One of my collecting Goals has been accomplished
 

To provide a little backstory to this: As a younger collector, I discovered the Living Legends series by Ron Lewis. I was pretty enamored when I was a child and swore up and down that I would one day complete the set. Fast-forward about a decade and a half later I started acquiring them one by one. Starting with Mantle, Mays and Snider, eventually getting Killebrew, Berra and Matthews. I was mainly missing the big name of Koufax, and vowed if I saw one come up for a good price I would nab it, and continue to hunt them one by one.

Well something incredible happened the other day. I saw the entire set go up on Ebay. All signed by the players, some signed by Ron Lewis as well. The Seller seemed reputable as all the other Signatures he was selling were given the approval by PSA or JSA. The Ron Lewis set however was not authenticated. The Mantle looked good. It looked identical to the one I already owned that's authentic. I was mainly concerned about the Koufax. I reached out to CaseyAtTheBat asking him if he wouldn't mind lending his eye to see if the signature was good. To which he replied almost immediately that it looked solid. Casey I cannot thank you enough for the quick response! To do all my due-diligence, I additionally reached out to Richard Simon who for a small fee did the same and confirmed the Koufax looked authentic.

After a bit of negotiating with the seller, we settled on a price. Additionally he happily agreed to send it via registered mail. The box was a little banged up, but the contents inside were perfect. I'll provide more high quality scans later but I was too excited to arrange and put this together. These are only temporary means of protection, as I need recommendations on what the best way to protect and store this set. I'll stop my rambling, here it is in all its glory.

https://i.imgur.com/Kd9wj3s.jpg

Awesome story. Congrats!

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Thanks, Leon! Glad I have a platform to share it. I look forward to coming onto the forum everyday and seeing stories like this, and finally getting to tell my own of course.

Wow, congrats on a great pickup.

Awesome set. Hard to believe so many of these legends are no longer living. Makes it an ever tougher score.

Thank you, it was very exciting to say the least. Felt like a kid waking up on Christmas once I found out that it was coming earlier than expected.


I think it's such a well done set. I love Lewis' artwork. And It really hit me as I was going through the set how many of these players have passed on. Especially with Seaver passing yesterday. More than half the set has unfortunately passed away I believe. I know Mays is close to 90 as well and Ford is 91. Schmidt, Bench, Ryan, Jackson, and Rose are the younger guys from the set and they're all in their 70s.

Good story, and great looking set. Congratulations!

Great looking set! Congrats, James.

Just trying to learn a bit here, if you don't mind sharing...

Were these all originally sold as autographed sets, or all originally non-auto, or a combination of the two?

What is the year of issue and how were these distributed?

Congrats on completing such a beautiful set. Those look great!

Congrats, James - I sense that it doesn't get any better for you than this! Maybe get them properly framed, and then hang them on the walls of your man cave?

I believe they were sold as unsigned pieces and then you had the option to get them signed? I know they came out in 1989 in a limited run of 5000 sets. I'm sure someone on the boards is more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to the background information on these. I have to sort through the contents of the package, other than the set of course. There were a few letters and envelopes that came with the set.

Interesting. Thanks!

It's certainly up there for me. I also really enjoy his 500 Home Run Club Lithograph, and eventually I would like to purchase one. I lost out on it at the most recent REA auction but I wasn't too upset as they appear every so often, and the Bank Signature on it seemed very light. However it could've just been the picture. I know someone on the forums won it.

Concerning the framing point, The Small Mancave I have right now, will crtainly be seeing this collection on its walls however due to the fact that most of the space receives sunlight, I'm most likely going to take the suggestion that a forum member made on another thread, which is scanning each of the pictures individually, printing them on high quality photo paper, and displaying those that way the signatures don't fade. In the meantime the actual pictures themselves will be properly stored, in a place where they autographs won't fade.





I'm going to see if I could reach out to Ron Lewis himself concerning the history behind these. I believe he has a public email address, if not I'm sure someone here on the forums knows of a way to contact him. Would love to learn the full backstory.

wow, really nice set when looked at from that perspective. Enjoy!

Great looking set! Congrats.

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Very cool set!!

If I remember correctly, these were created in 1989 unsigned and were released in 4 series. The great thing was that they were very easy to get signed as all of the players were regulars on the card circuit...well, Koufax was the hardest especially if you were on the West Coast. Congratulations on completing the set!!