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For almost a year, I have promised Mike I would post to the site and introduce myself. I have secretly been a bystander way back to the old site and enjoy all the posts and pictures of your collections.
Again....hello to all.
I am 38 yrs old and I imagine like most, my road into the sports antiques world is probably similar to many in our hobby - baseball cards. I believe I kept the local 7/11 in business buying packs of cards from 1977-1982. Around 83 and 84 is when I started attending card shows. Although I do not own a card today, when attending the National every year, I still stop and look at the Topps star cards from 76' and 77'. Great memories.
I grew up and currently live in S. Calif. Between the ages of approx. 8-14, I spent many weekends hunting at flea markets for antiques with my Dad. While we hunted everywhere, it was the Rose Bowl antique market back in the early eighties that would become our home base for years and years. He would wake me up way too early. We had too - I had baseball games later in the day. We opened many flea markets at 5am and were on our way home by 9am. Funny how times change - getting up early is now is a way of life. While Dad was busying looking for advertising pieces, Bauer pottery, coin-op machines etc, I was hunting for baseball cards - but soon began to notice old gloves, programs, pennant and books. The first vintage item that I bought (with Dad's money of course) was a NY Black Yankees pennant in pristine condition purchased for $5. I think I was 10 years old. The pennant hangs in Dad's sports room today. Sports antiques were great to find at the flea market, but overall, with the exception of some pennants, vintage memorbilia really was an after thought relative to baseball cards.
In return for being the only kid on the street to be up and hunting before half the world was awake, Dad started to buy me old baseball books and baseball mag's that I found at the markets. He left the flea market with porcelian signs and a gumball machine and I left with a couple books and magazines. We were both stoked.The Putman series is still cherished in my library. Want history - read a Putman book or a copy of Baseball Magazine from the 20's.
Two events seperated by many years led to my emersion into the sports antiques space and out of the baseball card space.The first event was attending The National in LA - I belive it was in '84 or '85. Being 13 or 14 yrs old and working on the Topps 1956 set, I was so anxious to go to the show. Since my Dad was a kid in 1956 and had memories of that years cards, we started to collect the 1956 Topp's set. And we were building a mint set. When I walked in to my first National, I was blow away by a couple of the dealers that had a ton of vintage material other than cards. Although Dad and I purchased the May's, Mantle and Aaron 56' cards that day, seeing the vintage material was what made the show for me. Trophies and gloves looked differant being on a dealers table rather than at the flea markets. I can still visualize Adelson and his son's booth at that first National. Sweet stuff. If we had only known then what we know now, we all would have had comparable tresures as seen in Smithsonian- Baseball by Wong. Wishful thinking.....
I had seen tons of old baseball and football things at the flea market, but not at the level that I saw at the National. I never forgot the thrill at looking at the old memorabilia.
It wasnt until many yr's later that the second event occured, I went away to college in Tempe AZ at ASU. If any of you have been so lucky to come across Nifties Antiques than you will know what I am talking about when I say "heaven on earth". Randy's shop in downtown Glendale AZ was filled with nothing but vintage memorbilia. I hadnt been to a National again since way back, meaning, I never really saw alot of great vintage items in one place since the 1984 National. But walking into Nifities 10 years after my first National changed me. Photos, gloves, games, old pitching machines, wooden stadium seats etc filled his old small brick building. I have literally been in hundreds and hundreds of antiques shops in my life and nothing has ever come close to Nifities. That shop was unreal to me. Located on Main Street, it was bacially an old store front. I think is had been a saloon at one time. Old and narrow the inside was made of only old red brick walls. The place must of only been 20 feet wide but perhaps 150 feet in lenght and walls that exceeded 25 feet. And every inch was filled with awesome sports antiques.That was it!!!
I placed an add in the paper and sold off the entire card collection within a few weeks of going to Nifities. I bascially went to Nifities every weekend. Randy would laugh as I would bring many college girl friends to his shop and just "hang out". With the sale of the card collection including the mint 56's, I now had money and was on a mission. I laugh now at the first purchases. Old uniforms, programs, trophies etc were my passion. I scoured Sports Collectors Digest and started signing up with the auction houses. Today some of the items I dig the most are the simply the old issues of SCD and the old catalogs from Oregon Trail Acutions as well as the very early Hunt catalogs. Go back and look at the ad's in SCD around 94 or so. Corey Libey and Bob McCaan ads littered the back pages. Lemon peels, cresant gloves, ring bats were soooooo abundant. Then came the Sports Equipment Price Guide by Bushing. What a book!!! This book helped my collection out in many ways. I had come home for the holidays in 95 and had left Bushing's book on the counter. Mom says to me - "hey, thats a pretty cool book". Keep reading to see what she had done....
As time went by, I met several other people. Jim Griffth and Mark Nash were such cool guys that gave me much knowledge as well as great deals while starting out. They always took thier time and gave me recomendations for collection purchases. I remember handing over hundred dollar bills to Jim for a complete football uniform including my first leather helmet. I was addicted.
At graduation, my mother gave me two gifts. The first was a two-toned white Reach cathers glove with a beautiful tag - patent date stamped into palm 1891. The second item was a 36' inch Spalding ring bat dated 1885. OK....now, I had begun to collect old baseball and football stuff, but nowhere did I have two items like the glove and bat. Both are without saying still in the collection. Here is the cool part - she had contacted Bushing after checking out the book and he sold her the items with a guarentee that if I was not happy, she could return. The glove and bat were cool, but knowing that your Mom called Bushing directly was too cool. I have read his book 50+ times...the copy looks older than books I have from 1900!!!
Later, I met John Kanute and Terry Knouse- both cool dudes that had major influence on me. Not to mention the fact that they always had great inventory.
Trophies, photos AND early WHITE GLOVES are my main passion today. This yr's national was my personal best- my first Spalding trophy and a bitchen ring bat puchased from Jim Griffth and John Kanute. Thank God those dudes are dealers. Kanute has provided me my collecting fix many times over the last 10 yrs.
Today, many of my friends are vintage collectors. And every yr, my wife buys one item from every National to remember the show. If you ever come over to the house, she will tell you that that glove over there or that trophy over there is not for sale or trade..
A couple times I have pulled one of her tresures out to make like I just traded or sold it just to get her going...
I might be narrow thinking but, is there any better hobby in the world other than vintage sports memorabilia collecting. Give me a night of looking at Ebay and serching for what Tree63 or MLB11 are bidding on is an alright night. Waiting for the catalogs...or better yet, thumbing through super old catalogs. Visiting other collectors "sports room" and checking out thier goods and hearing the stories is awesome. Starting in 84 I attending my first National. I did not attend another National until 95 or 96, but have every yr since.
True, I wish the Nationals were the same as in the late 80's and 90's. True, I wish that you could recieve your SCD and freak on all the vintage stuff. AND true, I still wish you could walk into some random antique shop and find cool stuff. While the hobby has centainly changed and the material becoming harder to find, its still a killer hobby.
If any of you live here in S. Calif, please reach out to me. Perhaps we can trade some stuff.
Hey Rob - we are due for a visit to see each others new finds!
Ryan
Again....hello to all.
I am 38 yrs old and I imagine like most, my road into the sports antiques world is probably similar to many in our hobby - baseball cards. I believe I kept the local 7/11 in business buying packs of cards from 1977-1982. Around 83 and 84 is when I started attending card shows. Although I do not own a card today, when attending the National every year, I still stop and look at the Topps star cards from 76' and 77'. Great memories.
I grew up and currently live in S. Calif. Between the ages of approx. 8-14, I spent many weekends hunting at flea markets for antiques with my Dad. While we hunted everywhere, it was the Rose Bowl antique market back in the early eighties that would become our home base for years and years. He would wake me up way too early. We had too - I had baseball games later in the day. We opened many flea markets at 5am and were on our way home by 9am. Funny how times change - getting up early is now is a way of life. While Dad was busying looking for advertising pieces, Bauer pottery, coin-op machines etc, I was hunting for baseball cards - but soon began to notice old gloves, programs, pennant and books. The first vintage item that I bought (with Dad's money of course) was a NY Black Yankees pennant in pristine condition purchased for $5. I think I was 10 years old. The pennant hangs in Dad's sports room today. Sports antiques were great to find at the flea market, but overall, with the exception of some pennants, vintage memorbilia really was an after thought relative to baseball cards.
In return for being the only kid on the street to be up and hunting before half the world was awake, Dad started to buy me old baseball books and baseball mag's that I found at the markets. He left the flea market with porcelian signs and a gumball machine and I left with a couple books and magazines. We were both stoked.The Putman series is still cherished in my library. Want history - read a Putman book or a copy of Baseball Magazine from the 20's.
Two events seperated by many years led to my emersion into the sports antiques space and out of the baseball card space.The first event was attending The National in LA - I belive it was in '84 or '85. Being 13 or 14 yrs old and working on the Topps 1956 set, I was so anxious to go to the show. Since my Dad was a kid in 1956 and had memories of that years cards, we started to collect the 1956 Topp's set. And we were building a mint set. When I walked in to my first National, I was blow away by a couple of the dealers that had a ton of vintage material other than cards. Although Dad and I purchased the May's, Mantle and Aaron 56' cards that day, seeing the vintage material was what made the show for me. Trophies and gloves looked differant being on a dealers table rather than at the flea markets. I can still visualize Adelson and his son's booth at that first National. Sweet stuff. If we had only known then what we know now, we all would have had comparable tresures as seen in Smithsonian- Baseball by Wong. Wishful thinking.....
I had seen tons of old baseball and football things at the flea market, but not at the level that I saw at the National. I never forgot the thrill at looking at the old memorabilia.
It wasnt until many yr's later that the second event occured, I went away to college in Tempe AZ at ASU. If any of you have been so lucky to come across Nifties Antiques than you will know what I am talking about when I say "heaven on earth". Randy's shop in downtown Glendale AZ was filled with nothing but vintage memorbilia. I hadnt been to a National again since way back, meaning, I never really saw alot of great vintage items in one place since the 1984 National. But walking into Nifities 10 years after my first National changed me. Photos, gloves, games, old pitching machines, wooden stadium seats etc filled his old small brick building. I have literally been in hundreds and hundreds of antiques shops in my life and nothing has ever come close to Nifities. That shop was unreal to me. Located on Main Street, it was bacially an old store front. I think is had been a saloon at one time. Old and narrow the inside was made of only old red brick walls. The place must of only been 20 feet wide but perhaps 150 feet in lenght and walls that exceeded 25 feet. And every inch was filled with awesome sports antiques.That was it!!!
I placed an add in the paper and sold off the entire card collection within a few weeks of going to Nifities. I bascially went to Nifities every weekend. Randy would laugh as I would bring many college girl friends to his shop and just "hang out". With the sale of the card collection including the mint 56's, I now had money and was on a mission. I laugh now at the first purchases. Old uniforms, programs, trophies etc were my passion. I scoured Sports Collectors Digest and started signing up with the auction houses. Today some of the items I dig the most are the simply the old issues of SCD and the old catalogs from Oregon Trail Acutions as well as the very early Hunt catalogs. Go back and look at the ad's in SCD around 94 or so. Corey Libey and Bob McCaan ads littered the back pages. Lemon peels, cresant gloves, ring bats were soooooo abundant. Then came the Sports Equipment Price Guide by Bushing. What a book!!! This book helped my collection out in many ways. I had come home for the holidays in 95 and had left Bushing's book on the counter. Mom says to me - "hey, thats a pretty cool book". Keep reading to see what she had done....
As time went by, I met several other people. Jim Griffth and Mark Nash were such cool guys that gave me much knowledge as well as great deals while starting out. They always took thier time and gave me recomendations for collection purchases. I remember handing over hundred dollar bills to Jim for a complete football uniform including my first leather helmet. I was addicted.
At graduation, my mother gave me two gifts. The first was a two-toned white Reach cathers glove with a beautiful tag - patent date stamped into palm 1891. The second item was a 36' inch Spalding ring bat dated 1885. OK....now, I had begun to collect old baseball and football stuff, but nowhere did I have two items like the glove and bat. Both are without saying still in the collection. Here is the cool part - she had contacted Bushing after checking out the book and he sold her the items with a guarentee that if I was not happy, she could return. The glove and bat were cool, but knowing that your Mom called Bushing directly was too cool. I have read his book 50+ times...the copy looks older than books I have from 1900!!!
Later, I met John Kanute and Terry Knouse- both cool dudes that had major influence on me. Not to mention the fact that they always had great inventory.
Trophies, photos AND early WHITE GLOVES are my main passion today. This yr's national was my personal best- my first Spalding trophy and a bitchen ring bat puchased from Jim Griffth and John Kanute. Thank God those dudes are dealers. Kanute has provided me my collecting fix many times over the last 10 yrs.
Today, many of my friends are vintage collectors. And every yr, my wife buys one item from every National to remember the show. If you ever come over to the house, she will tell you that that glove over there or that trophy over there is not for sale or trade..
A couple times I have pulled one of her tresures out to make like I just traded or sold it just to get her going...I might be narrow thinking but, is there any better hobby in the world other than vintage sports memorabilia collecting. Give me a night of looking at Ebay and serching for what Tree63 or MLB11 are bidding on is an alright night. Waiting for the catalogs...or better yet, thumbing through super old catalogs. Visiting other collectors "sports room" and checking out thier goods and hearing the stories is awesome. Starting in 84 I attending my first National. I did not attend another National until 95 or 96, but have every yr since.
True, I wish the Nationals were the same as in the late 80's and 90's. True, I wish that you could recieve your SCD and freak on all the vintage stuff. AND true, I still wish you could walk into some random antique shop and find cool stuff. While the hobby has centainly changed and the material becoming harder to find, its still a killer hobby.
If any of you live here in S. Calif, please reach out to me. Perhaps we can trade some stuff.
Hey Rob - we are due for a visit to see each others new finds!
Ryan
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