1946 Green Bay Packers Team Signed Football with Kiesling, Lambeau, Bruce Smith....

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Sold on Jul 31, 2014 for:

$15,535.00 Bid Source: Live: Floor bidder

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The three most coveted Packers autographs together in flawless condition!

1946 Green Bay Packers Team Signed Football with Kiesling, Lambeau, Bruce Smith. Though the 1946 Packers were unable to fight their way back to the NFL Championship they had enjoyed two seasons earlier, their roster remained largely unchanged from those glory days but for the addition of a superstar halfback, the 1941 Heisman Trophy winner Bruce Smith. Only Nile Kinnick, who perished in a World War II aircraft training mission, is a tougher target for collectors chasing the Heisman theme, and those Smith signatures applied to NFL horsehide are all but nonexistent in the collecting community.

Curly Lambeau might be tougher still, despite his long and essential service to the professional game, and he's universally considered to be the most significant figure in Green Bay Packers history. Lambeau was nearing the end of three decades at the helm of the franchise he founded when his pen met this football. But the rarest autograph here, and perhaps the most elusive and desirable for advanced NFL collectors, is that of Walt Kiesling, a man who would follow inaugural class member Lambeau into Canton immortality in the fourth annual induction. Lambeau and Kiesling are counted among the NFL All-Decade Team for the 1920's, joined by the likes of Red Grange, Ernie Nevers and Jim Thorpe.

Smith, Lambeau and Kiesling appear among the thirty-two black fountain pen autographs applied to this Official NFL (Bell) football, each and every autograph rating a staggering 9+/10. Other notable signers include Don Hutson, Tony Canadeo, Baby Ray, Irv Comp, Charlie Brock, Ted Fritsch and Larry Craig. The ball has been fitted with a new bladder and lacing but is otherwise 100% original and unrestored, quite simply the best-preserved signed football we've ever encountered from the first half of the twentieth century game. Full LOA from PSA/DNA. Full LOA from James Spence Authentication.