[BigJJ]

If you take away the c.1850-1900 cricket and polo balls being presented as lemonpeel baseballs, you eliminate about a third.

Even with this large number removed from consideration, I agree there have been too many of late. And I do think someone is constructing out there. And in my opinion, they are recreating local-made children's four piece lemon peel balls, with all, or mostly all, external stitching.

Every kid was playing baseball throughout the country, and with mostly local-made balls, made with leftover leather scraps. Most of these were four lemon wedges, four separate piees of leather, sewn together. The professionally made lemonpeels of course were made of one piece of leather, consisting of a circle with four wedges. The professionally made are larger as they were almost exlusively made for adults, and more specifically, the urban baseball clubs. There are large older children/adult local-made, four piece, lemonpeels as well of course. This is what most suburban/rural/soldiers etc, all but the more urban baseball clubs, were using pre 1875. I have one of these larger four piece locals. It has three interior sewn seams.

There ought to be many many surviving smaller child lemon peels, with four wedges and a good amount of easy exterior stitching, as every child was playing baseball thoughout the country with such rudimentary balls, and I do think most of these that come to market are good. But I too have a feeling that in the past year, too many of these rudimentary, four piece, exterior stitched, children's size balls have come to market.

I am told that some post 1900 string will fluorescence under UV and that this may be a definitive sign of using more modern string. Obviously does not assist if someone is repurposing pre 1900 string.

Would love to learn any other detective tips.