Game help.....

[autograf]

Any ideas on this game & value. It's what I'd consider in EXMT/NRMT condition, front back and inside and has what appears to be all the pieces. Parker Brothers, so probably mass produced but hadn't seen one before. Maybe 12x12x1.5 or so. Around $200ish.

[slidekellyslide]

$200 is too high. I've seen that game numerous times so I believe it to be fairly common. There are others here who could probably nail down a good value for you better than I could though.

[baseball tourist]

I ht just the box and game board for $35 on Ebay a few months ago. It is a great looking piece in my estimation and I would like to get the game pieces.

[stone193]

Hi Tom,

That's the earliest of the Parker Brothers Peg Baseball - 1908 - it comes in both a yellow and a blue version.

I have had 3 of them over the years - still have 2. Both are blue - I've never seen a yellow version on ebay myself - I would be tempted to infer the yellow is more rare but who knows.

I don't have an up-to-date Catalog of Memorabilia - The Standard Catalog of Sports Memorabilia - 2003 - has it listed from around 100 to 175$.

I have one is nice condition - not sure if it's as good as the one you have posted?



I've seen the games go for as little as 40 bucks and as high as 140$ Of course condition was dictating price.

mike

[Butch7999]

Hi Tom -- did you buy it, are you selling it, or are you just wondering about it? It looks to be an extremely nice example of the game, which should command a bit of a premium over the prices it typically earns. But Dan is correct, the game is plentiful, and the price Chris paid is right in the wheelhouse for an example missing some of the playing pieces.

We have seen a couple of examples go for nutty-high prices -- $390. in an eBay Live auction just a year and a half ago, $310. at Hunt six years back -- but those really inflate the average, which is just under $90. for examples in complete and very nice condition, and closer to $60. with the oddball high prices thrown out. Incomplete or in lesser condition, $25.-$35. is normal, although we've also seen a handful of very presentable examples get away for as little as $10.-$15.

For the record, Parker Brothers produced the game from 1908 until at least 1924, and that long shelf-life plus its popularity back in the day account for its fairly ready availability 85-100 years later. There are several subtle variations in the box design, and the yellow-border edition, which we believe to be the last and most recent, actually seems to be the easiest to find. It's also seen with the navy border and aprons (we think that's the first edition), a red border and aprons, and a pale grey border and aprons.

Parkers revived Peg Base Ball as Peg Base Ball Game, with a complete revamp of the graphics, in 1936, then revived their 19th-century dice baseball games -- that is, an entirely different set of playing rules -- and sold those in the same 1936 Peg Base Ball Game box through the 1940s before revising the graphics again for each of three more editions (retitled Game of Peg Baseball) in 1954, 1957, and 1961. More than you wanted to know...

[stone193]

I posted in a hurry and was kind of lazy - I wanted to recommend Butch's web for any questions on board games.

He/they're the best! Incredible knowledge - from Butch and others on the forum.

http://baseballgames.dreamhosters.com/

Hi Butch - do you have the yellow version of the game? I've never seen one come up - tho one could've come up and I missed it.

Last - here's a sample of what later versions of the Parker Bros games look like:

[jbsports33]

I sold one for 150.00 this year with all the pieces, with even the dice holder which is hard to find

Jimmy

[Butch7999]

Mike, thanks very, very much for those extremely kind words!

Shamefully, we must admit that no 1908-1924 edition of Peg Base Ball is part of our own personal collections. And undoubtedly we've missed several relatively recent on-line sales and auctions of the game as well. We monitored sales and auctions rather obsessively, recording literally tens of thousands of transactions for baseball games of every variety, from the early part of this expiring decade until 2007. The loss of a significant contingent of our friends and families in 2007 and 2008 severely curtailed our efforts in that vein and we've tracked transactions only sporadically since then. Hopefully we'll be back up to speed on that later this year...

In any event, our records show the yellow-border edition appearing about half again as often as the navy-border edition, with the red and grey editions showing up in total less than 10% as often as the yellow and navy combined. There's also another subtle graphic variation involving the Parker Brothers logo on the box, but that's almost too recherche even for us!