The Baseball Basement

Some great football schedule posters and baseball pennants at one booth.

My vote for the most colorful booth at the National with some beautiful vintage cigarette signs that serve as beautiful companion pieces for early baseball tobacco cards.

Roberto Clemente Sugardale card with a very impressive price tag.

Seat from the old Comiskey Park -- tough to take home on the plane.

More from a dealer from Atlanta -- Boston Bees and St. Louis Browns hats in the front of the case.

From the same dealer several pieces from the Sinclair Babe Ruth contest -- two dinosaurs with Ruth decals on them, the Ruth ball that went with the contest and a giant advertising banner that you can see part of at the bottom of the photo.

Vintage Home Run King toy with original box ( I think the box may look cooler than the toy itself).

 Great Goldsmith advertising display at the booth of Brett Lowman.

This is hard to make out (even in person), but it is an original mold for the Mickey Mantle Hartland Statue. It's sideways in this photo, you can see the number 7 on his back. From the booth of probstein123.

Several photos from the booth of Vintage Sports Collector from California.They feature many jerseys used in sports movies. 

 The next few photos are all from the same booth, but I never got the dealer's name. Lots of interesting offbeat items.

From the booth of veteran New Jeresy dealer Mike Brown -- he always has some great machines.

 Here's something I've never seen before -- a bottle of I believe either wine or champagne, with a Connie Mack label.

 Not a bad little item -- a Mickey Mantle 1951 World Series game bat.

 More shots of bat dealer/collector Matt Hart in action.

 A beautiful Christy Mathewson silk surrounded by some some classic T3 cards.

Just a small portion of the cards being offered by Mark McRae. He also had a large selection of Topps wrappers that were going fast. Very nice man to talk to.

 Wow -- great graphics on this Mantle jello store display at the booth of probstein123.

 From the booth of Everything Baseball out of New Jersey: a pair of "extras" from the movie "The Natural".  The producers apparently wanted to save money by not paying people to sit in the stands everyday while the baseball scenes were shot, so hundreds of these were made up and placed in the seats, with a few live extras sprinkled in around them. If you watch the movie carefully, you can see them!

 Part of the display at the booth of dealer Scott Goodman. He apparently made a huge deal right before the start of the show and had hundreds of recent game bats and a few game gloves for sale.

 Another shot of Brett Lowman's booth -- I sure took a lot of photos there!

 This was one of my favorite booths at the show -- an eclectic mix of signs, pennants, pins and display items all mixed in together.

At times it felt like you were digging for buried treasure,and it was here that I found my best pickup of the show -- a 1937 All Star pin with a ribbon listing the names of all the players on both times. None of the other pin experts or dealers at the show had ever seen it before.

 A sampling of the display cases at the eclectic booth.

 In these last shots from that same booth you can see a nice vintage Adirondack bat rack (12-hundred dollars), a Fro-Joy advertising sign, and a tin sign for the Orioles radio station.

 One more photo from the Antique Athlete booth.

Since the show was in Baltimore, there was a lot Orioles memorabilia to be found.

I've got to tell you, if I didn't collect baseball memorabilia, this is what I would be going after -- i just love these vintage pennants.

It's in rough shape and takes up a lot of room, but it's a pretty neat T206 companion piece.

 I didn't find as many high quality pinbacks as I had hoped, but these beauties are from Mechanick's Historical Gallery.

 I haven't shown many photos from the auction house displays, because all their stuff can be seen in their catalogs and at their websites. But here is something you can't see anywhere else yet -- items from the Vada Pinson collection that will be offered later this year by Hunt Auctions.

First is his 1961 Gold glove Award, followed by his All Star and World Series bats.

Vada is probably one of the most underrated players of all time.

 A couple of really nice Rawlings advertising posters.

The Babe.

 I've always thought early baseball writing tablets make beautiful display pieces.

 Teddy Ballgame -- a classic pennant of a classic ballplayer.

 Some nice Baseball Magazine supplements -- I almost bought that Walter Johnson on my way out of the show.

 Speaking of underrated players -- here's Lou Whitaker's Gold Glove Award.

Bronx Bombers World Series trophy -- it looks much better when it's not tied to the back of George Costanza's car.