We are an eBay affiliate and may be compensated for clicks on links that result in purchases.

Baseball Autograph Book from '30s-40s (Mel Ott, HoFers, dozens more to identify)

So I found an old autograph book when cleaning through a grandparent's collectibles (coins and stamps too, but that's for another place). When he was a kid, he would get autographs before games—mostly at Wrigley and their NL opponents. Unfortunately I haven't found anyone that has as much interest in it as me anymore. I need a lot of help identifying most of the signatures. And gauge authentication—it's always *possible* some signatures are not real, but I have no reason to believe so.

I've seen that a Mel Ott cutout itself sells for up to $2,000, so I'm really curious what a book (in relatively below-average condition) could draw interest—or individual autograph pages moved separately. At the moment, I'm keeping it as a memento... but maybe the value makes it tempting.

I'm just very curious about all aspects of it, and my goal is gathering as much info about it as I can. In large part, identifying who the signatures are from.

Here is the Mel Ott. I can't identify the other 2 names, or when this might have been signed.

*************************************************************

EDIT 1:

So here's one that's very interesting to me.

Lou Tost, Manny Salvo, Casey Stengel, and unidentified that looks like it could be Paul Waner.

This would place it as the 1942 Braves; and when Stengel was managing.

Now the mystery here is that the "S" in Stengel does not appear to be the way he (mostly?) signed his name. Referencing it with other known signatures, it looks the same aside from that S. However I've found other forms of his signature where he does sign his "S" in this way.

This one is curious. Did he at one time sign his name differently? Or on rare occasion autograph differently? This one was one of the first mysteries for me. Was he signing his large print "S" prior to 1943?

Tags: HOF, Musial, Ott, Stengel, autographs, baseball, cutouts, signatures

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Muggsy Rizzo on October 5, 2017 at 3:49pm

I thought this would get some responses!

I find it more fascinating than anyone else I guess lol.

There are some HOF of the late 30s-40s in here though, and dozens more to ID yet.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on October 5, 2017 at 8:22pm

It is interesting. I imagine the lack of response is related to those two neighboring mystery signatures. I think I'm familiar with all the Giants players of that 1925 to 1945 Ott era and I can't identify them even remotely as being among them. Has to be from a different team or even other. They're partial legibility makes identification difficult, but I am fairly certain they're not Giant teammates.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Drew Welch on October 6, 2017 at 4:35am

1933 NY Giants Hank Leiber and Bernie James.

Really neat book ... plus gives you a bit of history about your grandfather's youth.

Drew

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Muggsy Rizzo on October 6, 2017 at 12:47pm

Drew, Thank you very much! That one was a stump for me. Of all the letters I tried to think the last name of the first began with, "L" was not one of them. ha

That's one mystery down, and 98 more to go. I'll edit the first post instead of put it in a reply like this.

Thank you!