1950 "Shoeless Joe" Jackson Signed Autograph Cut....

Description

One of the most coveted autographs on Earth

1950 "Shoeless Joe" Jackson Signed Autograph Cut. He was six years old when his family moved to Brandon Mill on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina, a company town centered around a textile factory where he worked twelve-hour shifts as a "linthead," sweeping the floors as the machinery whirred and clanged around him. It was a life punctuated by hard work and very limited funds, with education one of the many luxuries the Jackson family was unable to afford. Though the mill's baseball team would ultimately prove to be the key that would unlock the door to a better life for "Shoeless Joe," his lack of education is often cited as a root cause of his banishment from the game he loved as he fell victim to corrupt forces demanding his participation in the destructive 1919 "Black Sox" scandal.

Even the most casual collector of sports memorabilia is aware that Jackson's autograph stands as one of the hobby's "Holy Grails," the vast gulf between supply and demand fueled by the legendary slugger's illiteracy and his supreme baseball relevance respectively. Typically Jackson would avoid signing autographs whenever possible, allowing his wife to tend to those duties, and only assuming them himself when legal matters demanded.

Presented is one of the very few genuine Shoeless Joe autographs available in the collecting hobby, penned as Jackson practiced his signature in order to respond to a youngster's autograph request through the mail. Heritage originally sold the autograph in our May 2012 Signature Auction, when the signature was part of the child's mailing envelope sent to Jackson's Greenville, South Carolina home. Another autograph and a portion of a third joined this model. In 1998, the consignor of that envelope tracked down the autograph collector, then sixty-two years old. He reported that he had ultimately received the same signature as every other boy who had solicited an autograph by mail, that of Jackson's wife Katie. Apparently this had been just one more sadness in a life populated by many, as Joe proved too embarrassed to provide his own childlike scrawl in satisfaction of the boy's request.

Now one of those autographs has been repurposed in this extremely limited edition creation by Historic Autographs, slabbed in a PSA holder with the header, "2012 HA Why the Hall Not? Joe Jackson 1/1, Authentic PSA/DNA Certified Auto." The autograph may not be elegantly scripted, but it remains as bold as the date of application, the cut measuring approximately 1x3" in dimension. Full LOA from James Spence Authentication.

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