In Newsletter #37, I called the sale of the original R327 Diamond Stars Charlie Gehringer artwork for $16,800, my favorite item in Huggins & Scott’s May auction. Well, they’re “doubling down” this summer.
In their upcoming sale, the original artwork for two huge Hall of Famers, Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx, will hit the block.
REA and Huggins have written that in the late 1970s, a cache of approximately 30 Diamond Stars artworks surfaced directly from the family of a National Chicle employee. These two likely come from that historic find, which also included approximately 25 National Chicle Football artworks and around 100 additional pieces from several of the company’s non-sports sets, like the Sky Birds Amelia Earhart original artwork I wrote about in April 2024.
Original prewar artwork like this doesn’t show up often, especially not for players like Ott and Foxx. I’m really excited for these. Bidding will be crazy.
Happy collecting!
P.S. If you have any additional information about the original National Chicle artwork find, I’d love to hear from you.
I seem to recall that all those original paintings (valued then at $20,000 TOTAL) were removed from a trash can! I saved a scrapbook of one-of-a-kind Woodstock Jimi Hendrix photos from a similar fate about 10 years ago!
I still have the 36 artworks of my 1992 Diamond Stars Extension Set, framed with fronts and backs of finished cards. Let me know if you would like to see some photos.