Columbus, Ohio Antique Show

[BretMan]

This past weekend one of the biggest antique shows in the midwest came to town. The Scott's Antique Show rotates between Tampa, Atlanta and Columbus (my home town) throughout the year. The Columbus show runs once a month from November through March. This show features over 1000 dealers of just about every antique and collectible you can imagine.

And once in a while you might find a couple of nice baseball gloves!

I saw a few beat-up split fingers and older gloves that were overpriced or more trashed than the usual gloves I like to collect.

One that I almost jumped on was an early Mantle XPG20. This glove was lying on a table palm-up when I first saw it. The stampings were strong, with the "early" style Mantle signature, and this glove looked pretty nice- until I picked it up.

The Rawlings patch was shredded, about half gone, the piping was completely gone around the wrist strap, the lining was in sad shape and there was magic marker up the fingers. Too bad, since this glove was marked $35 and would have been a steal if the back and inside had matched the condition of the front.

The interesting news was that among the 1000 dealers there, I did manage to find one dedicated glove collector! This gentleman had brought several dozen gloves with him. One I really liked was his black 1" web Victor model. And one he had was of particular interest to me, and also one I don't ever recall seeing before.

He had a nice Spalding glove endorsed by Cleveland Indians great Mel Harder. Harder pitched for the Tribe from 1928 to 1947, won 223 games and was a four-time all-star. He might not be well known to most, but being an Indians fan I was quite familiar with him. He was inducted into the Indians hall of fame and his is one of the few numbers retired by Cleveland. His retired number is on dispaly in the stadium along with other Indian greats like Feller and Boudreau.

This was a clean glove, appeared to be from the mid-30's (I haven't checked my Vintage Catalog book yet), with a buckle back and two tunnel webs. The dealer had a price on it that refelected the full-book price from the price guide, so I didn't pick it up. I plan on seeing this again at the December show and we might be able to work out a deal.

Since we have folks here that have seen and handled thousands of gloves, I would be curious to know if any of you have seen a Mel Harder endorsed glove.

[ebbets55]

Hi Brett,

I sold my Spalding Mel Harder glove on Ebay many years ago. Got like $40 for it even though it booked for a lot more. It was a high quality and very thick glove with a thick lining and stubby fingers. The endorsement was big facsimile going vertically from bottom to top. Don't know if you can see much from the old pictures. Hope this helps.

JD

[BretMan]

Thanks, Ebbets! That's the exact glove I saw, except it had the two horizontal tunnel webs in place.

I had a chance to check the glove guide and it looks like the only Harder endorsed gloves were made by Spalding in 1936 and 1937. The price guide lists these gloves as "very rare"- probably why I never saw one before! The book price is $250 for excellent condition- which this one looked to be- and that is just about where the one I saw was priced.