Ives, Blakeslee & Williams - Part III

Monday, October 10, 2016
Overcast and raining
17 Celsius / 62 Fahrenheit

Ives, Blakeslee, & Williams Catalogue

Part III

   I started out with 2 posts of toys, and when I was looking through the catalogue, I came across baseball equipment. I had never added a post about sports, so for today, this is the final post of the series.

What's of course most interesting is the equipment, which by today's standards is so antiquated, and rightly so. The next most interesting thing (if you haven't noticed before) are how inexpensive (by today's standards) are the costs of the equipment.

It's certainly interesting to see how many differently-priced baseballs that the company manufactured. Of course the "National League " baseball was the priciest at $ 1.00 which was a lot of money back in 1893.

Once again, we see the widespread pricing of the belts. Notice also, that the price is for a gross of belts, which is the equal to 144 belts.  I also just remembered that the company (Ives et al) was a whole seller.

Once again take a look at the prices for a gross. What's more fascinating though is the actual cost of a baseball bat. The most expensive bat per gross is the men's second growth ash bat, priced at $ 60.00 US. That works out to 41.6 cents (US dollars).  The lease expensive bas  is the  "youths'  Hard Wood , White and Blue Band", prices at $9.00 per gross or  3 cents per bat. However, this is a boy's bat and is made of "hard wood". What's also interesting is to see from how many different trees bats were made from. Three mentioned are bass, ash, and maple.

Finally we have the clothing.  The complete outfits (all inclusive) range from $ 5.00 - $ 12.00.

Of course not all parents could afford to equip their children with such 'luxury". Also, there were few laws for child labour in the USA in 1893. A good number of children had to go to work at young ages to help their parents out with the cost of living!

Thanks for dropping by,

and as always,

Have a great part of the day or night,

Wherever you may be.

Stacey Bindman

(toysearcher@gmail.com)