A Brewers Lot on eBay, Part 2

Today has been a good collecting day for me, as I went to my local show for the first time in a couple of months and came home with a hatful of interesting stuff. But more on that later this week.

First, I have to close out my eBay purchase of a lot filled with items from the Milwaukee Brewers' history from the early 1970s.

I'm not a big newspaper clipping guy, in large part because newsprint photos tend to be pretty low quality items and, further, they are often larger in size and not easily stored. So, when this group of items included a decent amount of newspaper clippings, I was not super excited. Honestly, most of the items were pretty mundane or even trash-worthy -- rosters of all the teams in the league on opening day in 1971, or in mid-May of 1972, for instance. I just don't care about that stuff. If it's interesting to you, let me know and I'll send it to you.

There were a few clippings that were kind of interesting though. For instance, there was this one from the Sunday Milwaukee Journal on April 5, 1970 -- just a day or two after the city found out that they would be swiping the Pilots and turning them into the Brewers -- a team photo of the Pilots:



Even more interesting were two clippings that went together about the twentieth anniversary old-timers game that was put together for June 24, 1973 at County Stadium. The game was intended to reenact the first major league game between the Milwaukee Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals.  Here are the rosters:

I liked seeing what the players were doing as their occupation in 1973 -- and how the Brewers kept trying to pull in that old Braves magic through guys like Del Crandall and Jim Wilson being in charge of the organization.

Here's a nice photo of the Braves team, who also coopted then-Brewers coach Harvey Kuenn into their lineup:

Still, that stuff, while nice, does not exactly get my motor running.

The actress who played "Sister Christian" -- Macha Bennet-Shephard -- turned out pretty hot, even at the age of nearly 50....see?

If only she had somehow been included in the lot, well, that would have made my wife very unhappy.

Okay, back to the stuff I could buy legally. Brewers items, of course.

The featured items to me were the scorebooks, scorecards, and yearbooks. For instance, the lot included a copy of the Brewers 1970 Yearbook:

It's not a bad effort considering that it was thrown together in about 6 weeks. It is only 36 pages long, though I don't know how that compares to other yearbooks of the era.

The coolest thing amongst the scorecards is also an item that came closest to being the coolest item in the whole lot.

That's the front cover. It looks pretty plain. That should be no surprise, though. I mean, when the team moved to Milwaukee, it probably caught a lot of folks flat-footed. By that, I mean that usually stuff like this would be plastered in advertising, and the Brewer front office probably had to be put together first before it could sell tons of advertising.

How I know that has to be the case is that this is the interior of the scorecard:

The person who originally owned all these scorecards had the habit of writing down the lineup in pen and stapling his/her (probably his, based on the quality of the handwriting) ticket to the interior. As you can see, this ticket is from April 7, 1970 -- the very first Opening Day in Milwaukee Brewers history! According to the SABR Book that just came out, From the Braves to the Brewers: Great Games and Exciting History at Milwaukee's County Stadium, that day was a pleasant if windy day with sunny skies and highs in the upper 50s. Considering how the game ended 12-0 in favor of the visiting California Angels, the weather may have been the only highlight.

Just seeing this in the lot absolutely blew me away. It immediately became one of my very favorite items in my Brewers collection.

Thing is, there were three more items that are almost as cool. All of them are additions to my Robin Yount Collection:

This gorgeous Robin Yount photo has to date from either 1978 or 1979. The Brewers first changed to the MB glove logo in 1978. And, in 1980, they installed their new scoreboard that featured prominently in the movie Major League:

What an awesome photo it is of Robin, too. He's either in his 5th or 6th major league season, and is either 22 or 23 years old. 

What could make that photo better?

How about an autographed version?

Indeed, that is better. Much better.

This photo apparently was one of the highlights of the previous owner's collection -- so much so that he/she kept it on his/her wall with thumbtacks -- as you can see the thumbtack holes in each corner.

The final item was not as vintage, but it's at least as exciting as this 1978/79 photo:

It's a late career Robin Yount photo from the same entity that issued a Paul Molitor photo I have (that, sadly, is not autographed). This one is definitely autographed, and it definitely looks genuine. 

I really believe that the $150 I paid for this yearbook/photo/newspaper clipping/scorecard lot was a steal when everything is unpacked. There were 4 or 5 scorecards from 1970, one from 1971, two from 1972, one or two from 1973, and a couple from 1974 too. 

With all that, how could go I wrong? I couldn't. The only way to go wrong was to let someone else buy it. 

Now that would be a mistake.