I got some "Balls"

[Lost&Found]

Just picked these signed basketballs and haven't gone through them yet. But they appear team signed. I know one is 1970 Knicks you can see Walt Frazier and Phil Jackson in the pic on the right

 

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[Beans]

Great score. I shy away from signed item in fear of them being fake. I am sure I lost out on a few good ones.

 

[WhiteTornado]

Short of getting autos certified (such as through PSA/DNA), best you can do is review some sigs that were sold on eBay and see if yours match up. You do take a chance if selling "as is" that the buyer will decide they are fake once they have it in hand, or perhaps they go to get it certified and it comes back fake. Then you'll have to deal with a return. Best of luck.

 

[Lost&Found]

At $2 each I took a chance.

 

[digging440yrs]

Cant lose at 2 bucks each

 

[Tallone]

I am pretty confident that those signatures are legit. My guess is that these signatures were collected by a young boy who was a big basketball fan. I played a lot of basketball (including college varsity ball) so I know a good bit about the equipment. These balls are made of synthetic rubber. They are the kind of low cost ball a very young kid would have. By high school, a serious player would be using an expensive leather ball. Of course, a high school age kid might have this type of ball just to collect autographs.

The real clincher, though, is that blue and white ball. Those are the colors of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. There are two names clearly visible on that ball. One is George Lynch who played at UNC from 1989-93 and went on to have a long NBA career. The other name is Henrik Rodl. Although you can't make out the first name, the last name is clearly legible. Rodl was a teammate of Lynch at UNC and played some pro ball overseas. Rodl certainly isn't a "big" name so it's unlikely someone would go to the trouble of forging his signature. Here is a link to the 1992-93 UNC Basketball Media Guide showing the team roster:

https://archive.org/stream/uncbasketballblu19921993#page/n1/mode/2up

You can probably find other media guides at that site and nail down exactly which year those signatures were collected. So, if the UNC ball has legit signatures, the odds are pretty good the other signatures are legit also. It wasn't that difficult to get autographs of pro players back in those days. Some of my BB buddies and I used to go to the Lakers games in LA and wait outside the locker room door to see the players after a game. The players would usually sign some autographs if you asked them to. Certainly Walt "Clyde" Frazier and Phil Jackson are VERY big names. They both played for the New York Knicks in the 1960s and 1970s. Both were drafted by the Knicks in 1967. Both are Hall of Famers. My guess is there are autographs of other Knicks players on that ball.

I'd be interested to see the other balls and see if there are any other big names on them. I would think seriously about getting at least the Frazier/Jackson signatures authenticated and documented.

I think you have a serious score there. Congrats!

 

[Lost&Found]

Your right it's an NC ball.
The balls are still in the trunk of my car so all I can remember that I recognized on the Knick ball is Dave Debusher, Bill Bradley, Cazzie Russell, Nate Bowman and Michael Reardon. There are few more autographs too.

It's funny when I was a teenager, my family dentist at the time was very good friends with Red Holztman and he worked on many NBA players. I remember one time he was working on filling a cavity and his receptionist told him Red is on the phone he left what he was doing and was gone for ten minutes. I'm lucky the Novocain didn't wear off. I never thought about getting autographs through him though.


I guess I have my work cut out for me tonight id'ing the five balls I got today. More pics to follow.

 

[Lost&Found]

It looks like I am going to have the balls authenticated.

Sorry for the delay in updating but it's been going slower than I thought.

The Knicks ball contains 15 signatures from 1969-70 NBA championship team.

Today I had a find looking for something to act as a base so I could photograph them.
This seemed perfect. Paid $1.50 for it.


And under the green felt covering the bottom

Van Briggle and FW (for Fred Wills) which dates it the 50's.

The Blue and White Ball is a team signed 1990-91 season. It also has the autograph of Dean Smith who recently passed away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Smith

I'll be updating later after researching the next 3 balls.

 

[Lost&Found]

The third ball has 16 signatures and is another UNC ball 1993-94. So far I have been able to ID these following autographs.

Coach: Dean Smith, Assistants Dave Hanner, Phil Ford Jr., Bill Guthridge

Players: Eric Montrose, Dante Calabria, Rasheed Wallace, Brian Reese, Jerry Stackhouse and Serge Zwikker

The fourth ball is a team signed ball for the 1991-92 Portland Trailblazers

The fifth is a Boston Celtics ball. So far only able to make out Kevin McHale

 

[silverdollarbill]

If they are real which they look good to me...wow. nice find

 

[Tallone]

The third ball has 16 signatures and is another UNC ball 1993-94. So far I have been able to ID these following autographs.

Coach: Dean Smith, Assistants Dave Hanner, Phil Ford Jr., Bill Guthridge

Players: Eric Montrose, Dante Calabria, Rasheed Wallace, Brian Reese, Jerry Stackhouse and Serge Zwikker

The fourth ball is a team signed ball for the 1991-92 Portland Trailblazers

The fifth is a Boston Celtics ball. So far only able to make out Kevin McHale

This is a little bit off topic but the name I highlighted above kind of jumped off the page for me. There is something of a connection between Phil Ford and a guy a played with in high school. Phil and my teammate, Mark Wulfemeyer, were the top two guards in the country coming out of high school. Ford went on to have a stellar career at UNC and also played in the NBA. Wulfemeyer went to Southern Cal but his career went nowhere largely because he couldn't keep his ego in check. There is a pretty good summary of his basketball career here:

Wulfemeyer Makes This Shot at Fame - latimes

Mark was signed by the Angels as a pitcher and paid, if memory serves, a $50,000 signing bonus. He blew his arm out in rookie league. I recently heard that Mark is now homeless. Such a waste of talent.