Info about Bill Zekus collection ???

[JimStinson]

In a previous thread I had mentioned about buying Ralph Winnie's autograph collection, Ralph was one of the "Old time collectors" as was Bill Zekus. I had first heard about Bill when assembling my "list" of good guys to deal with and guys to avoid when it came to autographs. Doug Averitt had told me when I first started collecting to ask around and assemble a list of reputable autograph people to deal with and then put all the lists together and then deal with the five that overlapped the most. It was as good an idea then as it is today. Well in the early to mid 1980's there were not that many baseball autograph dealers it was mostly a close knitt network of guys that mostly collected and traded autographs. Bill Zekus name ended up on the list. Bill started collecting in the early 1950's. He was in the insurance business and was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He lived in Fishkill New York. Most of his collecting was done in person at Ebbets field and at the Cooperstown induction weekends. And at some of the very first baseball card shows held in NYC where the average attendence on any given weekend might have been 20 people.
Bill was to later tell me stories of the in-person signing habits of "Dem Bums" back in the 1950's "Furillo was Nasty , Billy Loes was a flake Campy was a sweetheart, Jackie could be a little moody but always signed...etc" , Hall of Fame weekend he'd tell me about sitting up till the wee hours of the morning at the big hotel there in Cooperstown where the players used to stay hanging out in the lobby and listening to Satchel Paige and Casey Stengel. Or of the time two brothers walked into the show in downtown New York to sell their collection of autographed 1933 Goudey cards that they had collected in person in the 1930's when they were kids. Bill said that only four of the at that time less than a dozen people at the show had any interest (or money..smile) so they all agreed to just split the collection four ways and were shocked when the brothers started wheeling in handtrucks full of boxes of signed cards that they had packed in their station wagon, "If that happened today" he quibbed "Everyone in the room would have ripped each other to pieces".
I finally got to meet Bill Zekus when he moved to New Port Richey Florida and I was then living in Ocala, The main focus of his autograph collection was anyone who had played for the Dodgers and any Hall of Fame or possible future Hall of famers. I can't remember exactly but I think he had the autograph of every single player who had ever appeared on a Dodgers roster except for 6 or 7. Every other weekend I'd drive over to his house and he'd haul out a box of his duplicates , and I'd go through it and make a stack of the names I needed. He'd say "Make me an offer" , I always managed to spend between $1,000-$2,000 which was alot of money for autographs back then. Heck you could buy a Ty Cobb check for $35.00. I'd always ask him to bring out another box to go through and he would smile and say "Leave something for next time". You could see though that he didn;t have the same collecting fever that he used to. Several miles up the road a baseball card shop called "Talkin Baseball" had opened up and the owner a guy named Vince Antonucci who would one day be featured on "America's Most Wanted" quickly struck up a partnership with Ted Williams and somehow managed to convince Bill Zekus to let him sell his collection for him. Bill kept his Dodgers autographs and Vince got everything else. According to Bill he recieved a very small portion of the agreed upon sum, Williams and Vince split up their business arrangement with Ted Eventually spending millions of dollars in legal fees to recoup his loses. Zekus didn't talk alot about it and I didn;t ask. Around 1991, I had already moved west and got a phone call one day and Bill asked me if I wanted to buy the rest of his collection. I realized then that I had no idea of the size or scope of that portion of his collection that remained. For one week from 8 am until 6 pm I poured over what he had and eventually struck a deal. Once boxed it amounted to 400 POUNDS of autographed paper. It remains to this day the largest collection I've ever purchased all at one time.
Afterwards I tried to stay in touch but Bill's hobby changed to assembling model cars and he disliked talking about autographs "Too Commercial" he'd say. A few years ago I ended up in New Port Richey Florida and figured I'd give a call and hopefully drop in, His name was still in the directory and his wife answered the phone. She remembered my weekly visits , Bill had passed away several years earlier she said. "Those Lucky Strikes" he used to smoke finally caught up with him, she told me.
In my early collecting days I would always initial the reverse of an item so I could remember where it came from. Today if you ever come across the initials B.Z. in pencil on the back of an autograph, I was the one that put it there.

[MooseDog]

Great story Jim.

I sold and traded a lot with Bill Zekus from the 1970s to the early 1980s when I kind of put collecting on hiatus.

I never had the honor of meeting him in person but we bought sold and traded with each other frequently through the mail, nothing near on par with Jim's dealings with him, mind you. Since I was actively chasing autographs in the Oakland/San Francisco area as well has heavy TTM activity I think I helped him out with a lot of post-Brooklyn guys as well as some of the Hall of Famers.

As there was no effective way to scan and send pictures back then our relationship was based on trust. He'd send his current want list, and I'd send him what I had with the understanding he could take what he wanted and send back the rest. Often the "rest" came back with a couple of things of his just because he was such a nice guy.

He helped me a LOT with getting my own HOF collection up to a pretty substantial level for back then.

Such a gentleman and great trader friend, you just don't find too many guys like that any more.

[JimStinson]

I agree 100%, It sounds strange today but back then it was about TRADING not SELLING
Also when you mentioned being from the BAY area it gave me chills , in 1989 I was sitting in Bill Zekus living room ready to watch the World Series on TV when the infamous earthquake hit.

[Mr. Zipper]

Great story, Jim.

In your estimation, are there comparable "original owner" type collections that have yet to be uncovered?

[MooseDog]

...at least you were sitting, I was in the closet on the 2nd floor of our townhouse with one leg out of my pants. When the shaking started then got worse and the glass started to creak I was thinking I was going to be found in a pile of townhouse rubble with my pants half off...

The TH held up but my East Coast room mates were in a pretty bad state. For them it was their first taste of California geology.

[MooseDog]

Just in Northern California I know of at least 3 baseball autograph collectors who were trying to "get 'em all" and though I've lost touch with them I think they are still around.

There are also at least two guys who were heavy in-person collectors and both never sold or traded anything. I would think if those collections are still intact they'd be quite a find.

One of my personal contemporaries I also lost touch with, Richard Masson (last contact was in Southern California), had already amassed quite a collection just into the late 1970s. Has anyone dealt with him recently?

I think there are quite a few nice autograph collections out there but Jim probably knows best where they are

[mschwade]

Originally Posted by MooseDog

Just in Northern California I know of at least 3 baseball autograph collectors who were trying to "get 'em all" and though I've lost touch with them I think they are still around.

When you say Get Em All, how far does that go back? Certainly, there has to be some kind of limits, right?

[JimStinson]

"Get em All" meant 1876 the initial formation of the National League till the present. Anyone that ever appeared in a game.
Strange as it sounds you could actually take on a project like that back then, because there were less collectors and more "Stuff" ALOT cheaper too.
Although I seriously doubt that anyone ever GOT EM ALL , Even with Trump's wallet it would simply be impossble, even then

[Tom Hufford]

Bill Zekus was one of my earliest and closest friends when I got started in my autograph hunt, about 1969. I'm not sure how I came to know him, but it was probably through Jim MacAllister.

Bill's collecting interests were in three categories - 1. Every player who had ever played for the Dodgers; 2. Every Hall of Famer; 3. Every player who reached specific statistical levels, like 175 wins, 300 home runs, 2000 hits, etc. I don't remember the specific numbers, but in effect, it was all the players who appeared in The Sporting News' Daguerreotypes (sp??) book. Bill also wanted to acquire 3 items on each player - a signed photo, a signed gum/tobacco card, and a flat item such as a 3x5, signed check, business paper, etc.

So, if Bill happened to run across a tough signature that didn't fit one of his criteria, he was always willing to trade. Thing is, it was hard to find something from his wantlist. I learned that the hard way, though. About 1970, while trying to track down "what ever happened to" players that weren't listed as deceased in the new Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, I located the son of Wallace Oakes Clement, who played with the 1908-09 Phillies and Dodgers. His son completed a biographical questionnaire on his dad (who, it turns out, had died in 1953) - and he sent me his dad's signed Social Security card. I told Bill about it and he went nuts, knowing that I had a Dodger autograph that he needed. He ended up offering me an album page signed by Jack Picus Quinn in exchange for the Clement SS card, and I did it. After all, Quinn won over 200 games, pitched into his late 40s, etc. Over the years, though, I ran across numerous examples of Jack Quinn, and never another Clement (that stood to reason, his son had given me the only one he had!). Of course, Bill was never interested in trading it back to me - and it took me over 30 years to get the Wally Clement SS card back (after Bill died).

The first autograph collection I ever purchased was a joint deal with Bill in about 1971- we purchased the collection of Roger Christensen, who I didn't know, but Bill told me Roger was going into the military and wanted to sell. Bill said the price was $600 (I believed him - and still do), so I sent Bill $300. I have no idea how I came up with $300 - I was in college, had a job mowing grass at a church for $30 a month - so that was a huge purchase for me. Roger sent the collection to Bill, we agreed to split the HOFers first, then the rest of the collection. Bill split them up, and sent me a box full of stuff - including a 3x5s of Cy Young, Fred Clarke, Bobby Wallace, and cuts of Ban Johnson and Lou Gehrig - the first example I'd had of each. I don't remember exactly what else I got, probably 1,000 -2,000 3x5s. I have no idea what Bill took out before sending me my half - but looking back, I see that I got my money's worth. And, later I got to know Roger Christensen, too.

Bill was a insurance agent in Fishkill, NY, just north of NYC. He had a teenage son who was struck and killed by an auto in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and as you can imagine, that really affected Bill. I sensed that he lost most of his interest in autograph collecting after that. Not long after that, he relocated to New Port Richey, FL, where he lived the rest of his life. We kept in touch up until his death, on June 21, 2001, but really didn't do much autograph-wise during the last 15 years or so.

I think I only met Bill in person three times - at the HOF induction weekend in Cooperstown in 1971, 1972, and 1974. I was surprised several months ago when someone posted an article about Bill Mastro selling a T206 Wagner on this site - and there was an unrelated photo that included Bill Zekus and myself. I'll try to add a link to it here:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=150405

In the second photo from the top, on the left, that's Bill Zekus in the center, I'm on the right, and I have no idea who that is on the left. Someone (I don't know who) must have taken this photo at Cooperstown (I'm guessing its 1974) - obviously we were getting balls signed by the players in attendance, and were comparing our successes.

I miss Bill, and wish everyone on this board could have known him.

[JimStinson]

Steve: I know of at least a few of those type of collections that are still around and relatively intact. And am sure there are probably a dozen or so that just stayed in the family or estate after the original collector passed on that we don;t know about

Mr. Stone: It must have been horrific being there ! It was scary from 3,000 miles away ! from what I remember it was during the warm ups before the game and the reception went out and then returned ....and the players and families were walking around on the field in shock, then later watching the devastation that happened to the surrounding area.