Hi Rod--

Thanks for the follow-up info and questions. We do not have the A's team order records, and I mistakenly referred to the Yankees orders by not double checking team dates for Reggie....his 3 HRs in the Series just kind of led me to the Yankee.without stopping to think twice about it.

Regardless, to your question of "what is your best guess." I would say, without actually seeing the bat, that it is likely a Pro Stock model bat, as K75 is Reggie Jackson's Pro Stock model, ordered by the Oakland A's for use of their Major and Minor League players.

Pro Stock model bats are professional model bats, usually ordered by professional teams for their players at the Major or Minor League levels. What makes it confucing for collectors, however, is that a team, say Oakland, would consistently order K75 Reggie Jackson signature model bats to have on hand for their Major League position players, pitchers, and their affiliated Minor League teams and that some of those Pro Stock bats would be in dimensions, as luck would have it, that Jackson ordered for his professional use. More confusing in this situation, is that Jackson used the exact model in those dimensions in an earlier labeling period. Thus, in 1973-1975, Jackson had access to a model that he had previously ordered (documented), in dimensions he had previously used (documented), even though he personmally was not shipped K75 bats in that label period. Another common example of this situation occurs with Mickey Mantle K55 bats.

It becomes less problematic when the Pro Stock bat has dimensions extremely uncharacteristic of those documented ordered by the player.

Without seeing this specific bat, but assuming all labeling is consistent with professional model bats, I believe this bat would likely be authenticated as a professional model bat, manufactured for professional player use, undocumented in the factory records as having been ordered by the player whose name appears on the barrel (Reggie Jackson,) with use by an unknown player that cannot be specifically attributed to Reggie Jackson. One of the keys in this situation is the new model J93 made to Reggie Jackson's specifications in 1971, which was a modification of the K75 bat, following which there are no documented orders of K75 bats in Jackson's personal factory records for the remainder of his career.

I believe that team index bats are a financially reasonable alternative to bats that are fully documented in a player's personal H & B records, particularly when it comes to the higher priced bats in the hobby, as long as collectors fully understand what they are getting. I do not believe, as others apparently do, that fairly high prices being paid for Team Index bats in recent auctions indicate that there is a wide-spread acceptance of Team Index / Pro Stock bats as having likely attribution to the player whose name appears on the barrel. The more likely scenario is that an uninformed collector overpaid for a bat that is not fully documented in a player's personal factory records because he saw a high grade placed on the bat; he did not understand that the high grade was not the result of order or use by the player whose name was on the barrel, but was due instead to significant use of a pro model bat by an unknown player, batboy, or whomever.

Good Luck in future collecting.

Mike Jackitout7@aol.com