DETOURS

Adam Monahan:

There's a lot of stuff on this show that I have zero interest in. I don't want to name particulars because I don't want to offend any of our appraisers that have devoted a life to this and be like, "Everything you do is a sham." But there's certain things that they say the value, I'm like, "That's just dumb and stupid and nobody should do that."

Marsha Bemko:

You mean in dumb and stupid, wow, how can it be worth that much money?

Adam Monahan:

Yeah. Something weird and they're like, "It's worth $50,000." You're like, "That took five minutes to make. There's no way."

Show soundbite:

To a non-folk art person, this is probably ugly as a mud fence. Between the people that collect folk art, it's a thing of great beauty.

Marsha Bemko:

And you think that only happens sometimes? I even watch every show and I say out loud, that that is stupid money for a fill in the blank!

Adam Monahan:

The show we're talking about is of course, GBH's Antiques Roadshow, and the person I'm talking to who agrees with me is my boss, Marsha Bemko. But the item we're here to talk about today is, it's almost like it was sent to the heavens for me.

Simeon Lipman:

Well, baseball calendars are something that you'd see back then, but I've never seen this one before and neither have my colleagues. What's interesting, it's Bunker Hill Brewery.

Adam Monahan:

Bunker Hill Brewery calendar for the Red Sox. If there were a Venn diagram of what I like, it's baseball and beer. It is just a perfect circle.

Marsha Bemko:

Having known you for decades, Adam, I'm here to say, this is true. The man loves his beer and baseball and the Red Sox. He lives around the corner from the Red Sox and a bar.

Adam Monahan:

This is my perfect item and it's also such a Roadshow story. Here's Simeon Lippman, the appraiser who taped it for our show in 2021.

Simeon Lipman:

It had been discovered behind a barn door. Somehow it had survived a hundred years and he brought it to the Roadshow wondering, is this something? Boy, was it something,

Adam Monahan:

Yes, it's worth something, but will the calendar's value live up to this super fan's very high expectations. Something's wrong with the market if it does not.

Marsha Bemko:

It's going to hit the 30. Come on. We have to predict it's going to hit the 30 because there'll be some good bidding at the end.

Adam Monahan:

I'm Adam Monahan and this is Detours. Today, take me out to the ballgame. The guy who brought the calendar to us, Steve, is a lifelong antique hunter.

Steve:

My mother says my house is furnished in an early attic, because those are the things I like.

Adam Monahan:

He found this piece on Craigslist.

Steve:

I saw that calendar there and I thought, "Oh, that's really cool piece." When I went to look at it, I thought it was a reproduction. I didn't think it was what it was purported to be. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but I'm a Red Sox fan. I said, "Oh, let's take a chance on it."

Adam Monahan:

The listing price was $250, a little steep for a reproduction, but Steve took a chance on it and then did some research to try to figure out exactly what he had.

Steve:

And I realized, geez, this is genuine. This isn't a reproduction. I spent the money to put it in a nice frame and said, "It's probably worth $500."

Adam Monahan:

It's a good-looking calendar. Old-timey, black and white photos of all the Red Sox team members in light shirts and baseball caps, each in their own little frame, kind of like trading cards. In the big photo of the celebrated right fielder Harry Hooper in the middle, below Hooper is another name, Bunker Hill Brewery. It was the local brewery behind this promotional item and it's specifically advertising one of its beers, the PBL, purest and best and below that is the month, February, 1918.

Steve:

Everybody mistakes it as a 1918 because all the months are torn off until February of 1918, but it's a 1917 calendar. You would tack it up and that would be there for the baseball season.

Adam Monahan:

Part of the reason Steve is so interested in that date is that these were legendary years in Red Sox history. The team was formed in 1901 and hit the ground running. They won the first ever World Series championship in 1903 and then again in 1912, 1915, 1916 and 1918. Their success was due in part to one of their star players, Babe Ruth.

Simeon Lipman:

He came up with the Red Sox. He was a great pitcher.

Adam Monahan:

That's our appraiser, Simeon Lipman.

Simeon Lipman:

He might've been the best pitcher in the league when he came up, but obviously his hitting was so spectacular and so unique that he started to transition. He liked hitting more. He enjoyed hitting.

Adam Monahan:

George Herman Ruth joined the major leagues at just 19. He was young, which is how he got the nickname Babe, but Ruth had other nicknames too. The Sultan of Swat, the Colossus of Clout and the Great Bambino.

Old Radio Soundbite:

Here's a pitch. It's a slow curve low and the Babe swings. It's a long one, a long one going out towards right center. [inaudible ] was backing up against the wall. He can't get it. It's in there. Another home run for the Bambino.

Adam Monahan:

And Ruth was right there on Steve's calendar.

Steve:

You just look at it and you go, "Wow, that's history." There's so much history there. It's not just one player. There's four Hall of Famers in that and there's the whole curse of the Bambino.

Adam Monahan:

Nobody would have known it at the time, but the calendar marked the end of an era. Actually two, Bunker Hill Brewery went out of business in 1918, and then in 1919, Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees and the Red Sox era of dominance ended. After they traded the Bambino, the Red Sox didn't win another World Series for 86 years. They were cursed. So the calendar had an early Ruth photo from the precursor Red Sox, and a mystery, what was it worth?

Steve:

All the other things I collected, I kind of know their value, but there was nothing to compare it to, so I was hoping 1000, 1500.

Adam Monahan:

But there was another enticing possibility.

Steve:

There's a couple of Babe Ruth cards out there for a million dollars and they're Babe Ruth cards, but they're not quite as old as this. When he was a pitcher, when he was with the Red Sox, that kind of really cements in that curse of the Bambino.

Adam Monahan:

So the calendar could be worth anywhere from a few hundred dollars all the way up to a million.

Steve:

I was like, "I really need to get somebody serious to appraise this." I couldn't get on the Road Show. I couldn't get on the Road Show. I was like, "They're the only people that would know."

Adam Monahan:

He finally got to come to our event in Connecticut in 2021, not too far from his hometown in Massachusetts, and he brought his mom along for the ride. She had her own relationship with the team from a game she went to as a child.

Steve:

She had polio and my grandfather carried her into the Red Sox game. She still has the brochure and the flyers from that game.

Adam Monahan:

Within a matter of hours, Steve and his mother reached our pop culture and sports appraiser Simeon.

Simeon Lipman:

Instantly I could tell it was very special. I could see that it was authentic. I could tell from the paper, I could tell from the age, the foxing, if you will. I just knew it was real, but I had never seen it, and to my knowledge, no one else has either.

Adam Monahan:

This could be the only one in existence.

Simeon Lipman:

This could be the only one in existence. Look, these things, especially calendars, what is more disposable than a calendar?

Adam Monahan:

You hit the nail on the head, name something more ephemeral than a calendar. Once the year's over, there's no reason to keep it.

Simeon Lipman:

It's gone.

Adam Monahan:

But this calendar wasn't tossed like the rest. For whatever reason, it stayed hung up for almost a century before making it to Steve and then to our show. And it's not just a rare object, it's in rarefied air as far as cross-collectibles go. Calendar, baseball, beer, it's special. Sure, there are some promotional items and team pictures from that era out there, but this is in a league of its own.

Simeon Lipman:

Do you have any idea what it might be worth?

Steve:

Not really. I'd like it to be worth a lot, but if it's worth more than I have in it, then that makes my day because I've enjoyed it on the wall.

Simeon Lipman:

Well, I spoke to several of my colleagues, we all agree at auction, we'd estimate this at 20 to $30,000.

Steve:

Really?

Simeon Lipman:

Yeah.

Adam Monahan:

Steve's reaction played out as long and delightfully slow as the game of baseball itself.

Steve:

20-

Simeon Lipman:

Yeah. 20 to 30,000-

Steve:

... to 30,000-

Simeon Lipman:

Auction estimate-

Steve:

... dollars.

Simeon Lipman:

Yeah.

Steve:

Really?

Simeon Lipman:

Yeah. Really.

Adam Monahan:

It went into extra innings of disbelief.

Steve:

How much? 20?

Simeon Lipman:

20 to $30,000. That's what we'd estimate it at, could go for more.

Steve:

That's a home run.

Simeon Lipman:

Yeah, man. Awesome.

Steve:

That is a home run.

If he had said two or 3000, I would've been blown away. I'm thinking, "Well, he's going to tell me it's worth a thousand or 1500," and I'm going to sell it for 500 at auction. I'm going to barely get my money back out of it. I'm like, "Well, that's okay. I'm a Red Sox fan. It can hang on the wall for a little while longer. Then when he said that, I was just trying to wrap my head around that.

Adam Monahan:

Tell us about the decision to sell and how the process worked.

Steve:

I'm aging out. I'm turning 62 this year, and I figured, well, this is one of those things I'll cash in and I'll reinvest somewhere else. I'd like to downsize, so this will be a good year to sell it. Let somebody else really enjoy it. And may the Red Sox win, right?

Adam Monahan:

Yeah, seriously. Although that Tampa series was nothing to watch. Let's just forget that move on.

Steve:

Oh yeah.

Adam Monahan:

Steve put the calendar up for auction in April 2023, and we followed along to see what would happen. But first, I can't miss an opportunity to visit the Red Sox Home, Fenway Park. After the break, we talk to the team's curator and see what other Sox items people collect.

I'm here at Fenway. It's a nice day. Probably like 60, gorgeous. Wish there was a game.

Fenway Park has been the Red Sox home since 1912. It's actually the oldest major league baseball field still used today. It's unique in other ways too. Like it has the shortest distance from home plate to left or right field, but it also has the tallest outfield wall, the Green Monster. I still get the same sense of awe I got as a kid when I enter the stands from the concourse below and see the green grass and wonderful wall. It is majestic. I went to beautiful Fenway to see the Red Sox archive and its curator, Sarah Coffin. Are you Sarah?

Sarah Coffin:

Yes.

Adam Monahan:

Hi, I am Adam. Nice to meet you there.

Sarah Coffin:

Nice to meet you as well.

Adam Monahan:

Thanks for having me.

Sarah Coffin:

Of course.

Adam Monahan:

Can you introduce yourself and what your name and your title is?

Sarah Coffin:

Yeah. I am Sarah Coffin. I am the team curator and alumni manager for the Boston Red Sox, which basically means I take care of all of our archives and our alumni.

Adam Monahan:

Did you go to school for baseball?

Sarah Coffin:

I wish. Wouldn't that be the perfect major? I went to school for history and religion. I joke that I use both on a fairly regular basis, because I think baseball for a lot of people is religion.

Adam Monahan:

So you find yourself the caretaker of the archives of the Red Sox. What a dream job.

Sarah Coffin:

I definitely don't take it lightly. I tell people often that I am a curator of people's memories. A 2004 Jason Veritek jersey could very well be the last game that someone came with their grandmother or the first game they ever came to. It could be meaningful for a number of reasons, but these artifacts represent these games and these times in baseball history, and really history of Boston and the entire sport.

Adam Monahan:

The Red Sox were an early team, but they weren't Boston's first.

Sarah Coffin:

Boston actually already had a baseball team, the Boston Braves. Just like Chicago or New York had more than one team, we had a National League team, which was the Braves, and then the American team, which became the Red Sox in 1908.

Adam Monahan:

A little explanation for you non-baseball nerds. There are actually two major league baseball leagues, national and American. The National League was formed first in 1876, the American League and the Red Sox came later in 1901. Like Sarah said, the team was originally called the Boston Americans, but they came to be known by a common nickname, a reference to the uniforms, you guessed it, Red Sox. The area we were standing in, the Royal Rooters Club, was named for an early Red Sox fan club.

Sarah Coffin:

They were a group that would travel and go to games in different ballparks. They are credited for coming up with the lyrics to Tessie, being the Royal Rooters theme song. They were some of the first original Red Sox fans, so we named the space in honor of them.

Adam Monahan:

Can you walk me through some of the displays?

Sarah Coffin:

Yeah, of course. Where do you want to start?

Adam Monahan:

Let's go over here.

Sarah Coffin:

Okay.

Adam Monahan:

Rawlings Gold Glove. Oh, is that Dewey? Dewey. Okay. Now we're at my youth right here. Dwight Evans was a hero of mine as a kid.

Sarah Coffin:

Right now we're standing in front of a Dwight Evans 1981 gold glove, which is awarded to the best fielding player at each position each year. Behind that, we have an American League trophy, which is obviously awarded to whoever wins the American League championship. Next to that, you have a Rookie of the Year award for Walt Dropo, who was the first Red Sox to win Rookie of the Year.

Adam Monahan:

Individual awards over here, and then if we make our way across the room, what do we find down here?

Sarah Coffin:

This is our World Series team-signed baseball display. We have a team-signed baseball from every World Series championship from 1920 through 2020. This is kind of a visual representation of the curse. While Bob Gibson and ...

Adam Monahan:

The display starts in 1920, after Ruth was sold to the Yankees, they're ball signed by the St. Louis Cardinals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Yankees, and the Yankees, and the Yankees. Helped again and again by our beloved Babe. He stayed with the Yankees through 1935, almost his entire career, and he never returned to the Red Sox. The curse continued for almost 70 more years, but then finally it ended. There's a display for that too.

Sarah Coffin:

We are standing in front of second base from the 2004, game four of the ALCS. Also, ...

Adam Monahan:

This base is a sacred item. It's from a legendary 2004 playoff game between the Red Sox and there are arch rivals, the Yankees.

Sarah Coffin:

... Dave Robert's base. This was the base that Dave Roberts stole during game four to begin the comeback, which is arguably the greatest comeback in sports history, or I might be biased.

Adam Monahan:

No, that's a factual, correct. If I go fact check that at my computer, that'll check out. So we're fine.

Sarah Coffin:

Greatest comeback. Yep. We were down three and 0 to the New York Yankees. They were coming in on the fourth game, hoping to close it out and finish the series for them to head to the World Series. Instead, we won game 4, 5, 6, and then game seven and would move on to sweep the Cardinals in the 2004 World Series, winning our first World Series in 86 years. This particular base is seen at the beginning of that.

Adam Monahan:

Just the endorphins shooting off in my brain right now have gone sky-high.

Sarah Coffin:

Well, 2004 really was a pivotal moment for so many baseball fans.

Old Radio Soundbite:

He has it. He underhands the first and the Boston Red Sox are the world champions. For the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball World Championship.

Adam Monahan:

I kid you not, October 24th, 2004 was one of the best days of my life, up there with the birth of both of my children. In many ways it was much better, because my wife was with me rambunctiously celebrating, beers in hand of course. Rather than recovering from a life-changing event, the only life-changing event that day was that an 86-year-old curse was broken. Is the curse real, Sarah?

Sarah Coffin:

I think there's a lot of superstition and stories that really get woven into the fabric of baseball history. Can we scientifically test it? No, probably not. But are there people that will adamantly say this was Babe Ruth cursing us? Yeah, probably.

Adam Monahan:

Well, those people are right. That's just obvious to me. But whatever. Well, thank you for showing me around there. This is awesome. I think I've got to join one of those tours.

Sarah Coffin:

Definitely, we'd love to have you anytime.

Adam Monahan:

Now you know how much this Red Sox calendar means to me, but the question remains, how much does it mean to the market? When the calendar went up for auction online in 2023, Marsha and I checked in a few days before the bidding ended.

Marsha Bemko:

Last time I looked at it, I think it was up to 22 grand, and I wouldn't be surprised if it exceeds the 30.

Adam Monahan:

That's true.

Marsha Bemko:

I could see maybe in his wildest fantasies, I'd be wishing for 50.

Adam Monahan:

50 grand, I would be astonished if it goes over $50,000.

Marsha Bemko:

I think 50 exceeds the estimate by a healthy amount, and he should be really happy with it. Lengthy, he should be happy with, given what he paid. If it settles where I last saw it at 22 grand, that's an excellent profit.

Adam Monahan:

Here we are on Thursday, April 20th, starting with $10,000, current bid $24,000, and we have three days, nine hours, and 38 minutes for this calendar.

Marsha Bemko:

It's going to hit the 30. Come on. We have to predict it's going to hit the 30, because there'll be some good bidding at the end.

Adam Monahan:

At the end it's going to go through.... Those people go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, so it's going to hit 30. It'll hit the upper end. Where's your final prediction for this?

Marsha Bemko:

Yeah, this is good. We should be betting on this. Although we at PBS, we never bet.

Adam Monahan:

We would never bet we would never gamble on anything.

Marsha Bemko:

But if we were to-

Adam Monahan:

If we were to gamble.

Marsha Bemko:

If we were to gamble, I'm going to say, not including the buyer's premium, what it hammers at. I'm going to say it hammers at 34-5.

Adam Monahan:

34. Geez. It's a calendar. It shouldn't be worth any of this.

Marsha Bemko:

It shouldn't be what it's at already though.

Adam Monahan:

I'm going to go for $47,000.

Marsha Bemko:

Yeah. Go.

Adam Monahan:

I'm going up.

Marsha Bemko:

I hope you're right. You know why? Because I'd love to see the guests do that. I'd like to see him get his million dollars.

Adam Monahan:

I would too.

Marsha Bemko:

Maybe he would donate something to public television for having learned it from us.

Adam Monahan:

That would be very generous of him.

In my mind, the auction would play out like a great duel between pitcher and batter. Each time one bidder would throw out a new number, the other bidder was ready to foul it off. Back and forth they would go, eight pitches, 12 pitches, dragging out the drama until finally someone cracks. Eager for all the juicy details I checked in with Steve when it was all over.

How are you? Were you up late?

Steve:

No, I went to bed early. Well, normal time. I stopped watching the auction and I woke up this morning. Did you see the result?

Adam Monahan:

I did. I did. $24,000, with the premium it's up to 28,800.

Steve:

Right.

Adam Monahan:

None of the last minute bidding, which is what, I got myself way too excited.

Steve:

I was expecting to see some bids, some bids, some bids, and that didn't happen. I'm okay with that. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. A worthwhile investment in the long run, I look at it.

Adam Monahan:

Even after all fees and that, if you're around 22,000, you're 44 times your initial investment.

Steve:

Yeah.

Adam Monahan:

All right, Steve, thank you so much. I appreciate you participating in this and watching this one go. You've been nothing but a great sport with all this.

Steve:

Oh, it was fun. It was fun. I was happy to share it and enjoy it. So I appreciate the Road Show and thank you very much.

Adam Monahan:

Simeon told us this calendar was worth between 20 and $30,000. Now, given that he was spot on, why am I disappointed?

Marsha Bemko:

That's a lot of money to blow on a calendar, Adam. That's just so much money. You know what it is though? Because when we saw her at a 22, generally these heavy bidders, they want to get in at the end.

Adam Monahan:

Yes, every time. Every time we've seen it at the very end, they dive and they go at each other and all of a sudden it balloons. That's why I was like, "47,000." I got wrapped up in it. I think it's like a good sock season. If they start winning, start having some success, I get swept up in it and the next thing you know, I start telling my friends how good they look and how they could win the series. Then if they make it to the playoffs and lose in the first round, I wind up thinking that the season stunk. But if I objectively look at it, there's tons of teams who would've loved to make the playoffs, just sitting at home. Just like there's tons of people with useless old calendars, which never got thrown away. Who would kill for theirs to be worth $24,000. It's just silly money for a calendar.

Marsha Bemko:

Do we know, did a person from Boston buy that calendar?

Adam Monahan:

I don't know, but I hope I know them. They probably got good tickets.

Marsha Bemko:

With money like that. They probably go to all the games.

Adam Monahan:

Detours is a production of GBH in Boston and distributed by PRX. This episode was written and produced by Galen Bebe, edited and mixed by Ian Coss. Our assistant producer is Sarah Horacius. Jocelyn Gonzalez is the director of PRX Productions. Devin Maverick Robbins is the managing producer of podcasts for GBH. And Marsha Bemko is the executive producer of Detours. I'm your host and co-executive producer, Adam Monahan. Our theme music is Once in a Century Storm By Will Dailey from the album National Throat. Thank you all for listening. Have a good one.