I'm far from an expert, but I'll take a shot at a straight answer as to what would make me nervous about it.
Overall it looks like a ball that's old and had been played with. wear and fading. Ok so far.
I'm not familiar with the knothole balls, but the 1927 Yankees stamp seems odd for a ball given to kids as a premium in 1934. Kids would be much more interested in current players, or simply having a good ball to play with.
One red flag.
The ball looks like it's been shellacked, a common practice to supposedly preserve autographs back then.
But....The Shellack hasn't darkened evenly as it should have. Darker in the middle of the panels, almost too dark. But very light around the seams. To me that means the darkening is probably artificial. Unless the ball has been damp, which lightens shellack. The "water rings" you'd get on old furniture if you didn't use a coaster.
2 red flags
despite the wear and fading the signature is very dark and legible, still black with no sign at all of fading, which is unusual for ANY written object that age. Especially one that's been subject to bad enough storage that the shellack darkened that much.
3 red flags.
So overall there's 3 things that each might make me uncomfortable spending a lot of money on it. I could be wrong of course, but having those 3 things in combination really makes me doubt that that item is genuine.
Now if it was cheap enough I might take a chance. But the ball would have to be very cheap for me to do that.
Steve B
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