Outsniped! -- Is this Matty?

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Posted By: Joe D.

Is this Matty or not? Would love to hear opinions.

I have no idea why Matty would be in this picture - and there is no mention of matty in the listing...
but it sure looks a lot like him -
so I put in a $240 snipe, and then reduced it to $180....

I seriously thought this would fly under the radar and would go for about $50.


Anyway - I was outbid - so someone else must be thinking what I was thinking....

Please look at this auction -
click on the image to supersize it.


Is that Matty in the back row there? (right side, next to the guy in the suit)

supersized image link:
http://www.auctiva.com/hostedimages/showimage.aspx?gid=33174&image=21653406&images=21653406&formats=0&format=0


If so... nice pickup by somebody and my loss.


ebay link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=019&item=290036492954&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3APIC&rd=1#ebayphotohosting

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Posted By: Anonymous

Cool period photo, but if that's Christy Mathewson, then I'm Ron Perranoski.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Check out some of the guys there; gotta be pushing 30. The guy you flagged does look an awful lot like Matty and the fellow on the lower right looks like Clyde Milan. I also think that gangly SOB with the black hair and big ears looks like Merkle. Add to that the different unis and I think what you had there was a barnstorming card. I guess we'll never know, though...

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Posted By: Joe D.

many of those guys look above the college age.

And the designation of "University of" was written in by pen... may very well have been by someone who had no idea what the picture was of.


The "Matty" guy if you notice has a darker cap than the rest of them.

I had hoped to get the item and give it a closer look / do a nice scan and post it here... but I got outsniped.


.... looking at it now... thats either Matty or a cousin -- sure looks like him to me.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Some resemblance, particularly the way he wears his hair, but not Matty.

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

Did you happen to ask the seller if it was postally cancelled? If so, did he provide a city and date? I can see what appears to be a postal cancellation on the front but I can't make anything out.

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Posted By: Joe D.

but his listing mentions that it was postmarked from Vancouver.

I was in 'hush-hush' mode...
and honestly I thought I would win it for $50 or less -
so I figured I would just grab it first and ask questions later (not the best method I know).

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Posted By: T206Collector

...I would say no chance.

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Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

I believe that the seller is fairly savvy when it comes to baseball items. A Vancouver cancellation would indicate it's more than likely from Washington and it's like what was written on the PC - U of Washington.

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Posted By: dennis

i think i see shoeless joe.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

The seller IS very saavy when it comes to baseball postcards and if this was Matty then he would have put that in his auction. What appears to have happened though here is that two people put in big snipes because they both thought the same thing -that this was Matty.

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Posted By: fkw

They are all wearing Washington Uniforms (2 different types). Matty in 1912 was much older looking. It also looks like Waddell too

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Posted By: Anonymous

Yeah, and the kid to the right in the dark clothing is Alexie Nicholaevich, survivor of the Romanov family masacre.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Mathewson never played for any 'Washington' team. In researching a minor league photo a few years back, I looked up all the teams Mathewson played for, school boy to the Majors, and Washington was not one of them ... And Mathewson definitely wasn't a University of Washinton student in 1912.

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Posted By: S Gross

Matty went to Bucknell (Lewisburg, PA).

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Posted By: davidcycleback

The winner is a specialist in early Seattle baseball who lives in Sesttle.

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Posted By: anthony

maybe it was some type of publicity stunt that they played as U of Washington or something and had to wear those uniforms...none of them but one look very happy to be there in the first place...especially the guy in from of "matty's" left arm...talk about a sour-puss!

also, that postmark looks like it says "hawaii"...look closely its upside down

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Posted By: Dave Rey

I know the winner of that item -- I'll ask him if there is anything "special" about the photo other than it being a UW piece.

The winner is the foremost collector of Seattle/Northwest baseball memorabilia, so I suspect he wanted it more for its Seattle-ness more than anything else.

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Posted By: Joe D.

I probably made the item about $100 more expensive than it had to be for your friend.

And it seems the consensus is that I was mistaken in my hunch.


Edit to say:

Anthony - I agree with that possibility. There are odd things about the postcard.

--One guy is holding shoes in his hand (front row) but he is wearing cleats and so is everyone else around him (?)

--looks like a little bit of an audience to the back right

--The Matty look alike (still looks like Matty to me)

--Those guys don't look college age

--They have the sour-pusses you mentioned


I would have like to see it in my hands to give it a better look.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I have a U of Nebraska team photo from about the same time period and those guys all look older than college age to me too, but for the time period I don't think that was unusual. Look at the major leaguers from that time period -they all look like old men. I even look at my mom and dad's high school yearbook from the 1960s and all of those kids look older than the high school kids of my day. As for the sour-pusses that's not unusual for the time period either as most people didn't smile for photos....not sure when people started saying "cheese" for the camera, but it wasn't in 1912. And the guy holding his cleats looks to me like he's wearing regular shoes and not cleats. The guy who looks like Matty sure does look an awful lot like him, but to me he seems a bit too husky to be Matty.

I wouldn't feel too bad about running the other guy up on the photo though because he obviously put in an amount that he was comfortable with....it just so happens so did you. I've paid way more than what some things are "worth" on ebay -especially Lincoln Athletic/Chiefs items because I may never see another one and I don't regret it one bit. In fact I think i've run some of my competition off because I've been getting some things a lot cheaper than I did in the past.

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Posted By: Dave Rey

I wouldn't feel bad about it, I'm sure he was more than happy just to get it and add it to his magnificent collection.

The look of the players, age-wise, is very consistent with the look of collegiates during that time period. People seemed to look older, at a younger age back in those days and I'm not sure why.

Also, rules were much looser back then about collegiate athletics and the level of affiliation you were supposed to have to play for a college team. This was especially prevalent in football in the early part of the century.

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Posted By: howard

Isn't that guy a bit too sloppy looking to be Matty?

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Posted By: anthony

maybe, just maybe that U doesnt stand for university...maybe it stands for "uniforms" of washington...

and i also thought the "matty" look a like is more husky that he was, but i havent seen a lot of photos of him either, usually its the same photos on different cards or publications, or a drawing

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Posted By: Joe D.

but that could be because he is not in his clothes (some one elses uniform).

his face doesn't look particularly husky.


what are the kids doing in the background? do little kids usually go to a college baseball practice (I know thats a stretch).

And the shoes get me. why hold a pair of shoes or cleats? there is actually another person who has a second pairs of shoes near him (in the front row to the left).


I was like 60/40 believing it was matty during the auction.

Now I am like 10%believe/90% don't... because I trust in the opinions of this board.

But its that 10% that can always bother you.

Still would love to see it in person to try to find more clues.

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Posted By: Daniel Bretta

Little kids hung around baseball players as often as they could. Ever see the Matty McIntyre photos? Didn't matter if it was practice, game, off day or whatever. Kids liked ballplayers.