Appraisal: 1934 All-American Baseball Team Autographs

GUEST: I brought a page from, uh, an autograph book.

My mother-in-law, when she was ten years old, her father, uh, took her to a, a baseball game in Seattle, and it was an exhibition game, and the all-stars were playing each other.

They were sitting behind the dugout, and at the time, her father told her to go down and see if she could get some autographs.

GUEST: Which she did.

And she kept this in her autograph book and passed the page on down to her son, my husband.

We've just kind of kept it in a safe and would take it out.

We made a copy of it, and framed that, and had that hanging in our house.

So it was October, I believe, right around the 18th, that game day.

And they were playing in Seattle...

GUEST: ...before they were leaving for Vancouver, and then they were shipping out to Japan...

GUEST: ...for about a monthlong barnstorming... games.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: You know, set of games in Japan.

APPRAISER: Exactly.

So... What's great about this is the provenance of how, that she got it.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: And it's been handed down the family, and that's just fabulous.

And you brought the picture today of your mother-in-law around the time when she obtained the autographs.

We do see autograph album pages of the Yankees that include Ruth and Gehrig.

Of course, the best, most popular players.

They signed quite a bit.

What makes this different, though, is that this is part of the tour.

It was an important tour.

So in 1934, the American League players put together a team that started of 36 players.

They came to the West Coast.

They called it the Western Canada tour before it was the Japan tour, but it was called the 1934 Barnstorming Tour.

Only American Leaguers, because the National League wouldn't allow their players to participate.

APPRAISER: So they had this team of 36 players.

15 players went to Japan.

Of that, what's nice is, you've got the two major stars, you've got Ruth and Gehrig.

What's interesting is, there's 12 signatures here, but there's only 11 of the players that went to Japan.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So we also have Al Schacht, who was the Clown Prince of Baseball.

So you're actually missing four players of the 15 that went to Japan.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So, still a great example of that squad, but not a complete squad.

The whole purpose of that tour was for... Well, the players looked at it as tourism.

The, baseball and the U.S. government looked at it as an ambassador tour.

And they were greeted by a parade of half a million people in Tokyo.

They won every game.

And Babe Ruth hit 13 homers.

One of the interesting things about this t, tour also was that Moe Berg, the catcher right here, went on the tour.

He was a U.S. government spy, and he took his camera and he took film when they were in Japan.

I would say at auction, I'd put a value of $10,000 to $15,000.

GUEST: Wow.

Wow, that's, that's great for a, a little piece of paper with signatures.

APPRAISER: I would put an insur, an insurance value on it of $20,000.

GUEST: Oh, okay, great.