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Originally Posted by ruth-gehrig
I was looking at the belt ball that ended today on ebay and thought the same thing about 19th century baseballs popping up on ebay more often. It would in interesting to know the definitive test of whether a ball is modernly made using old materials - if that test exists  |
With my new authentication, I have access to a digital x-rax machine. I've had a few 19th century baseballs sent to me, a couple I found to be authentic, the other not so much. Here are pictures of the x-rays. The ball on the left is hand wound with no modern center or spooling. The second x-ray isn't as detailed because we were zoning in on the core, but as you can see we found it to be a perfect rubber center core, which is obviously not found in home made lemon peel balls from the 1850's-60's.
www.historyofthebaseball.com/authentication just in case.