by BretMan » September 18th, 2006, 12:21 pm
The large show in Sprinfield, Ohio was this past weekend. I could only attend one day- Sunday- and got there about mid-day. After four hours of walking I still hadn't covered the entire grounds!
Not much in the way of gloves was found. Several dealers had a few vintage gloves, but nothing special. Also seemed to run across quite a few odd imports (Holiday, Parvee) and common gloves from the 70's up.
Then there is the one guy that is almost always at this show who brings a couple hundred gloves, about 50 nice bats, several vintage catcher's masks and tons of assorted sports cards, publications and memorabilia. A little bit of everything there on the glove side, but this guy wants "book price" for just about everything he brings. Still, always fun to browse through tubs and tubs full of old gloves!
Within a couple of miles of the fairgrounds where this show is held are several huge antique malls. All together these malls house nearly 2000 separate booths and dealers.
I only had time to visit one before they closed and was surprised to find a few more booths with vintage sporting goods than I had in the past. Saw a couple of old wool uniforms (and the same thought went through my head- how could you stand that on a hot summer day!) and there seemed to be an abundance of old leather football helmets, more than I've ever seen before.
Funny that many of the helmets were misidentified in regards to maker and date, something that I have a pretty good handle on due to all my baseball glove reference material and research. For example, one MacGergor Goldsmith helmet was listed as being from the 1920's! We know that can't be possible as that date preceeded the MacGregor and goldsmith merger by a couple of decades.
And there were more gloves than on past visits, too. Most were priced at top-dollar and many were not up to the condition standards of what I like to collect, but it's good to see that this collectible market seems to be growing a bit.
Saw a PMM Musial Playmaker that was structurally sold, but the leather shell was rather distressed and faded for $40. A few split -fingers here and there. Saw one generic Wilson 40's split-finger with no web and a large portion of the shell along the pinky finger and heel rotted away for $65! Yuck!
Minus the "glove guy" and his seveal hundred gloves, I probably saw about 50 other gloves at this show and the antique mall combined.
The only glove I bought was an American Eagle (Spiegel) brand with a Hoot Evers endorsement. Not a bad little mid-size glove that will clean up nicely. Seeing this glove further convinces me that the American Eagel gloves were actually made by Hutch, as I have seen an identical Hutch model on several ocassions.