This lot is closed. Bidding ended on 5/11/2001.
The Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York in 1939 as part of the game's centennial celebration. The first class inducted into the Hall was a cream of the crop of superstars: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson. On June 12, 1939, the day that they received their plaques, a postage stamp commemorating the occasion was placed on sale at the Cooperstown post office. Only a precious few of those now-rare three-cent stamps exist today, depicting what is said to be the first organized baseball game ever played, at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. We are delighted to offer a block of four of those historic sepia-toned stamps in near-mint condition, which are attached to the Baseball Centennial souvenir stamp card that reads "United States Commemorating Baseball's Centenary." All the more incredible, the card was signed by Ruth, Cobb and Johnson, as well as by the fabled Philadelphia A's owner Connie Mack. The delicate card, which measures 4" x 5", is mounted at the corners on a piece of 6 1/2" x 8 ½" stationery with an illustration of a ballplayer signing an autograph for a bunch of kids. The signatures are in black fountain pen outside the edges of the block of stamps in the center, and these may be the among the finest autographs ever of those four legendary men, with each signature rating nearly a perfect 10. The stamps themselves are in excellent condition. The ink of the postmark is almost entirely concentrated on the two stamps on the left side, with the two stamps on the right, and especially the upper one, left nearly unscathed. There is also a
slight crease through the Mack signature and a lighter one through the Ruth, though these do not in any way detract eye appeal or strength of the signatures.