Documenting the Sources of Autographed Pre-War Cards

[Ricky]

A long-time friend of mine, Michael Mangasarian, used to travel around the country, back in the 1970's, getting autographs on T206 cards. Michael (who organized this past weekend's Cranston Sports Collectors show), loved baseball books and I'm blanking on the name of it, but one of the famous books at the time was one that gathered oldtime player's playing day recollections.

Michael also loved oldtime baseball and decided he was going to write a similar book featuring lesser known players who had played in the deadball era and were still alive. So, he would travel all over the country with his T206 collection and a tape recorder and interview any old player who would talk to him. At the same time, he would get the player to autograph his card. Back in the late '70's, Michael probably had 300 or so autographed T206s, all autographed right in front of him while he was interviewing the player.

Sometime around 1980, Michael was checking into a hotel in New York City, I believe, on the way to see more players, and someone broke into his car and stole his entire collection of autographed and unautographed T206s. That kind of ripped his heart out and he gave up on his project. None of the cards were ever recovered.

I sometimes wonder if some of the autographed T206s out there are remnants from Michael's collection...