Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

[/img]http://www.michaelemmons.com/BaseballGloves.html[/img]

Hi all!

I am new to "serious" glove collecting, though for years I have had several older gloves from the 30s - 50s that I had as part of my general collection. (I collect old uniforms, old bats, autographed balls, old programs, older baseball cards.....anything "old" and baseball related).

I just picked up this old Draper & Maynard glove (you may have seen it on eBay last week), and wondered what you all think about the possibilities of conditioning, and/or preserving, this glove. Though I am far from an expert, I am pretty sure it is a child's size glove since I can't get my hand into it. The glove is VERY thin, and the leather is very soft, but as you will see in the pics, the leather is cracked/flaking in some spots. Based on the pics, what would you do, if anything, with this glove?

I already own some Goo Gone and a couple of tubes of lanolin cream, which I have used on some of my "less collectible" gloves (might post on those later -- not sure I'm doing it right), but not sure I should touch this D & M glove with either of those products. Any thoughts?

[/img]http://www.michaelemmons.com/BaseballGloves.html[/img][/img]

OK, I guess I do not understand how to post the pics, let me try the link...

http://www.michaelemmons.com/BaseballGloves.html

Hi Michael,

Nice to have you aboard. I wouldn't touch it. Cool glove but there's not much you can do to that type of leather. If you condition it it will just get a bit sticky and it will probably flake (or unpeel) even more. Goo Gone should only really be used occasionally and on really thick 40's or later type leather. There are a lot of other better products to use on gloves.

JD

I agree with JD. There's not much you can do with that glove. Although you can use Chelsea's leather food instead of lanolin. It is not sticky like lanolin. Apply it gently and it should condition the glove and bring it back to life.

where can you get Chelsea's leather food at?

John

http://www.shoeshinekit.com/chelleatfood.html

http://www.amazon.com/Chelsea-Leather-F ... B000BYXHPA

http://www.soccernetstore.com/departmen ... lear-.html

Thanks, JD, for the advice. (I was just on your website last week -- nice!). I think I will take you up on your advice to leave this glove alone. In fact, that is often my feeling about old gloves, anyway. I think there are a lot of gloves that actually look *better* -- & have more "character" --with the decades of wear & the unique patina it produces. Maybe sometimes that is what makes each glove truly "one of a kind." When you leave the "wear" & the dirt on the glove, you preserve a bit of that glove's "history" -- which is lost when you clean it up. Does that make sense?

However, I have been very impressed with some of the Before & After posts on this forum. The magic that some of you perform on these gloves is incredible, & the final products are beautiful. I have tried to practice on a couple of 1950s gloves, and have found it more difficult than I imagined. The gloves that have a lot of oil stains & the dark layer of dirt are stubborn. At first, I tried just spraying GooGone on a rag & gently rubbed the leather in one small area. When that wasn't too effective, I started rubbing fairly hard, which was more effective, but still didn't get the staining off. Finally, I read a someone's post on this forum that said to spray the GooGone directly on the glove, so I did that. THAT finally worked a LOT better. I guess the stains really need to be saturated to "break up" the oil stains & dirt that has been tanned into the leather. One concern I've had, though, is that it seems like in order to do this, you have to basically "scuff up" the top layer of the leather to finally get the dirt out, which seems to "rough up" & dry out the leather. I am sure different collectors have different opinions on this, but is that okay? Do you find that re-conditioning the dried/scuffed leather with lonolin & other products "restores" the proper look?

Cubsrno1 -- thanks for the suggestion of Chelsea's Leather Food. I do not think I will use anything on this particular glove, but would like to know more about it for some of my other gloves. When you say it will breathe life back into the glove, does it replenish the color & re-moisturize the glove leather?

Yes, it does both re-moisturize and replenish the color . I recently picked up a D&M full in similar condition as yours. Here are before and after pictures.[/img][/img]