Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

Fellow Glovers,
I'm brand new to the forum but wanted to share this one with some seasoned vets. I recently bought this glove at one of our many antique markets here in Lancaster, PA. When I picked it up to check it out, I noticed it was pretty beat up, with the leather being dry and brittle, almost bluish/grey in color. There is a big chunk of leather missing from the thumb area and some siginificant cracking on the opposite side. What caught my eye was the 'Thos E Wilson Co.' button which was nice with no wear. When I brought it home, I realized that cleaning it would probably cause it to disintegrate...it was that frail. But I did manage to give it a nice gentle conditioning with some Lanolin, which really helped the appearance and in turn, brought out some stampings that I couldn't originally see. In the palm area, it says 'Professional Model', along with the Wilson 'W' with 'a smaller 'Thos E Wilson Co' running through it. Just below that it says '615'. When I squezze the padding, it seems to be horse hair as I can hear a subtle crunching sound. Judging by the 1" wide web, I'm guessing this is late 1910's/early 20s perhaps? While it looks nice, I think if I used it to play catch, it would react like a piece of burnt toast once a baseball hit it. Can anyone tell me if what I have is any sort of rarity? Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.
Tim

Nice find! Definitely an early Wilson model.

That the glove is labeled "Thomas E. Wilson" dates it to pre-1923. Wilson offered various versions of the 615 model from their inception in the early-teens up through the early-20's.

As a non-player endorsed glove, these gloves are valued solely by their age and relative availability. Such 1" web fielder's glove are listed as "common" in the glove price guide, meaning there is an ample supply to meet collector demand. Still, such gloves are sought by collectors and quite desirable.

Though not an especially rare model, and considering the condition, you could put a top value of about $100 on this one. That chunk of missing leather might be a turn-off to many collectors, though, and might pull that price down a bit- maybe reducing the price by about 1/3.

Still, a good find that I doubt any collector here would turn down at a reasonable price.

BretMan
Thanks for the info. I would have attached the pics to my post (as I see others have done in other posts) but I couldn't figure out how to do it. Is the URL attachment the standard way of showing pics? Also, when you access that URL that I referenced, does it open up the slide show for the glove or simply one picture? Just curious what the folks on here prefer so I can abide. See, I told you I was a newbie.

I'm not that familiar with Snapfish but you need to find the direct address to the picture to get it to show up on the forum. I know in photobucket the codes are all right underneath the picture but I don't know with Snapfish. The URL you need should end with a .jpg extension.

I just found instructions for getting my pics attached to my post. This is a test for pics of the aforementioned Wilson glove...

To look at the glove, I had to copy the URL, paste in in my browser window, then go directly to that page. It just gave me one shot- the back of the glove- not a slide show.

Apparently, the link provided by Snapfish is the address of the actual web page, not the address of where the image is stored.

Handle the link as a web address, not an image link. This link should work if you click it.

Tim's Wilson Glove

OK, Let me give this another shot...