Ty Cobb 1905 Reach Montage

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Big Six

Hey Barry & Scott...I don't disagree with you at all. However, the seller I purchased these from claims they are from damaged Spalding/Reach guides...frankly, I would love to own a vintage guide in it's complete form, but from the perspective of displaying some of the early team plates, I look at this more like recycling...turning something damaged in to something that will be around for a LONG time now...just don't want you thinking I'm running around with a pair of scissors hacking apart old guides willy-nilly. I can't speak for Dave, though...

Yes, the sellers figured out that if they put "came from damaged guide" in their descriptions, people are more likely to buy them; however, that is not what the sellers are actually doing all of the time. I have seen sellers who use the "came from damaged guide" disclaimer, win perfectly good reading copies and then the bits and pieces show up as 'montages'.

If you watch the bidding on the lower-grade copies on ebay, you'll be able to easily figure out what these sellers are willing to pay. I have a few searches for the guides, and I bid them up accordingly, winning one every now and then. It's worth it to me, and you can see by Phil's recent guide sales in the B/S/T section that they are easy enough to re-sell right here on the board to people who will appreciate them.

So the short message is that you are probably unwittingly encouraging the destruction of these guides each time you buy a cut out page.

As I said, I'll make you nice copies. No, you won't be hanging an original page cut out of a book on your wall, but who wants to do that anyway?

As a side note, I would also recommend that anyone who is interested begin building up their library runs of these now while you still can. For the most part, the Spalding Guide, Spalding Record, and Reach Guide, are similar enough in content that you could build a mixed run and have all the early 1900's info on baseball that you could ever want.