June 2005 > Sports > Football
< previous lot |  next lot >
Lot 1801: 1925 Football Shaped Humidor from All-American Dinner
ITEM DESCRIPTION
|
||||||||||||
This splendid and exceedingly rare football-shaped humidor given out at the 1925 All-America Football Dinner at New York's Hotel Commodore on November 30, 1925, still has the faint aroma of a few after-dinner Havanas -- as well as the figurative scent of the man who ran the show, Christy Walsh. A onetime newspaper cartoonist chosen by Babe Ruth to be his ghostwriter and personal manager, Walsh was one of the most powerful men in sports who ran his own press syndicate. Indeed, while the trophy ostensibly honored 4 legendary coaches, it is as much a Walsh paean to himself, with his name on a plaque at the front and on his facsimile signature on a label in the tureen, which is revealed when the top half of the real leather-lined football is lifted up. Label reads "Souvenir, All-America Football Dinner, Appreciation to my newspaper friends and in honor of Knute Rockne, Tad Jones, Glenn Warner, Fielding Yost." Ball has the coaches' names engraved on it and is mounted on a black-finished, 6 x 8" block of wood with the plaque that reads "Walter. D. Walsh, Compliments of Christy Walsh." Condition of the piece is remarakbly good given its age, with just a few dings and areas of soiling on the ball and in the tureen. Very, very few of these are left today.
BIDDING
| The bidding for this lot has ended. |