Vic Willis

Portion of Jack Smalling autograph collection to hit auction
Depending on your age, you might not know the name Jack Smalling -- but he wrote the book on through-the-mail autograph collecting back in the day when most autographs weren't just a click away.
While The Baseball Autograph Collector's Handbook is up to its 19th edition today with addresses for more than 90 percent of known living major leaguers, coaches and umpires inside, it's the fruits of his publishing passion -- his autographs -- that are on the auction block in one single lot coming to the auction from Heritage Auctions next month.
"Many, if not most, of Smalling's greatest successes came from trails long since gone cold, but when Smalling first took up his hobby in 1962, quite a few Dead Ball Era legends still walked the Earth," said the auction listing. "And if not the players themselves, then their children or grandchildren, pleased in that pre-Internet age that somewhere, someone still remembered the man. They were all too happy to drop a cancelled check or a clipping from an old lease into the supplied self-addressed, stamped envelope in fulfillment of Smalling's request. More than a half century later, Smalling's collection of autographs numbers in the six figures."
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This entry was posted in Auction Buzz, Autograph Collecting, Baseball, Vintage and tagged Babe Ruth, Hall of Fame, MLB, Ty Cobb, baseball autographs, Cy Young, Heritage Auctions, Josh Gibson, Rogers Hornsby, Walter Johnson, Joe Tinker, Grover Alexander, Mickey Welch, Amos Rusie, Vic Willis, Pop Lloyd, Martin Dihigo, Hughie Jennings, Eddie Gaedel, Jack Smalling, Jimmy Collins, Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown on April 17, 2018 by BlowoutBuzz.

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