What I'm Looking For

I'm always looking to buy, and I'm especially interested in pieces that come with a real story: documents, contracts, tickets, letters, and game-used items tied to a specific moment in sports or American history. Condition matters less to me than provenance, and I'm happy to look at single items or whole collections. If you have something on this list, or something close, send me a note with photos and anything you know about where it came from.

Top targets

  • Unique items, contracts, and documents

  • Houdini artifacts

  • Jim Thorpe

  • Moe Berg

  • James Naismith artifacts

  • Minnie Miñoso artifacts

  • Walter Johnson Germantown check

  • 1936 World Series Game 1 ticket

  • "Drama in Bahama" (Ali vs. Berbick, Dec. 11, 1981) ticket and program

  • Yankees vs. Tigers, Aug. 14 to 17, 1922

  • New York Black Yankees tickets, May to Oct. 1941

Orioles and Adam Jones

  • Orioles game-used items from 9/30/18

1860 presidential election

  • Printed Lincoln & Hamlin Republican campaign ticket (the "ballot" piece), ideally New Jersey

  • Small broadside

1919 Black Sox

  • Claude "Lefty" Williams

  • Fred McMullin

  • Arnold Rothstein

  • Hal Chase

  • Autographed index cards from any of the above

Baseball inventors

  • Alexander Joy Cartwright

  • Daniel "Doc" Adams

  • Elihu Phinney Jr.

  • Abner Doubleday

  • William Wheaton

Basketball inventors

  • Luther Gulick

  • James Naismith

  • William R. Chase (scored the first-ever basket)

  • George T. Hepbron

  • Melvin Rideout (took the game to Europe)

  • Amos Alonzo Stagg

  • Frank Mahan (suggested the name "Basket Ball")