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 The Tom Marsilio Collection

On May 6, 2018, Steiner Auctions hosted its “Spring Fever” auction, featuring four signed T206 cards from a wonderfully large through-the-mail autograph collection.  Steiner broke the entire collection up and did not explicitly share the source of the cards — where were they obtained, by whom, or how.  But, with the help Dave Amerman, Auction Manager at Steiner -- and an assist from Dom DiMaggio and Lew Fonseca (more on that below) -- I have been able to identify the consignor and communicate with him about his collection. 

Amerman explained that “Lot #17 Doc White, Lot #18 Sam Crawford, Lot #19 Elmer Flick and Lot #20 Fred Snodgrass in this auction all came from a private collection.”  Amerman noted that “[t]he owner of these cards was actually not a card collector at all.  These were the only four cards in his collection.”

Amerman further explained:

The collector was a retired attorney in his mid-70s who collected signed 3x5” index cards.  He had a collection of over 200 signed index cards . . . from the mid-1950s to early 1960s.  A majority of the lower end 3x5” index cards that form this collection were also sold in Lot #237 of the 2018 Spring Fever Auction.

While Amerman would not breach client confidences and identify the consignor for me, by noting that Lot #237 also came from the same collection as the four signed T206s, I was able to learn the consignor’s name.  This is because Lot #237 showed that Dom DiMaggio and Lew Fonseca both personalized their signatures to Tom Marsilio:

All of the items Steiner auctions from the Marsilio Collection were authenticated by JSA in their presence. These four T206 cards had been a part of this private collection for over 50 years.  According to Amerman, “the collector was not a reseller of memorabilia and this was his first experience selling any of his items via auction as evidenced by the items collected and overall nature of the collection, most personalized to this individual who clearly had a passion of writing athletes and collecting autographs in his youth.”

With all of this information, it really was not very hard to find the “retired attorney in his mid-70s” named Tom Marsilio. After all, he was on Facebook.  So on April 30, 2020, I reached out to him on Facebook messenger.  Here was our conversation:

SignedT206.com: Hi Tom - I'm an autograph collector. Is this from your collection?

Marsilio: Absolutely, all of them!

SignedT206.com: Amazing! Thanks so much for writing me back! You had a signed T206 of Doc White from that collection. Do you recall how you got it?

Marsilio: Yes, I mailed it to him with a SASE and he returned it. I sold three others also. Wahoo Sam Crawford, Fred C. Snodgrass and Elmer Flick, all gotten the same way in the late ‘60s when I was a teenager. For five dollars I bought an exhaustive list of major league ball players home addresses from a Richard Burns in Coffeyville, Mississippi. With that, I sent out hundreds of like requests. Possibly a third responded.

SignedT206.com: Yes, that lines up with my research. Do you still collect autographs?

Marsilio: I liquidated my collection in order to enhance my retirement portfolio. Included in my collection was a baseball signed by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Casey Stangel, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, and MRS. Babe Ruth.

SignedT206.com: Amazing stuff!

Marsilio: I actually met Mrs. Babe Ruth who signed the ball when I was about 10 years old. My dad and I were waiting under the stands at Yankee Stadium for her to arrive. It must have been fall, as she did arrive wearing a mink coat. She was surrounded by what seem to be 10 “suits”. I had the impression that I was being approached by royalty. She did not disappoint. She took the ball from my dad looking at neither of us, signed it, and abruptly turned and left without any recognition to us at all.

My collecting continued into 1967 and 1968 when I was a midshipmen at Annapolis. My collection eventually traveled from Pennsylvania to the Mojave desert to the Sahara desert in Morocco before returning to Pennsylvania from which they were sold.

SignedT206.com: Really? You had autographed T206 cards with you in Morocco?

Marsilio: Absolutely! Yes, they traveled with me throughout my Marine Corps active-duty career.

SignedT206.com: That’s just unreal. Did you just have those four T206s signed? Or did you get others?

Marsilio: Those were it.

SignedT206.com: Do you recall why you just sent those 4? Did you buy them in order to send them to get signed? Or did you have them lying around the house?

Marsilio: I had maybe five or six, for which I paid $.75 apiece. I sent one to a player whose name I don’t recall, the envelope was returned to me and the card had been stolen. I may have had a couple more depicting deceased players.

SignedT206.com: Makes sense. Really glad you did that. And I’m thrilled you wrote back - this conversation gives a lot of provenance to items your collection.

Marsilio: As a kid, I was a walking baseball encyclopedia. Over the years, my interest in the sport has waned to the point where I have actually no interest in it whatsoever today. That made it easier to part with my collection.

SignedT206.com: Understood. Well your collection is giving a lot of joy to a lot of people today, including me. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for your service to our country!

Marsilio: I tell people not to thank me for my service. I had a total of 28 years and the only combat I saw was in north Africa and there the enemy was my ex-wife! 

SignedT206.com: Haha! Well it still means something to me.  Thank you.

In addition, the baseball address list Marsilio referenced was also sold by Steiner in the same auction at Lot #468, which Amerman referred to as “the icing on the cake” of the collection. It was created by hobby pioneer Richard Burns, who wrote the Sports Trader, which was a pioneer sports collectors' monthly journal that was around several years before "The Trader Speaks" came on the scene. You can see a few pages from the address list below.

While I don’t have a copy of the full address list, the Sports Trader from April 1965 included one of Burns’ address lists, especially for “players who played around the turn of the [20th] century” that included three of the subjects that Marsilio successfully sent T206 cards to in order to get signed (Crawford, Flick and White):

Note that the address list also included other players from the T206 set, including Bill Carrigan, Hans Lobert, and Nap Rucker, each of whom signed T206 cards.

Steiner sold a collection of over 200 signed index cards that he collected from the mid-1950s to early 1960s. Many of these are featured below:

Additional signed items from this collection that also sold in the same auction included this beautiful letter from Rube Marquard:

Also included were a number of framed Hall of Fame plaques, including autographs of Hall of Famers Carl Hubbell, Lefty Grove, Nap Lajoie, Jackie Robinson, and Casey Stengel — who said asked Tom Marsilio to “Join the N.Y. Mets”.

A number of Marsilio’s index cards were also sold individually, including T206ers Elmer Flick — who, like Crawford, also noted the year was 1966 — Rube Marquard, and Fred Snodgrass; in addition to Edd Roush and Roger Peckinpaugh — all of whom were favorites of TTM autograph seekers.

When the TPAs cannot to be trusted – and frankly, even if they’re doing their level best – it is information like this which provides the corroborative or circumstantial evidence of authenticity -- the "provenance" we crave when taking that leap of faith and purchasing a wonderful little autographed piece of cardboard. For all of these reasons, Amerman certainly was right when he said, “I don’t think anyone will have much luck trying to determine any foul play regarding the items sold in this collection, including the T206 Doc White and the other three T206 signed cards.”

I understand why auction houses can’t always include this level of history of every item they auction, particularly lower-value material.  But, what is lost by items listed without the provenance is so much of the story behind where these wonderful artifacts have been over the years, and the journeys they made before winding up in your own hands.  For me, that just makes collecting all the more fun!