Has anyone ever come across one of these??? Please post photos if so.

Thanks,

Chris

thanks for posting over here......There are some great guys on this side of the board....and it's much more civil .....Good luck with the question. Personally, I don't know about it....regards

This game is scarce. Below you'll find a link to a Lelands auction which contains a picture and a price which, you'll see, is commensurate with its scarcity and its value-added association with the Yankees AND the Brooklyn Dodgers.

http://www.lelands.com/bid.aspx?lot=1187&auctionid=104

Joe is of course correct. The game is indeed fairly scarce -- although a little of the game's mystique, and a bit of the reason for the generally high prices it commands at auction (average close to $500., range from $225. to $1100.+ over the past decade, for examples in nice condition) -- come from its wholly undeserved rep as "the rarest" or "among the rarest" of all tabletop baseball games. We have no idea who started that rumor, but inexpert collectors have kept it circulating on the interweb for years.

We did, however, recently run across a real rarity -- a variant edition of the game, with slightly different cover graphics, we'd never previously seen. In that edition, the photos of Burt Shotton and Preacher Roe are replaced by pics of Stan Musial and Roy Campanella.

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hey butch,

thanks for your reply and info. what would you estimate the "variant" edition to be worth?

thanks,

chris

A fair question, Chris, but putting a dollar value on a unique (or nearly unique) item is always a challenge. The only track record established is for the "standard issue" Red Barber, so we'd only be guessing as regards the Musial/Campanella variation. Honestly, though, we think it probably wouldn't get a lot more at auction than the Shotton/Roe edition -- and possibly even less. Most collectors hunting the Barber game seem to have a youthful connection to the three New York teams (and the players and managers pictured on it) and to having played the Barber game itself as kids, and that's where the value lies for those game/memorabilia collectors -- not in variations to the graphics, the way those sort of rarities and anomalies appeal to many among the far, far larger numbers of card collectors (or coin or stamp collectors, &c').

But as we said, that's just a guess, and if the Musial/Campanella variation came up for auction, much would depend, as always, on condition and completeness. Joe is usually way better than we are at predicting what price a game will fetch at auction... Chief Wahoo, any thoughts?

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I totally agree with the above assessment with regards to value. The best market for a variation of an item that is already scarce would be a baseball game completist. And if there's more than one of those guys on the planet, that would be a lot. Frankly, I think the price commanded for this game is a bit much, but then I'm a pre-war kinda guy.