The Glove Collector Newsletters

Joe Phillips, the father of our hobby, authored and published these Glove Collector Newsletters from 1989 to 2009. We collectors would eagerly await the bi-monthly newsletter to arrive in our mailboxes. It was not only a way to learn about vintage baseball gloves, which we all had such a hunger for, but also a way to interact and network with others as well as a way to purchase gloves from like-minded collectors. It came out every other month, but we wished it would come out every week. Joe faithfully mailed these out to us for 108 issues or 20 years.

I first heard about and joined the mailing list on Issue Number 30, the first one with my name on the mailing sticker at least. Being the information junkie I am, I tried to obtain Numbers 1 through 29. I needed to know everything I could about my new hobby and passion. My buddy Paul Gertsen in Minnesota gladly loaned me his early stack to copy as he was an inaugural subscriber to the Newsletter. I then had a complete run up til then. I loyally subscribed until the very end and was sad when Joe finally hung it up. We all were. I’m sure many of us refer back to them as we long for the nostalgia of the early days. Well, now we all can.

With Joe’s permission, I’m going to post them all in the Glove Library, a few at a time. Brett Lowman was kind enough to dedicate a section on his Vintage Baseball Glove Forum to the subject so we can go back, read, relive and discuss these newsletters and the hobby 30 years later in a proper Forum. It should not only bring back great memories but it might spur some great glove discussions, backstories and get people together again to buy/sell/trade gloves.

Hoping this will be a fun project.

JD

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