Glove of the Week: Jan 7 – Jan 13 (Crescents, Bouton)

Discuss interesting gloves listed on eBay or other auction houses.

Glove of the Week: Jan 7 – Jan 13 (Crescents, Bouton)

Postby burker72 » January 17th, 2008, 8:48 am

Bidding seems to be picking up...a number of desirable gloves this past week with some good bidding volume, it sure makes for an exciting week.

At first glance I thought that this was a beautiful example of a turn of the century grommet-back base mitt, but a closer look revealed a few issues. The palm side of the glove looks great, but it does have a home stitching repair, although even that looks good. The back side has some faded ink and is missing 3 of the 4 grommets. Admirably, the seller was very upfront about all of these issues. The seller does refer to it as a catcher’s mitt, however, I am assuming this is a base mitt because of the separated thumb…is that correct? Anyway, the glove sold for $660 on just 2 bids.

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So…is it a workman’s glove or not? One of the more popular recent threads was the discussion of what constitutes a workman’s glove. Well, quite appropriately we have a glove described by the seller as a workman’s glove that would certainly defy the overall consensus of what make a workman’s glove. Regardless, what a great glove, a full web Spalding lefty fielder’s glove selling for $568 on a whopping 26 bids. A question popped up asking if the stitching in the lining was a repair. According to the seller, this is typical of the time, although I’m not sure I’ve seen this style of stitching before.

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Here’s yet another case of a “workman’s” glove…this one is a great looking black full web glove from Goldsmith. This one sold for $228 on 7 bids, quite a deal.

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We had a couple of Spalding Bouton 42-213 PMs pop up in 2007 and here is another nice one in 2008. This one features strong, solid stamping and my favorite web design. An absolutely great looking glove and design, this one went for $151 on 9 bids. One of our forum members was a winner, I wonder if this one will be a gamer or a display item, looks like it could fit either bill to me. I’m sure I’m a bit of a broken record, but if you haven’t read Ball Four do yourself a favor and read it this winter.

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If you’re a glove collector with $104 in his pocket, I’m not sure you could find a better way to spend it than on this glove, a terrific Wilson Ted Williams 614 model. This one has great stampings and a great web. I see the 614 as one of the higher end listing in the 1948 Wilson catalog. A great buy from one of the great collectors in the game.

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Here is a rare endorsement, Rabbit Maranville that attracted plenty of attention – 15 bids that ended with a $255 sales price. The glove is from an unknown manufacturer, but the seller speculates it is a “61” model number.

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This one will make the list every time, a Rawlings TG-12 Stan Musial HOH trap-eze model. This nice original condition example brought $220 on 16 bids. Looks like there is some cracking on the wrist strap, but otherwise I suspect this glove will clean up beautifully, especially considering the buyer. Maybe we’ll see some "after" pics.

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Postby ebbets55 » January 19th, 2008, 12:02 am

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workman glove

Postby softball66 » January 19th, 2008, 10:01 am

Now this is more of what Dave Bushing is talking about with a workman glove appearance (the lefty above). A thinner look. And one might describe as Bob has, a workman type or a workman type with a web.
Now note, it also has a sewn on (separate) thumb. The opening in the back is fairly big.
My contention for a pure definition would be: if a worker walked into a hardware store in 1900 and wanted a workman's leather glove what would it have looked like? Would it have a sewn on thumb, a web, a wide opening in the back? Certainly it would have looked somewhat basically like this, sans web, so I don't entirely fault McCann or Bushing on this.
But for the purists.......
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Postby ebbets55 » January 19th, 2008, 1:04 pm

I don't know Joe. Don't change camps on me now. Call me a purist. I think the most you can go with gloves like these is that you can say, they resemble a workmans glove. As nice a glove as it is, I still wouldn't call it one. This was clearly made by a sporting goods manufacturer, Spalding, probably a good 15 years after what we have been calling a workmans glove. If that's the way we are gonna go with these - narrow heeled baseball gloves with webs, sewn on thumbs and sporting goods manufacturers tags, then I just found five more workmans gloves in my collection and they are more common then we all thought. Woo hoo!

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Postby vintagesportscollector » January 19th, 2008, 3:25 pm

I wouldn't consider this a workmans glove, but I don't have a problem with the description so long as "style" or "workman like" is used. I do however think the dating in the description could be more accurate. This is not a late 1890's glove. Based on the Spalding tag it couldn't be pre 1900 and i'd say the earliest it could be is c.1905. There are earlier 1900s Spalding cloth patches, and based on the 1905 or later date, I am not sure I would say this is the very first style of glove to feature a web. It's a super nice glove with a great workman's style look, but I think the description is stretching it a bit much to make it seem like a workmans glove.
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Workman glove / Workman Style or Type

Postby softball66 » January 19th, 2008, 5:26 pm

JD, my post was just to say that I see what Dave Bushing is getting at, even McCann, but don't say Workman glove! I would even hesitate to describe this as workman type or style. But this looks more like workman because of its width than the wider glove variety. No it's not a workman glove.
So maybe it's a semantics problem like Alex B. says. Just don't prostitute the word "Workman," like we see all too often.
And mitt for glove. Nupe! Cowboy is right: a mitt is a mitten (no fingers) and a glove is a glove (fingers). Akadema is getting close.
Now I've seen the mitt jargon used to describe gloves by people who don't know or care or who say what they've heard them called. It's been interchanged quite often. I might even throw in the term "mitt" in writing a story if I've overused the word "glove" and need a little variety. But it's basically incorrect.
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Postby ebbets55 » January 19th, 2008, 6:39 pm

Way to go Joe. Just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page. :wink: We are. I think you are right. It's just semantics and I know I'm beating a dead horse. Just getting my two cents out there as I think this gloves dates to the 1905 era like vintagesportscollector said, which is a good 20+ or so years after what we have been referring to a workmans glove. Theoretically, every early full web or 1" web glove description could say that it emanated or resembles a workman's glove, cuz it does, and I think that pushes it a bit too far as they were made into the early 30's.

The main point I was trying to make with all these rants is that by the time the manufacturers got into making gloves, they were already pieces of sporting goods - baseball gloves, which inherently takes them out of the workmans glove category to begin with as workmans gloves were just gloves that were taken out of their original use and used for baseball. So anything made by a sporting goods company was probably a baseball glove, at least after 1880ish (unless of course it was a mitt :twisted: )

I'll drop it on my end now. Thanks for listening.

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Postby vintagebrett » January 19th, 2008, 6:59 pm

Maybe this should be a topic covered at this Premier Collectible Sporting Conference that is taking place in Chicago in April:

http://www.pcce2008.com/

Looks like all of the big dealers and auction houses will be there - maybe we could send them a petition stating the forums stance on workman's gloves. :)
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Postby BretMan » January 20th, 2008, 7:45 pm

How about we use the term "webless glove"? Descriptive and to the point, and removes the debate of a workman glove having a web or not.

You could have a webless glove, a webless cresent glove or a webbed cresent glove and that would fit the bill for the first 20 or 30 years of glove production.

By the way, as things are now defined, put me down in the camp that says "workman" style equals no web or cresent!

One more definition that kind of bothers me- the term "pre-war" being used to describe ANY split-fingered glove. I imagine that the term was coined in the early days of collecting, before much of the catalog data available today had been compiled, and served the purpose of creating some arbitrary cut-off point for the split-finger design.

The only problem is that split-finger gloves were offered for 8-10 years after the war, and that makes the "pre-war" definition somewhat (but not intentionally) misleading.

And then there are, of course, the laced-finger, Vance-style gloves of the 20's and 30's that are definitely "pre-war", but the fingers are not loose. So we can have split-finger gloves that are "post-war" and laced finger gloves that are "pre-war" and that makes the "pre-war" definition obsolete.

Nit-picky? Maybe. More accurate? Definitely!
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