1930's Debut Year Baseball Autographs, MOST RARE

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

Perhaps, but there also would have been a relatively larger pool of poor whites who grew up in equally hard-scrabble circumstances as many of the black players, i.e. on tenant farms, in mining communities, etc., places where kids never went to school or left at very young ages to go to work. And given that the country was 90% white at the time, I would surmise that the number of white illiterate ballplayers would have far exceeded the number of black illiterate ballplayers.

What you say certainly makes a lot of sense. We unfortunately will only be able to speculate on this as opposed to ever being able to offer the world anything concrete. There are so many Negro Leaguers for whom full basic data is missing. Common names, no middle names on file, let alone DOB/DOD...the picture will likely never be fully formed for every NL'er.

Conversely, we do have a full list of MLB players from this 1920's-30's era. While there will continuously be fine tweaking of some of this data until the end of time, we generally know where and when they were all born and passed away. On top of that, over more than 30 years, I have collected post-baseball career info (their lines of work) and causes of death for almost all from this period. As noted, they were all capable of signing their names and I am certain I've seen all of their autographs in my years of doing this. I've also owned the vast majority of them at some point in time, albeit not all at once! Again, I do want to make room for the fact that a scant name or two could possibly be escaping me; like the rest of us, my memory is not as razor-sharp as it was in my youth!

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by BillyCoxDodgers3B

What you say certainly makes a lot of sense. We unfortunately will only be able to speculate on this as opposed to ever being able to offer the world anything concrete. There are so many Negro Leaguers for whom full basic data is missing. Common names, no middle names on file, let alone DOB/DOD...the picture will likely never be fully formed for every NL'er. Conversely, we do have a full list of MLB players from this 1920's-30's era. While there will continuously be fine tweaking of some of this data until the end of time, we generally know where and when they were all born and passed away. On top of that, over more than 30 years, I have collected post-baseball career info (their lines of work) and causes of death for almost all from this period. As noted, they were all capable of signing their names and I am certain I've seen all of their autographs in my years of doing this. I've also owned the vast majority of them at some point in time, albeit not all at once! Again, I do want to make room for the fact that a scant name or two could possibly be escaping me; like the rest of us, my memory is not as razor-sharp as it was in my youth!

I grew up thinking that marking one's name with an "X" was not an uncommon thing, but it seems from what you say that it was rare indeed. Instead of Joe Jackson just being the most prominent of players unable to sign or only with great difficulty, he was actually one of the very few. Thanks for the information.

[Brent G.]

Very interesting that things have come full circle: Many modern ballplayers -- more and more as time passes -- have no idea how to sign their name due to the removal of cursive writing from education, and indecipherable squiggles now serve as signatures/autographs.

[gonefishin]

Question for those that collect autographs, does anyone have a want list or rare autographs for other sports such as basketball, football, etc.?

[prewarsports]

There are collectors trying to get the members of their respective Halls of Fame (basketball, football, college football, hockey etc.) but I am not aware of anyone trying to get a signature of EVERYONE from any sport aside from baseball.