New Discovery for Hall of Fame and Negro League Collectors

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I have discovered through research that a postcard I have recently come into possession of contains JL Wilkinson.

This is the 1909 Hopkins Brothers Lady Baseball Club from Des Moines, IA..the man in the suit in the back row is JL Wilkinson who would later go on to own the Kansas City Monarchs and was a key figure in the early success of the Negro Leagues. Wilkinson started out by forming his "Lady" ball club in 1909 and a few years later formed the famous "All Nations" club which was a barnstorming club filled with players of many nationalities and at one time contained a couple of women. In 1920 he would form the Kansas City Monarchs.

Hopkins Brothers was a sporting goods store in Des Moines that sponsored the team.


Here is the All Nations team which you can see a couple of the same women in the front row that are on the postcard.


Here is a photo of Wilkinson in his later years

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Posted By: barrysloate

Good photo identification Dan. The faces match. It's always nice to see a good piece of research!

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Thanks Barry, I know it's not a "card" that people may want to add to their Hall of Famer collection, but it's probably the only contemporary production type item that contains Wilkinson that could pass as a "card".

edited to add: this card may not be particularly hard to find as Joann has told me that it comes up fairly regularly on ebay.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Card or not, the research is what counts!

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Posted By: leon

Nice job on that. Great research......

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I was actually researching a different postcard when I stumbled across the information that led me to identifying the Hopkins card.

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Posted By: Ken W.

Very nice, Dan! I would definitely count that for my HOF card collection. If you ever wish to part with it...

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Posted By: andy

Hopkin's is still in business today.

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Posted By: Patrick McMenemy

Dan,

Congrats...nice research! I agree that learning about the game's history is part of the enjoyment.

Patrick

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Posted By: Joann

Whoa! See? I back off from the board for 2 seconds and this is the kind of thing I nearly miss.

Great, great research Dan. I have been keeping an eye on ebay to both try to upgrade the one I have and also look for one that is postally used so I could at least maybe figure out what part of the country the team was from. Looks like picking up an upgrade just became a much more formidable task. lol. How cool is that that this guy was so core to the Negro League!

I'll add more to the post on the memorabilia side as to the previous comments about the appearance of the card, etc, and probably ask more about how you figured this out.

I have seen maybe 4 or so of these on ebay in the last year or maybe less. There is a PC of the Watervliet Western Bloomer team that I see more often, but this one is maybe second. For those of you that may want to pick one up now that Dan has uncovered the identity of the guy in the back, if you look on ebay they are listed under "Cell Phones and PDA's".

J

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Posted By: Jimi

Great research! Anything Cuban is very interesting to me. Great work!

Jimi