1957 New York Yankees signed ball - looking for some help!
ehazuka
Posts: 63 ✭✭
Attached are a bunch of iPhone photos of a signed baseball. The ball belongs to a friend of mine who got it from his uncle a long while back as a gift. He actually belted it around the back yard with his friends in the early 60s, as you can clearly see by the condition of the ball. I guess at 10 years old he didn't think much of the gift! He was told that it was a '58 Yankees Team Signed Ball, and believes that it does have authentic signatures.
From my research, I believe it is a 1957 Yankees signed ball with 15 of the 28 signatures identified (by me!).
Below is a list of the autos that I feel I can see well enough to positively ID. The Bill Dickey and the Mantle look pretty darned good to me for that era, but again, I am NO EXPERT with autos!
Can anyone provide any assistance/guidance/suggestions? I believe PSA would need about $250 to authenticate the ball. My research reveals a likely value of around $500 for the ball, if they ARE authentic. So I'm not sure it makes sense to authenticate the ball first, or just sell it as is.
If you feel they are authentic, please let me know if it is worth it to have it PSA authenticated. If you feel it is a clubhouse ball, that's fine too please just let me know!
The ball IS FOR SALE, so I guess I should close with "Reasonable offers are welcomed!"
I would GREATLY appreciate any feedback that any of you experts can provide. A million thanks in advance.
-Ed
Position Player Name Age
3B Andy Carey 25
COACH Bill Dickey 50
1B Bill Skowron 26
3B Billy Martin 29
P Bob Turley 26
MGR Casey Stengel 66
P Don Larsen 27
OF Elston Howard 28
OF Enos Slaughter 41
OF Hank Bauer 34
P Johnny Kucks 23
OF Mickey Mantle 25
P Tom Sturdivant 27
3B Tony Kubek 20
C Yogi Berra 32
Comments
Sorry. I have embedded the best photos into this thread rather than "attaching" all of them. The photos aren't good, I realize, but the ball is pretty battered, too. Thanks in advance.
Yikes! That ball is in terrible shape. The only thing I clearly recognize is the "E" in Enos, and that one looks good. No idea on the rest.
I assume there are lots of these around in decent shape. If so, yours would be a tough sell.
With all those big names I might have expected a higher value, but I am not an expert on valuing sports stuff. If you were quoted $500 for the condition it is in, that would make sense. But if that quote applied to a ball with similar sigs in good condition then yours is worth a lot less than that, I would imagine.
The only consolation is I am sure that your friend is not the only one who ever did that.
I will be interested to see what others say. (If you don't get any responses here maybe post in the Sports Forum).
Not sure if this matters, but I thought PSA topped out at $150 for multisigned items (excluding bats and gloves).
https://www.psacard.com/fees/autographs
I am also no expert and it's hard to tell because of the condition, but are you sure it’s not a souvenir ball? I have a souvenir Yankees ball from 1953 that has some similar characteristics (autos in different directions, none that seem to overlap at all, similar "pen pressure" on most/all sigs), but it’s obviously tough to tell from the pics and condition. Here are pics of my ball if you want to compare (some of the same players are represented on mine).
Jim
Good point.
Also, it reminded me that the OP's ball has no markings. It is not an official American League ball, and I assume that even most commercially produced balls would have markings of some kind.