The president collectors buy on a baseball

Five presidents, one odd shape

This index now records certified sales for five presidents, and four of them follow the same pattern.

Washington and Lincoln are expensive at every level, and their best material is letters and documents. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt are affordable, with most certified letters, documents and photographs selling for under about fifteen hundred dollars. We set out why in why a Roosevelt autograph costs a fraction of Washington's and Lincoln's.

On Truman's page, the paper fits that second group. A signed photograph sent with a typed letter from his presidency made $598. An inscribed colour photograph made $3,884.

The baseballs do not fit anything. The seven on the page sold for $2,151, $5,002, $5,497, $9,859, $10,025, $10,200 and $17,459. The middle of them is close to ten thousand dollars.

Why a baseball

Presidents and baseball have been tied together since 14 April 1910, when William Howard Taft threw out the first ball at the Washington Senators' opening game, to the pitcher Walter Johnson. Opening the season became part of the job, and for decades afterwards it was usually done in Washington.

Truman took to it. The Baseball Hall of Fame holds photographs of him throwing out the first pitch on Opening Day in 1946, 1947, 1950 and 1952, and records him as the first president to throw left-handed.

His 1950 opener became a small legend, and the accounts of it do not quite agree. Most say he threw two balls, one with each hand, to show off that he could use both. The Hall of Fame describes two left-handed tosses. Either way, it was a president enjoying himself at the ballpark, and it was photographed.

Two markets wanting the same object

A typed letter from the White House appeals mainly to people who collect presidents. A baseball signed by a president appeals to them and to the many people who collect baseball, most of whom would never buy a presidential letter.

We cannot measure that crossover directly, and we would not pretend to. But it is the most natural explanation for why the same signature is worth so much more on a ball than on a page, and it matches what we have seen elsewhere on this index: the objects that carry the most premium are the ones tied to a moment or a passion that more than one kind of collector shares.

What moves the price of a Truman ball

The strength of the signature. Heritage rates the signatures on its baseballs on a ten-point scale. A 1947 ball rated 9 out of 10 made $10,200. A ball from his White House years rated 5 out of 10 made $5,497. Ink on a baseball fades and smudges with handling, and buyers pay for a bold one.

What is written with it. The dearest ball on the page, at $17,459, carries an inscription as well as his name.

Not, on its own, the date. That same ball is an official American League ball bearing the name of Joe Cronin, who became league president only in 1959. So it was signed years after Truman left the White House, and it still outsold every ball from his presidency. A 1957 ball, also from after his time in office, made the least. The year matters less than the ball itself.

What to check before buying

Look at the ball's stamping. An official league ball carries the name of the league president of the day, which helps date it. Truman's presidency ran from 1945 to early 1953.

Judge the ink. On a seventy-year-old ball, the difference between a bold signature and a faded one can be the difference between two prices on this page.

Buy it certified, and preferably twice. Most of the balls here came with letters from two authenticators. A presidential baseball is exactly the kind of high-value, easy-to-imagine object that attracts forgery.

Know what you are paying for. If you want Truman's signature, his paper is a fraction of the price. If you want the ball, you are paying for a crossover with baseball, and that is where the money is.

The thing worth sitting with

Washington's value is in his letters, Lincoln's in his photographs and his secretary's endorsement, the Roosevelts' in what their letters say. Truman's is on a baseball.

He was a president who threw out first pitches left-handed, perhaps with either hand, and was photographed doing it, and the collectors who care most about his signature are, in large part, baseball collectors. Sometimes the object tells you who the buyer is.

You can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources