Ernie Harwell collection
 

I imagine many of you have found this, but here I am in Detroit and I never realized the Ernie Harwell collection had been digitized. I also never knew how extensive his collection actually was.

If you've got an hour to kill (or wondered who was on the 1879 Kansas City baseball team!), here's the link. Wonder whose bright idea it was to stamp all the cards!?

http://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/

Scott,
I am amazed how many photos are listed as unknown players. I hate to see that.

Bill Boyd

Not sure why this resulted in only one response before falling off the front page. An amazing collection that I've studied several times over the years. This collection was instrumental to me in researching Tomlinson cabinets. The newly digitized images actually include a couple that I wasn't aware of and I need to update my population tracking.

Note that the collection, in its entirety includes far more than what Ernie donated. For example, the complete set of Tomlinson cabinets have been with the Library since before Ernie was born. This was one of Ernie's favorite items at the library before and after he donated his collection. Ernie told me that he always enjoyed looking at the complete run of Tomlinsons together with the team picture every time he visited the room named in his honor (Ernie Harwell Room).

At any rate, I'm going to post a couple images from the collection.

One of Ernie's better OJs (one of three Flynn cards known to exist).
http://digitalcollections.detroitpub...eam/IMAGE/view

A shot of Ernie with his collection before being donated.
http://digitalcollections.detroitpub...eam/IMAGE/view

Countless interesting photos/cabinets. This shot of the 1899 Western League magnates (mostly managers) includes Allen, Mack, Comiskey, Schmelz, Loftus, and Manning of OJ fame as well as president Ban Johnson.
http://digitalcollections.detroitpub...eam/IMAGE/view

Loaded with lots of T206s and early 20th century photos, especially rich in Detroit material.

Joe - is that 1899 item a cabinet? Very cool! Regardless, it might be one of the earliest Ban Johnson items extant.

Here's my 1950s RPPC of Ernie Harwell:

http://photos.imageevent.com/derekgr...%20Harwell.jpg

Nice RPPC of Harwell. Yes, the 1899 photo does appear to be a cabinet, a larger format cabinet (larger than 4 1/4 x 6 1/2).

Thanks for the link. He sure had a great collection. I'm enjoying going through the photos...

Ricky Y

I know I can't id the photos of "Man in suit", there are several in the collection , but I know there are collectors on this site that can. I hope they attempt to do that.

Joe

Well, now there are three fewer unknowns -
Joe Tinker (hr00080), Stan Covaleski (hr00081), Win Mercer (hr00093)