WHAT YOU ARE HOLDING is the single largest auction catalog we’ve ever done. I don’t know if it’ll be our biggest auction - we’ll know in a few weeks, I guess. But it’s certainly the auction with the most girth - 1500 lots, and 212 catalog pages. It’s a pretty excellent assortment of things you just don’t see every day in this hobby, which is our mantra. It’s not by accident, and I want to acknowledge it. In the past three years, Love of the Game has experienced unbelievable growth. Not just in the size and quality of our auctions, but in the steady increase in repeat consignors of higher-end material, and, in the capability of the team working on assembling the auctions and running the business. It’s no secret that, for the first four or five years of Love of the Game’s existence, it was all pretty much me. I was responsible for getting the consignments, writing the descriptions, scanning and photographing all the lots, supervising the catalog designer, marketing the company, paying the bills, packing and shipping the auction winnings, and taking out the trash. I’ve got pretty high standards of how I want to
doing newspaper research, hot on the trail of a piece of new information that improved the entire description of an item. At the same time, an outside specialist was working on producing high- quality scans and prints of the glass lantern slide collection featured in the auction, and Dan was writing copy for some of the items in the “Featured” section. And our amazing designer Stephanie was hard at work, pulling together the layout for the Black Sox trial section in this catalog, laying in copy written by Jacob Pomrenke, chair of SABR’s Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. What was once a solid boutique auction, run by one guy giving instructions to an entry-level designer and writing descriptions til he fell asleep at his desk, is now a true team effort. And it’s a great team - in my opinion the best there is. Everyone who touches this company has a passion for it, and takes ownership not only of their own work, but of the entire business - helping elevate each other’s work so that it’s an environment where we are constantly improving, exploring new ideas, working harder at being better. I don’t typically use my introduction as a platform to promote Love of the
represent this company, and the care I want to take in representing our consignors’ material, so back then I spent a lot of time talking about how I envisioned the company working when we could staff up a little. Today we are presenting auctions of extremely high caliber, and I like to think we’re doing it at a level that’s competitive with every other auction house out there, regardless of their size, and how many massive departments of people they have working on things. One night this week, before I went home, I took stock of where we stood in finalizing the auction. I walked around the office into our photography studio, where Evelyn, our imaging specialist, had spent the entire day shooting and re-shooting memorabilia lots until they were just right. I looked up to find Andrew, our operations manager,
Game Auctions. I usually use it in a more poetic way, because I prefer to write romantic stuff about the beauty of baseball, the greatness of our hobby, the importance of kindness and such. But this time I can’t help it. You’re holding in your hands 212 pages of teamwork, passion, and talent, along with some great consignors. If you have not consigned to Love of the Game yet, you are missing out. I invite you to give us a try. Play Ball!
Al Crisafulli Auction Director
SPRING 2024 PREMIER AUCTION − CLOSES MARCH 30, 2024 1
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