Skip to footer

$1 million 'Antiques Roadshow' discovery: A trove of 1870s Boston baseball memorabilia

$1 million antiques: A trove of signatures and rare baseball cards from Boston Red Stockings players was appraised at $1 million for insurance purposes, series producer Marsha Bemko said.

|
Meredith Nierman/Antiques Roadshow/AP
Leila Dunbar appraises a collection of early Boston baseball memorabilia for the program 'Antiques Roadshow' in New York. This is the largest sports memorabilia find in the program's 19-year history, valued at $1 million.
  • By Lynn Elber Associated Press

| LOS ANGELES

The PBS series "Antiques Roadshow" says it hit a home run with a collection of 1870s Boston baseball memorabilia.

A trove of signatures and rare baseball cards from Boston Red Stockings players was appraised at $1 million for insurance purposes, series producer Marsha Bemko said.

She said it's the largest sports memorabilia find in the history of the 19-year-old public TV show, which travels America looking for varied heirlooms and treasures.

The collection was brought to an "Antiques Roadshow" taping Saturday in New York City. The owner inherited it from her great-great-grandmother, who ran a Boston boarding house where the team lived in 1871-72, PBS said.

The owner's identity was kept private for security reasons, PBS said Monday. The collection had not been formally valued before but the owner had once received a $5,000 offer, PBS said.

According to "Antiques Roadshow" appraiser Leila Dunbar, the "crown jewel" of the items is a May 1871 letter to the Boston landlady that includes notes from three future Hall of Fame members: Albert Spalding, the future sporting good magnate, and brothers Harry and George Wright. The letter included the players' appreciation for their host's cooking.

The baseball franchise is now the Atlanta Braves.

Appraisals from the New York City visit will be featured in three hours of "Antiques Roadshow" episodes to air in 2015 on public TV stations. The series is broadcast on Monday nights.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to $1 million 'Antiques Roadshow' discovery: A trove of 1870s Boston baseball memorabilia
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0812/1-million-Antiques-Roadshow-discovery-A-trove-of-1870s-Boston-baseball-memorabilia
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe