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Comments: I first purchased a tribute
card of Harry Wright - a 1950 Callahan issue by starting with
a PSA 8 in 2004 and then upgrading to a beautiful PSA 9 on 3/24/2005.
Eventually, I had to get something from his playing days and in Feb, 2007 this came along:
The striking
design of this highly desirable Old Judge insert card incorporates
a stately, sepia-toned portrait photograph of baseball pioneer
Harry Wright. Advanced Old Judge collectors acknowledge Wright
as one of the rarest depictions in the series, regardless of the
pose; remarkably, very few varieties exist of this most esteemed
field general of the 19th Century in comparison to the abundance
of most other notable Hall of Famers. At this stage of his great
career, Wright was manager of the Philadelphia Phillies - the
lone future Cooperstown enshrinee on the team. The card reveals
the pose of a quintessential leader, complete with formal suit
and no-nonsense expression. The eBay seller provided the story below...
How I came to be selling Old Judge Baseball cards on ebay
I am just the agent selling items on eBay for the heirs to
an estate in the eastern part of Massachusetts. Their forefathers
owned a warehouse that they seemed to have reason to fill. Grandpa,
in particular, went around buying up estates, and then would pack
everything away in the warehouse, which is a sizeable building
with a number of levels. The heirs are now trying to empty the
contents of the building before deciding exactly what to do with
the real estate. Grandpa died in the mid 1930's, so all
these goodies have been sitting accumulating dust and other grungy
stuff for quite a number of years.
At the current time, late summer 2006, I have begun selling
the second batch of Old Judge cards to come from this location.
This second batch was in a small box in a larger box in the warehouse.
These cards are remarkably clean and without any dirt and dust,
which leads me to believe that they were items treasured by the
owner who amassed them back before Grandpa bought their box and
squirreled it away in his warehouse. If Grandpa died in the 30's,
then whoever previously owned these cards was probably collecting
them during the teens and twenties.
So with this explanation you can better understand why I
include the following with each eBay listing of these original
Old Judge baseball cards.
From my eBay listing for each Old Judge card: These cards
have been in another group of original Old Judge baseball cards
that have been carefully tucked away dry and dark for quite a
few years. This is the first time these cards has been available
for purchase.
I am their agent and they have asked that I not release
their name, nor Grandpa's, nor the Massachusetts town in which
they reside.
Mary Lightner, Wagonland Annex, Bernardston, Mass.
The card was slabbed Authentic by SGC.
UPDATE: In early March, 2015 BST Auctions introduced their inaugural offering to the hobby. I've had the privilege of knowing Andy Becker, John Spano and Brian Terjung for several years and have always enjoyed spending time with them at Nationals past / baseball games and dinners. They're great guys. It was a great first auction and several items caught my eye. In particular, there was an opportunity for me to upgrade my Old Judge Wright. I watched the auction closely and placed a bid early on to ensure I can place additional bids on the final day. At approximately 9PM MST I placed a max bid and crossed my fingers. Between my laptop downstairs, my PC upstairs and my cell phone I must have refreshed the screen over a hundred times. But, my high bid was never pushed. At 1:30am I laid down to bed and before falling asleep, the auction closed. I won!!! The next day I googled the card to compare against past auction results. I guess I should have done this well before the auction closed but hadn't. I found the card had last sold in a Legendary Auction in 2006. My cost was significantly less - score! |
