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16-B Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- AUCTION -
F
or the past half-decade or so,
the Saco River Auction Com-
pany of Biddeford, Maine,
has been building a solid reputation
as a niche seller of sports antiques
and collectibles. On January 14,
Saco River ventured into uncharted
waters with a newly recovered
cache of glass plate
negatives for the
Old Judge series of
baseball cards.
The cards were
issued in 1888 and
touted Old Judge
Cigarettes,
pro-
duced by the New
York City firm of
Goodwin & Company. Goodwin
was among the first companies
to use trading cards to promote
its brand. In 1890 the company
merged with four others to cre-
ate the monopolistic American
Tobacco Company.
Auctioneer and owner Floyd
Hartford reported that prior to the
sale only about 31 Goodwin nega-
tives were known extant, and this
find brought out 40 more. “People
have been chasing this collection
for years, trying to find out where
it is,” he said before the sale. “We
got it. It came from Vermont.... The
most there’s ever been at auction
before is five.”
Joe Gonsowski, the coauthor of
a comprehensive book on the sub-
ject,
The Photographic Baseball
Cards of Goodwin & Company
(1886-1890)
, attended the sale. He
explained, “You’d buy a pack of
ten cigarettes and you’d get a small
1½" x 2½" [card], same size as the
T206, only they were a real photo.
[The collection] was rumored to
exist.... Now they’ve surfaced.
They’ve always been referred to as
the ‘Vermont find.’”
With very little secondary market
track record, the value of the set was
difficult to accurately predict, and the
results proved erratic. Gonsowski
agreed, suggesting, “I think they
went way, way underpriced. There
have been negatives that changed
hands at $8000 apiece before this
auction, and so the expectation was
about $2000 per negative, and they
were disappointed. Of course as a
bidder, I was quite happy.... [The
auctioneers] spread the word quite
well, but surprisingly there just
weren’t a lot of bidders bidding one
another up.” The consignor, how-
ever, was reportedly well satisfied
with the total.
The price for the top-selling neg-
ative was something of a fluke.
The player was John “Jack” Doran,
who played pitcher, outfielder,
and third base for such legendary
teams as the Omaha Omahogs and
the Davenport Onion Weeders. He
was hardly a superstar, and in 1888
for Omaha, he batted an anemic
.137 in 40 games.
In the same year,
he won five and
lost ten games. He
never broke the
“Mendoza line,”
commonly consid-
ered to be .200, the
threshold for feeble
batting. In other
words, he stank. But his Old Judge
glass negative for 1888 fetched a
superstar-worthy $5635 (includ-
ing buyer’s premium) and was the
highest-priced glass negative of
the night. Gonsowski commented
later: “The funny thing is that
Doran had four or five negatives,
and only that one really took off,
and there’s really no explanation
there. Just two bidders who aggres-
sively were going after it. And in a
lot of cases the collectors wanted
a negative that actually matched a
card in their collection.... I think
that’s what happened there.”
Larry Corcoran (1859-1891) is a
forgotten player who shouldn’t have
been forgotten. In 1880, his rookie
season as a pitcher with the Chi-
cago White Stockings, he
won 43 games while losing
14. Compare that with the
modern record of Denny
McLain, who won only 31
games in 1968 for theDetroit
Tigers. In 1884 Corcoran
became the first pitcher to
toss three no-hitters in a
career, a record that stood
until Sandy Koufax threw
his fourth no-hitter in 1965.
But as Gonsowski pointed
out, Corcoran played in the
age of a two-pitcher rota-
tion. “In nineteenth-cen-
tury baseball,” Gonsowski
explained later, “there was
only a one- or two-pitcher
rotation, so there’s fifty and
even sixty games winners.
A lot of pitchers had great
seasons but a short career
because they lost their arm,
and Corcoran was one of
those. He could have been Hall of
Fame worthy if he could have dou-
bled the length of his career.” That
helped make his Old Judge glass
negative worth $805.
Saco River Auctions, Biddeford, Maine
Semi-Positive Bidding on Negatives
by Mark Sisco
Bobby Mathews (1851-1898) won 297 games
over his unusually long 16-year career. He’s also
credited with the dubious distinction of being
one of the first to use the illegal spitball pitch. His
Old Judge negative fetched a modest $460. Joe
Gonsowski commented that there were no Hall
of Famers among all the known negatives but
that Mathews was the player most likely to have
gained the distinction. Saco River photo.
Larry Corcoran Old Judge glass negative, $805.
Saco River photo.
A T206 series card for
Walter Johnson, pro-
moting El Principe
de Gales Cigarettes,
graded excellent to
near mint and showing
the legendary pitcher
posed as if approach-
ing the “stretch posi-
tion,” sold for $2645.
Saco River photo.
The name “Shoeless Joe” Jackson
(1887-1951) still rings through the
halls of injustice. He is remembered
primarily for his alleged connection
to the infamous “Black Sox” scandal
in which he and his teammates on
the 1919 Chicago White Sox were
accused of conspiring to rig the
World Series against the Cincinnati
Reds. Jackson and seven other play-
ers were accused of each accepting a
$5000 bribe to blow the game with
botched plays. All eight were acquit-
ted, but all were banned for life from
baseball by commissioner Kenesaw
Mountain Landis. Jackson’s guilt
has been in dispute ever since. His
performance in that World Series
has always argued for his innocence:
a .375 batting average, 12 hits, no
errors, and a Reds runner thrown out at the plate. He still holds the third-highest
career batting average in major league history. His 1940 Play Ball Gum, Inc. card,
produced more than 20 years after his last game, graded excellent, gave him a vote of
confidence by recording only that “he stopped playing after the 1920 season.” It was
a home run price at $1495.
Hall of Famer “Wee” Willie Keeler
(1872-1923), one of the smallest play-
ers ever to play the game, was a pro-
lific hitter, batting over .300 16 times
in 19 seasons. His best advice for hit-
ters was “Keep your eye clear, and hit
’em where they ain’t.” His T206 card,
graded excellent, drew $747.50.
It’s fun to look at the players in static poses that
were intended to appear dynamic. This Jack
Doran Old Judge glass negative took top price
honors for the negatives at $5635. Saco River
photo.
“People have
been chasing
this collection
for years, try-
ing to find out
where it is.”