Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

[danesei@yahoo.com]

I'm not positive that the ball will go up for sale, but I'm pretty sure they just showed one of the ball boys handing the ball to a MLB rep... with a roll of authentication stickers.

[coxfan]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

Good to watch for, but my research through MLB authentication hologram numbers has found a lot of authenticated items that are never put up for sale. For example, the last ball used in the Rangers' 2010 ALCS game 2 win, their first- ever postseason home win, was sent by Nolan Ryan for authentication, but apparently returned to him to keep.

[allstarsplus]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

The ball was given to Span. Most milestone balls are MLB Authenticated these days.

[Roady]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

I have Garret Anderson's 2500th hit ball.

[Roady]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

.

[helf35]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

The Royals have Ichiro tied for most career singles hit up for auction.

[coxfan]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

The ball LH419797 from Garret Anderson's 2500th hit game isn't necessarily the one he hit for the milestone. I own LH419802, which has the identical inscription. So do several balls from the same sequence: eg 41976, etc through the number sequence of holograms.

Unfortunately the MLB authenticators sometimes gave the milestone game, implying that the ball was the actual one. But if one looks through the whole number sequence, one can often find it is only a ball from that game, rather than the actual milestone.

Fortunately, modern authenticators rarely use these misleading hologram descriptions.

[coxfan]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

I had a typo in my last post. The hologram number sequence runs from LH419794 up through my LH419802, etc. for this game.

[allstarsplus]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

The ball LH419797 from Garret Anderson's 2500th hit game isn't necessarily the one he hit for the milestone. I own LH419802, which has the identical inscription. So do several balls from the same sequence: eg 41976, etc through the number sequence of holograms.

Unfortunately the MLB authenticators sometimes gave the milestone game, implying that the ball was the actual one. But if one looks through the whole number sequence, one can often find it is only a ball from that game, rather than the actual milestone.

Fortunately, modern authenticators rarely use these misleading hologram descriptions.

That's a real shame when they did it that way. I'm surprised they never went back to clarify it.

[allstarsplus]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

Here's a small part of my collection of the real milestone baseballs that I got from players as part of my Washington Nationals collection.

The Adam Dunn 1st HR ball in particular you will note that it went into the stands and the team retrieved it. Those go into a special database called PLAYER COLLECTED HR BALL.

The Ivan Pudge Rodriguez 1st HR ball went into the bullpen and retrieved by the authenticator so that went into the regular GAME-USED BASEBALL database.

[allstarsplus]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

By the way, that HR was the 6th Opening Day HR of Adam Dunn's career which set a record

http://m.mlb.com/video/v4027557/nationals-extra-looks-at-adam-dunns-opening-days/?c_id=mlb

[Roady]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

The ball LH419797 from Garret Anderson's 2500th hit game isn't necessarily the one he hit for the milestone. I own LH419802, which has the identical inscription. So do several balls from the same sequence: eg 41976, etc through the number sequence of holograms.

Unfortunately the MLB authenticators sometimes gave the milestone game, implying that the ball was the actual one. But if one looks through the whole number sequence, one can often find it is only a ball from that game, rather than the actual milestone.

Fortunately, modern authenticators rarely use these misleading hologram descriptions.

It never occurred to me to look at the numbers before and after mine.
No wonder I got it so cheap!
I appreciate your post. I always like to know exactly what I have in my collection.

[coxfan]

Re: Nationals selling Span 1000th hit ball

Even when an item doesn't turn out as you wish, it is usually possible to find something else meaningful about it. For example, in 2008 I bought a game-used ball (no specifics on its use) from the Rangers' loss to Oakland on 4-26-06. It had personal significance, since it was the first Rangers' game I'd gone to.

But after this year's HOF inductions, I went back and found it was a significant item from Frank Thomas's career. As DH for Oakland in that game, he'd gone 3/4 with a HR. Thomas credited that 2006 comeback year with the A's, after the White Sox had let him go, with helping him reach the HOF. So that 4-26-06 game acquired more meaning, only long after it was played.

With any game-used ball, I recommend going through the hologram sequence of numbers for that game (simply the numbers above and below yours) Then compare that with the play-by-play and box score for the game, using websites like MLB.com and retrosheet.org(which goes back for decades). Then check it all again in future months or years, since the historical significance of any event often occurs long after the event has passed.