Early mesh/straw baseball cap
 

This cap recently sold on ebay. $840. Opinions?


https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-188...p2047675.l2557

Hi Gary,
I usually like the same stuff as you, and I a not sure what opinion you are looking for, but this cap does not interest me at all. My opinion is I would rather acquire something else for 840 dollars.

I've seen that cap before and I've always thought its not as early as we might otherwise think. Even if it was, the "Junior" label kills it for me in terms of collectability and value. I think the price paid was high.

Tough to tell age I agree with othets price high for an unknown item. Maybe if it was listed in an early Reach or Spalding catalog.
It could be 80 or 90 years old as easily as it coud be 130.

Thanks guys. I've seen a few of these sold through the years and just wondered how desirable they were to vintage collectors. The answer seems to be not very.

Just an aside, but it appears from this thread that NJ seems to be a 19th century hotbed.

The type font and the spelling of "baseball" as one word might give some clue as to its age...

Possibly irrelevant, but the baseball boardgame accompanying another wicker cap, in a photo
of a Hunt Auctions lot shown in the eBay auction, dates definitively from the early 1920s.
If the game was included in the Hunt lot to lend some 1890s credibility-by-association
to the wicker cap-of-uncertain-age, it has the opposite effect.

Excellent Butch. Where in western NY?