Sports of the Times book with many autographs
 

I'm not an autograph collector so I don't know much about the market other than what I can see from past sales, but I have an item that won't help me with.

I've been going through a large sports collection that a friend of mine acquired, and I found a book titled Sports of the Times which has reprints of articles from The New York Times covering 1892 to 1981. There are probably 175 autographs throughout the book on articles about the particular player or on a page that was a relevant year (such as a Heisman Trophy winner). A few of the autographs have a sticker with BAE followed by a number, but most do not. There are many Hall of Famers from baseball as well as some football, basketball and hockey. There are some Negro League players, Heisman Trophy winners, 1980 US Hockey team players and a variety of other known names.

I am looking to sell the book either through an auction or privately. What would be recommended as far as getting signatures authenticated? I wouldn't want to spend more to do that than the book would actually sell for, and with this many signatures, it seems like it would cost a lot to do. Assuming most of the signatures are legitimate, what would a fair price be for something like this?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Both JSA and PSA would authenticate that many signatures, but you would have to contact them for a quote. It will be 500 plus.

Noone can tell you what the price would be without knowing who the players are, if they are real, etc.

It would be helpful when you request an opinion to also attach a photo or two of the autographs.

Regardless, good luck.

Thanks for the info about JSA and PSA. Any idea what the stickers with BAE followed by a number are? There are 5 of them associated with individual autographs. Are they from an older authentication service? I don't know when these autographs were obtained, but the book came out in 1981 and has been sitting in storage since around 1998 so all of the autographs would have been from that time period.

I wasn't looking for an exact price suggestion but more for an idea of how to price something like this. Would it be based on the value of the most expensive autographs or a sum of the value of each individual autograph or somewhere in between?

I didn't originally include any pictures because there are too many pages that have them and wasn't sure what would be worth showing, but since you asked, here are a few pictures. There are others such as Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, Wilt Chamberlain and many more.

I can only comment that I like the Dimaggio and Reds autos. They look legit to me.

Good luck, looks like a neat item.

Any rare names in this piece?

Thanks for the feedback. I don't collect autographs so not sure who is rare and who isn't. I don't know how common some of the Negro League players are that are in the one picture I posted. There are also about 20 or so names I couldn't easily identify so maybe some of those are less common.

Everything looks authentic to me (I believe the holograms are from Upper Deck). This was clearly the project of a very dedicated collector.

The cost of authenticating every single signature could very easily surpass $1,000, and could wind up being several times that. All the big names (DiMaggio, Ali, etc) cost extra.

I would not take it to an auction house for that reason. Try to sell it on here if you're so inclined.

Yes these are all good, if it went to auction, the auction house would just get a Auction LOA (not as a robust as a regular LOA) for a discount and go from there.

The book has been posted for sale in the B/S/T with a complete list of autographs and some more pictures.

https://net54baseball.com/showthread...05#post2490805

lots of cool sigs that just kinda mashed together there in the booklet, so it is a little niche. i'm not sure of the correct audience for this so whether it's worth it to go the auction route.

Yeah, these sorts of items are labors of love for the original collector. Unfortunately, the sum of its parts will seemingly perpetually exceed total value to anyone else. I can't see this thing selling for more than a grand in most current auction venues, and that might even be a stretch. I know that makes no sense when you add up the total value as individual cut signatures. It's just that there's no theme to this piece other than that the signers all appear in this book. For a vintage comparison, this is like a post-career, modern day equivalent of a multi-sport Who's Who in Baseball. Sadly, those are almost always purchased by a dealer who then proceeds to turn them into a thousand very unsightly sliver cuts that are shaped like amoebas.

You know, this would have been an absolutely perfect consignment for Steiner Auctions way back when, and might have fetched a surprising result if it had captured the imagination of one of their types of non-hobbyist customers.

Nice Book. The Bae.... stickers are Upper deck authentication stickers. Back in the day if you attended a signing ( or sent in an item) for an athlete under Upper deck contract, a rep for Upper Deck would place a sticker.
Hope this helps
Jonathan