1939 Hof Inductees First Day Cover With 11 Signatures Including Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, & Cy Young (Psa/Dna)

1939 Hof Inductees First Day Cover With 11 Signatures Including Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, & Cy Young (Psa/Dna)

1939 marked the official centennial of the National Pastime. To mark the occasion many ceremonies and events were held across America, but none was as special as the opening of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Legend had it that the game was invented in this rural environ by Civil War hero Abner Doubleday. Whether he did or not doesn’t matter, what does is that Cooperstown remains the spiritual home of baseball, and beginning in 1939, the physical place where the game’s greats were enshrined in their own Hall of Fame. Beginning in 1936, sportswriters were asked to vote for the players who they deemed the greatest of all-time. The first ballot elected Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson and Honus Wagner. The next couple of years added more of the game’s legends and on June 12, 1939 the actual physical Hall of Fame opened its doors in Cooperstown. Almost all the living inductees attended and to mark the occasion the United States Postal Service created a stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of the game.

Stamp collecting was in its heyday in 1939 and collectors rushed to obtain a coveted first day cover featuring the new stamp mailed from Cooperstown. However, the truly lucky were the few who attended the event in person and had the living members of the Hall sign their first day cover. This is one such example. To say this cover has it all would be an understatement. No less than 11 first-rank Hall of Famers have signed including Ty Cobb, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Connie Mack, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Larry Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, George Sisler, Eddie Collins, and of course, Babe Ruth. What makes this first day cover most attractive is the mixture of inks in which the ten Hall of Famers used to sign the envelope. The mixture of blacks, browns and blues combine with the green and gold diamond illustration and the purple stamps to make a truly stunning display. The envelope shows some toning and edge wear from being mailed, but the signatures are both bold and bright and the cancellation extraordinarily clear. This collection of Hall of Fame greats has been graded AUTHENTIC and encapsulated by PSA/DNA (84168073).