Cleaning 1909 Baseball

[jbsports33]

Early Vintage Baseballs are not like bats or gloves, never try to clean the surface of markings on a ball this old, and the above members are right this was an original marking.

Jimmy

[BrandonG]

Why would you want to remove the YMCA logo? Its a YMCA ball, not a Major League NL Ball, if you took the YMCA logo off then you'd have a blank panel, the Spalding Horse Hide Cover logo would be missing from the top. Then you'd just have an odd ball and be erasing a piece of history...

[jpop43]

Glad you asked before getting out the scouring pad...here is our YMCA marked ball along with a couple of other items in our collections marked as such. The bats are of particular interest given that they are all pro/game model LS 125's...the one in our collection is a Tris Speaker model, but we've seen Collins, Jackson's, and Cobb's, along with un-endorsed ones.
www.dugouttreasures.com

[jpop43]

In addition to the YMCA markings on sporting goods during the WWI era, the Knights of Columbus also counter-stamped sporting goods (K of C) that were procured by their organization for use by US servicemen. If anyone has or finds a ball marked as such, we'd love to hear about it.
www.dugouttreasures.com

[vintagesportflips]

To followup on this topic (sorry if it takes it too far astray), but I have a game used football from the AEF Military Football Tournament of 1919 held in Paris. The football has an embossed YMCA logo (doesn't show up well in photos), as the YMCA supplied all the sporting goods for the AEF sports tourneys that were held in Europe after WWI.

[Bridwell]

This is turning out to be an interesting thread! Thanks for all the input, and great photos. I've certainly learned a lot, and I'm not going to attempt any cleaning!

Originally, I thought that the YMCA stamp was added decades later and would make the ball less valuable. You guys have shown me otherwise!