...........

Ouch!
 

I was watching this one closely until it passed the $350 mark a day or two ago. My budget wasnt going to allow much more right now. $4049, ouch!!!
I was WAY OFF.

What was the factor/player/rarity that pushed this postcard so high?
Dave

…..

…the non-Cuban expert departs :)

Is that Alejandro Oms seated second from left?

Tom C

It's a great postcard but what makes it special is it's from Martin Dihigo's first couple of years of playing professional ball.
I am not 100% on exact year but my guess is 1923 by looking at the rest of the team, which makes Dihigo 18-19 years old. His first year was 1922.

The 3rd guy from the top left is not a superstar pitcher, it's actually Champeon Mesa.
Some other notables on the photo; superstar Alejandro Oms, Fabre, Baro, Levis, Mirabal, Fernandez among others.

Fantastic postcard, congrats goes out to the winner.

Steve

Amazing PC, strong historical significance, but $4K, Wow!

No Tom, Oms is the one standing in the middle with his arms around Pablo Mesa and JM Fernandez.

I've never seen a photo where Oms is smiling and this one is no different.

That would have been my next guess. He is younger here than most of the images I have seen....his face doesn't look as weathered and drawn as I remember. I figured the guy seated with the blurred face was a more likely candidate.

Tom C

I thought someone might pick up a deal with the incorrect listing and description. Then it was started and hovered between $100 and $350 for several days and I began to think someone might pick up a steal. $4k is amazing. Am I correct (my negro leagues knowledge is not very strong) in believing this predates Martin Dihigo's generally accepted RC? The 1927-28 Mallorquina is considered his RC, but I think this is from 1925-1927 as Mike Herrera would be present in a 1928 photo. (Also am I correct ID'ing the second from the right on the back row as Dihigo? - Like I said, not very knowledgeable.) Other I think I identified are:

Isadro Fabre - Bottom Far Left

and

Top L/R: ?? – Juanelo Mirabal - ?? - ?? – Jose Maria Fernandez – Bernardo Baro – Martin Dihigo – Oscar Levis

I'll stay out of this one at this point, but I thought the undivided back dated this to pre-1910.

Bottom left is without a doubt Isidro Fabre so the image has to be 1921 at it's earliest IMO.

Back was divided with correspondence on one side and address on the other. It would only have address if undivided.

I don't get it, but okay

Sent from my SM-G730V using Tapatalk

It lists Correspondence on one side and Address on the other. If it was pre-divided it would just list Address because the correspondence would need to appear on the front of the postcard. It's just missing the line but would still be considered divided if I'm not mistaken.

Okay, thanks.

Explained perfectly Packs.

4k doesn't surprise me. How do you determine a good or fair price on something so rare and significant? We'll probably never see another.

Have to run out right now but I believe it is the 1927 Cubans team. More later......

Somewhat surprised
 

I was bidding and had the high bid of $1,200 for awhile and was praying it would slide past the big spenders, but I was wrong. It's an absolutely amazing postcard. I narrowed the year due to being between 1923-27.

Not many images of Dihigo from that early and some other great players shown also....

I saw it the first day it was posted, nearly freaked out when I saw $100 thinking it was a buy it now. Realized it was an auction and knew it was going to get expensive. Wasn't thinking 4K expensive though! Congrats to the winner, great PC!

..

If I have the Tetelo Vargas ID correct (front row, second from right) that makes this the 1927 team along with the rest of the player combos previously mentioned by Steve and others. The Cubans team from 1922 to 1927 had virtually the identical roster of star players every season so that made it very difficult to pinpoint the year on this one (if a uniform database for Negro League teams is known, that would help a lot too).

Not Tetelo. See annotated below.

http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/...pse250731a.png

http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/...ps14c373e6.jpg

Right, Jason. Maybe Portuondo seated second from left?

Who knows. I'd love to see how someone could dig that out. I can't believe I even put a name under that person's face. Might as well be silly putty.

Those other two unidentified guys probably hold the key to the year.

Without Vargas and no Pedroso or Hooks Jiminez or Padron, now I'm thinking 1925.

I think you mean Juan Padron. Here's Fabre with Juan Padron from Ryan by way of agatetype. He's not in the image.

http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/...psc0e6496c.jpg

Without Vargas and no Pedroso or Hooks Jiminez or Padron, now I'm thinking 1925. We know the year is '23 - '27 and the nucleus of the team was the same throughout all five seasons. Dihigo's rookie season would be nice and would make it more valuable, otherwise, I don't think it really matters that much.

Funny, the only way that I spotted the postcard on e-bay was because another item was listed recently as a 1900 Cuban Baseball........... and it did not sell so I was checking to see if the seller relisted it or not and came across this postcard. When I saw how the seller listed it, I figured it would be an easy win at a bargain price. Guess I was wrong on both accounts, huh?

It could be as early as 1922. I would guess it's either 1922 or 1923. Amazing piece. Interesting bid history on this one. Looks like the underbidder has had 92 bid retractions just in the past 6 months. Were you the underbidder, Phil?

-Ryan

Yup, I think I mentioned that in my first post, Ryan, that there were only two bidders above $1,500 and I bid $4,000 and did not win it.

Your objective is obviously to point out past bid retractions which have no impact on this discussion, unless a Net 54 member was the seller and, even if so, I did not retract my bid on this item so it has no bearing on the subject.

I had the $1500 bid

92 bid retractions? I didn't think you could do that.

Is it a bidding strategy?

C'mon guys, I can't divulge all of my secrets, then everyone would do it..........

Actually, my main objective was to offer some insight on the possible dating of this incredible item, since I'm somewhat familiar with the subject matter and players that have been identified (and misidentified). I did think the bid history was interesting, which I noticed right when the auction ended. I thought it was very strange that the next highest bid was $3,999.99. I thought it might have been a shill bid, so I looked at the bid history of the underbidder. $3,999.999 didn't seem like an amount someone would bid if they were trying to win an auction. More like they were trying set a reserve, or more accurately, shill. I didn't realize that was you at the time. Frankly, I'm surprised to find out about all your bid retractions, but I'm glad to hear that all the bids on this particular item were legit. It's certainly worth the amount it sold for, in my opinion.

-Ryan

Here is a team photo known to be the 1922 Cuban Stars, jerseys and pants are similar to those on the e-bay postcard, maybe even the same, but socks are different and no Dihigo pictured. I have seen conflicting info on whether Dihigo played for the Cuban Stars in 1922, rosters and stats do not show him there but many of the biographies and narratives that I have read do mention him playing for the Cuban Stars in 1922.

Anyway, just curious, Ryan, how did you come up with the 1923 date as opposed to the other years mentioned. I researched a couple of guys like Teran and Perez and Lopez, who were listed on the '23 roster, but I don't see them in the photo. Who are the remaining couple of ID's that are missing and probably the ones that solve the puzzle?

I must know this secret bid retraction and odd max bid strategy.

I am so impressed with the amount of information you guys have been able to collect via thorough research! I've always been too intimidated lack of 'formal' record-keeping with regards to Negro and Cuban League play to consider studying them.

Max Kudos to all participating in this thread! - Very informative.

It sure would have been fun just to see even one of their games...

Barnstorming Dreams...that must have been fun.

Seems like everyone already does do it, and it makes me a little sick to be honest.

I thought this thread and this item was fascinating, but I'll admit this revelation kind of surprised me. I always assumed some of these serial retractors were on this board, but obviously kept it to themselves.

If you are not shilling auctions, and I doubt you are, you are actively interfering with auctions. Just because Ebay now allows it to happen with zero repercussions, doesn't make it right.

:(

I'll try to dig up what i have as far as box scores for Dihigo on the Cuban Stars. The most obvious detail, while not exactly scientific, is just looking at Dihigo. He is very young in this image. I've been collecting his cards and photos for over 15 years. I've owned over 100 photos of Dihigo over the years and have a database of probably 400-500 total images of him, mostly from various magazines in Mexico, Cuba, etc. Unfortunately, it's much harder to find images and information about his playing days in the United States than it is for Cuba or Mexico. I would find it very hard to believe that this image is from later than 1924, maybe 1925 at the latest. But that seems like a stretch to me. My best guess would be 1923, but a range of 1922-1924 seems the most likely to me.

It's difficult to go by a lot of the info that is out there regarding rosters since there are numerous mistakes in some of the ones published in commonly used reference materials. I would like to see a close-up of the blurry player in the front row, which might help some, but there are only 3 or 4 players it looks like it could be (Portuondo, Teran, Cardenas, Fabelo) and none of them really help to pinpoint an exact year since they were all there for multiple years. I'd also like to see closer scans of the guy in the top left corner.

-Ryan

Pretty sure that's Perez, btw, front row, far right.

-Ryan

Yes, good one Ryan, that's gotta be Pepin Perez, I didn't think of him.

Blowing up the image on my Ipad, the blurry guy in the middle looks more and more like Portuondo but that's just me.

Great info guys. Phil, Jason, Ryan in particular. I was watching this one but with the combination of the old PC back with 1920's style uni's I was already out-matched. And I love research. Then add in that I couldn't properly ID HOF Dihigo and I was done.

Thanks for giving me this thread as an answer key guys!

Amazing, amazing piece. Congrats to the winner.

-Al

I'm sure many here are clever enough to figure out "secrets" that would interfere with other people's auctions to our advantage but instead choose a different path. So, no, not everyone would do it.

Edited to add: wouldn't anyone question the valdidity of an auction result where the underbidder had 92 retractions?

For the sake of accuracy the retraction total is now 93!

That makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth....

You could have had inverse-id skills like me - then you would have bid thinking you were trying to get something entirely different :eek:

Phil, I don't have one bid retraction since I've been on ebay (2002). I can't see a good reason for retracting your bid. Can you enlighten us? Otherwise it seems like you're effing with auctions for profit or for sport. And 93 mistakes in entering the price isn't remotely feasible.

Since so many are interested in my e-bay bidding history and, more specifically, bid retraction history, let me explain what's going on so that everyone can rest assured that there is no profit motive or "secret strategy" behind it.

First of all, I can assure everyone that I have never retracted a bid on a baseball memorabilia item as these are the primary focus of my collecting interests and many times, significant sums of money are involved. Also, I do not take part in shilling or helping other sellers alter auction results and/or prices.

As a side little hobby, some of you may know that I have started dabbling in ice cream collectibles, which many times sell for a $1,00, $5,00, $10.00, etc. and often times, the cost of shipping exceeds the item price. In order to keep this facet of my collecting interest cost effective, I usually try to buy multiple e-bay items from the same seller to minimize the effect on shipping charges. While doing this, many times I lose out on the one or two items that were my main interest and decide that I would rather pass on the remaining items. These situations account for all of my bid retractions except for a couple of times where I entered wrong amounts and go back and make the corrections immediately.

My practice is probably not the best way of handling the scenario and, in the future, I might just use the "watched items" feature more extensively when interested in multiple items from the same seller.

Wow...that is not cool. I make a good portion of my living on ebay (I also own a vintage toy store) and bidders like that really piss me off. Your bid may make the next bidder move on if it's an item that normally only sells for the opening price.

Out of curiosity what excuse do you give when you retract your bid? Because I've never heard the "I got outbid on your other auction and I was trying to bundle to save on shipping" excuse.

What do Ben and Jerry's rookies go for? ;)

Thanks for explaining Phil.

I think I'm throwing this comment out unncessarily or just didn't bother carefully reading all the posts on the bid history... but it's not like the item bid consistently up to $4050. You usually see the enormous jump when two people SNIPE bid and SOMEBODY gets 'hung' ... typically may also involve the seller not getting paid, by either bidder... and it gets relisted. Not saying that either bidder here would not be good for payment, but it sure would have been nice had the auction ended for them below $2000, which is what it was on pace to do. Nothing worse than a last second $2,500 BUMP

If Phil is buying from the guys he is retracting bids from, and every single one of them has been contacred and is okay with it, I don't see the damage.
I have never had anyone contact me to explain a retraction, and when I spot one I normally put them on my blocked bidder list.

Sent from my SM-G730V using Tapatalk

Vomit....

retractions
 

cough: "bullsh-t"

I'm not a fan of all the bid retractions, but I think it's important to point out that nothing like that happened for this particular auction. All of the bids were real. In fact, Phil has said that he only does that for the ice cream collectibles and not baseball items. Phil started the thread, so that's the only reason all of this came up in the first place, but before he gets completely thrown under the bus for his questionable eBay bidding tactics, keep in mind that we're not talking about shill bidding or anything even close to rising to that level. Is it okay? Not in my opinion. But again, I don't buy or sell ice cream memorabilia. On the ice cream memorabilia forum, everyone can be pissed. But I've done numerous deals with Phil and not one has been the least bit shady or questionable. If any other board members have had negative dealings with him or know of him retracting bids on baseball cards or memorabilia, by all means let us know. But he already explained why he does it, and, more importantly, that he doesn't do it on the stuff that relates to this forum. Don't mistake this for me condoning bid retractions because I've never done it and I don't think it's okay to do. But half of the guys now judging Phil for retracting some bids on ice cream memorabilia probably still bid with Legendary or do business with guys like JP Cohen and other quality characters within the hobby.

-Ryan

+1

My guess is that anyone who hasn't been banned by a large AH is still bidding with them any time they see something they 'need'. And the banned ones are having someone else bid for them.

Sorry, but I wonder if all the Ice Cream memorabilia collectors are on some forum right now going to each other..."oh, I retract bids all the time, but not on our beloved Ice Cream memorabilia, I only stick it to those Sports guys every chance I get"


:rolleyes:

Well put, Ryan!

This post
 

..this little post is up to sixty-three replies ; is there a popcorn memorabilia forum ...

Agreed.

Are these 1928 Yuenglings ice cream related items?

For the record I have 1 bid retraction for a seller not disclosing he was out of country. Don't understand 93, on 1,00, 5,00, or 10,00 dollar items when you're bidding 4K on something that may not be the real deal.

Am I the only one who is suspicious that the corner missing may indicate the printer of the Postcard?

Shout me down if need be....

Ty:

I think the postcard is real, no indication that it is not. I wouldn't bid/spend that kind of money if it wasn't. I'm sure the buyer feels the same way that I do.

As far as the disparity in my bids on baseball items as compared to ice cream collectibles, it pretty much comes down to the fact that I don't have the kind of money to make regular purchases of Negro League Baseball items (not to mention the supply would not be nearly enough either). In order to get my daily/weekly fix of buying some type of collectible, the small ice cream items work nicely for me. Otherwise, I might have to go with T206's............

.... well I don't want you to suffer with t206's Phil. In fact please no....

If the buyer is satisfied, there is no reason to complain. I just thought it was remarkable how there is no identifiable studio mark on the photo, and of course no correspondence or date stamp on the back. These were usually sent out to promote a team, not sold at a local store and kept in inventory.

I have thousands of real photo postcards that were never sent. Being postmarked or not has no bearing at all on whether it is real or not. And just looking at the photos in the auction I can tell you I think this is 100% authentic.

Of the thousands of PC's how many can you identify by photographer, place, or player, and by association year? I'd imagine quite a few.

Here is a PC of players who are plausibly identifiable with no reference to photographer or place, other than their uniform, Cuban Stars. Photo circa. 1922-25 seems appropriate, PC printing ?.

I agree. Plus, it is completely incorrect that these were usually sent out to promote a team. Much later, that was true about some PRINTED postcards that would have advertising on the reverse, either printed or stamped onto it. This is a real photo postcard, not a printed postcard.

-Ryan

I have never seen a rppc of a team that was used as a promotional item by the team. I do have one Nebraska Indians team real photo postcard that I have seen multiples of, but I believe it was made to sell in the town where the team once played. And I have seen three of them all from the same seller who resided in Hartford, Wisconsin.

<a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/user/nudan92/media/Nebraska%20Indians%20Baseball%20Team/postcard8.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/Nebraska%20Indians%20Baseball%20Team/postcard8.jpg" border="0" alt="Nebraska Indians at Hartford, WI 1910 photo postcard8.jpg"/></a>

This is more representative of a promotional postcard (printed not real photo)
<a href="http://s22.photobucket.com/user/nudan92/media/Nebraska%20Indians%20Baseball%20Team/postcard1.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/nudan92/Nebraska%20Indians%20Baseball%20Team/postcard1.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo postcard1.jpg"/></a>

The original auction stated 1901-07 divided back, correct? This was determined to be incorrect by net54, and the years were closer to the 1920's with an undivided back. A fact initially questioned by a member and dismissed.

The auction ended under such questionable circumstances that a bidder needed to draw our attention to it. Why? This could have been made like any other transaction without scrutiny.

This postcard IS a divided back...on one side at the top it states "Correspondence" and the other side it states "Address"...that makes it a divided back postcard. Before 1908 you could only write the address on the reverse side of a postcard...all correspondence had to be on the front of the card.

What questionable circumstance did this auction end under?

What do you mean? Everything about the auction is questionable; a rare PC with no efforts to authenticate it goes up for sale on a knowingly unethical website without tangible evidence from experts. UH, yeah, I'll buy it.

Ummm....it's ebay, people list stuff all the time that they don't know what they have. I looked at the rest of this seller's items and it appears he sells a wide range of antique items, and nothing related to baseball. What effort should an antique dealer go to to authenticate a postcard that he likely had no clue whatsoever that it would sell for 4 figures? Does the seller even know there are authentication services for baseball postcards? They probably wouldn't have even known what they had beyond a baseball team postcard if they didn't google the name on the jerseys.

What in the world are you talking about??? The seller didn't know what he had. He lucked out because what he had was awesome. And valuable. Why would he consider, or even know about authentication? And why does every good item need to be authenticated? Some of us are pretty good at telling if something's authentic without a third party telling us so. Is the "knowingly unethical website" that you are talking about eBay? So you think everything on eBay is fake? I don't get it. And what are tangible questions from experts?

Also, who are you?

-Ryan

Stick to '59 Topps Ty.

Didn't know how many feathers that would ruffle.... Thank you for having a pulse.

I am nobody.