How Important Is Provenance To You?

[101SOX19]

Provenance does mean something to me. I was fortunate enough to attend a session of the Barry Halper auction (knowing full well I couldn't afford anything in the auction), just to get the catalog and the bidding paddle.

A certain dealer bought several of the rarer vintage card lots from the Halper auction. The next month in his catalog, I saw a 1911 Baseball Bats card from the Halper auction that fit my collection and I jumped at the chance to acquire something from the sale. An average baseball fan or collector may not know the names of Nagy or Carter, but you bring up the name of Barry Halper and a lot more people will recall the name and/or the collection.

10 years later, many auction houses still reference if a piece of memorabilia originated from the Halper collection, but I don't know how many of the cards from his collection can be traced back?

[Tsaiko]

Thanks for all the informative posts and opinions guys. Really thought provoking. I had to look up Carter, Nagy, Halper and the others, wow.

My cards were collected directly from the cigarette packs, by a very special (to me anyway) lover and player of the game of baseball.

I appreciate this hobby more today than I did yesterday - thanks.

@oldjudge - Too funny...........and I know that route well, or used to.

[Rich Klein]

Importance in the future.

Rich

[HRBAKER]

It will be interesting to see since so few of the "cards" in total have any discernable provenance.

[ValKehl]

I am a Walter Johnson card collector. A few years ago, when Hank Thomas, WJ's grandson and a really nice guy, decided to sell the WJ cards he had collected, I purchased a good number of them for my collection. Even though these cards aren't "labeled" in any way (or slabbed), the Texas Tommy and other WJs I got from Hank will always be extra special to me!

[tbob]

James- you might find it amusing that I have two Tattoo Orbit sets one with a Dale Alexander slabbed from Lionel Carter's collection and one Alexander slabbed from the James Feagin collection :-)
tbob

[drc]

A lot of it depends what is the provenance. If a T206 Ty Cobb belonged to Ty Cobb I bet most people here would pay more for it.