Moonlight Graham

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

Apologize for the slightly off-topic question, but does Moonlight's status above lots of other common players rest almost entirely on his inclusion in Field of Dreams? Did his cards carry a premium before the movie?

I for one, was not aware of his story before the movie came out, and even then, was not sure that his character was an actual player.

There was a recent thread about why certain players cards are more desired than others given similar on-the-field performance, and a major reason that came out was having a relevance to something outside of baseball. That seems to certainly be the case for Moonlight Graham, thanks to Burt Lancaster and Kevin Costner and WP Kinsella.

I read the Shoeless Joe novel (a great book, by the way) shortly after it was released in 1982, and I highly doubt anyone really knew about Graham before the novel. I don't think it was on collector's radar even after the novel was released. The Field of Dreams movie that was released in 1989 is what really brought him more widespread interest, but I still think it wasn't until the internet era that slowly unearthed and identified what was available for him (note sbfinley's mention of this REA lot of Rose postcards https://robertedwardauctions.com/auc...anton-players/ that had a Graham in it, without identification, actually less than 10 years ago), and only after all of this did Archibald Graham finally become something for many collectors to pursue/crave.

W.P. Kinsella really set this cornfield craze into motion. Heck, there have even been Major League games held in Iowa cornfields now, which just adds to the mythical luster surrounding Graham (and Shoeless Joe too).

Brian