Does anyone actually have any interest in something like this?

[glynparson]

I would rather have all the bats kept whole and in private collections where I never see any of them. Then getting to see a little piece of wood. To me that's all it is once it has been cut up. It is no longer a bat or broken bat it is know just a splinter of wood. I don't think this practice should be illegal but that doesn't mean I have to think it is the right thing to do.

[Rich Klein]

With a small (I'll call them a focus group) group of SABR people at the 1st Deadball conference in 2002. Almost to a person, and understand they were not collectors, but had a fascination with the history of baseball, they were not against this process, providing two caveats

1) As long as not the ONLY or the LAST known example. For example (and my math may be a little bit off here), A Babe Ruth bat because it was so large, might produce 1,500 bat pieces that can fit on cards. Babe Ruth bats are reasonably available and cutting one up for this purpose is not going to affect the values very much of a full bat. In addition, you might be able to get younger collectors more interested in the greats of the past.

A case such as the Georges Vezina goalie pads being cut up (when they were the only ones known) was a good publicity move for ITG but a terrible blow to history.


2) If said bat or jersey was historically significant. For example, a bat the Babe used on an August day which broke without any homers coming off that bat, etc is frankly not as historically signiificant as the one he hit #60 in 1927 with. Historically significant artifacts should not be tampered with.

Regards
Rich

[Peter_Spaeth]

Did Donruss provide information about the provenance of this bat? If not, why in this day and age of rampant fraud would anyone assume it is what it purports to be?

[Orioles1954]

What Donruss did on most products from this era was to take pictures, purportedly of the bats from which the slivers were taken and put that on the back of the card. By the way, for the most part "bat cards" have gone the way of the dinosaur in the modern hobby. Only a couple of issues have them inserted at all. Most modern card collectors fall into two themes 1.) "prospect" collectors or 2.) "retro" themed collectors.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Orioles1954

What Donruss did on most products from this era was to take pictures, purportedly of the bats from which the slivers were taken and put that on the back of the card. By the way, for the most part "bat cards" have gone the way of the dinosaur in the modern hobby. Only a couple of issues have them inserted at all. Most modern card collectors fall into two themes 1.) "prospect" collectors or 2.) "retro" themed collectors.

But this particular Ty Cobb Card has no such picture on the back side. There is absolutely nothing to differentiate this supposedly "game-used" sliver from that of a store-model bat. The Ty Cobb H&B signature dyes for game-used and store model bats were identical. There is nothing to suggest (much less prove) that this sliver is from a game-used bat.

As further evidence against authenticity of these modern insert cards, there is an excellent thread on the memorabilia side, pertaining to a Ruth/Gehrig signature card. The Ruth is 100% bad, and the Gehrig is very suspect as well... check it out!

Aside form the destructive practice itself (which I personally find deplorable- but to each his own) the authenticity concerns alone would keep me from collecting these moronic and highly contrived "collectibles".

[Orioles1954]

Perezfan, I agree with you. It's all about the willing suspension of unbelief

James

[oldjudge]

My take is that we never truely own these pieces of history. We are just caretakers for some period of time. Perhaps after you pass someone in your family will possess these items, perhaps a museum, perhaps some other person. What your job is, and I truely believe this, when you have possession of these items is to keep them is as good shape (or better) that when you acquired them. Destroying a piece of history in the name of making a buck, and that is all that this is, is a tragedy and crime, not in the legal sense but in the moral sense.