Collectors Say Thanks For The Memories

Mickey Mantle signed the bat in 1985. A rare autographed Associated Press news photograph shows Yankee Roger Maris on the day in 1961 when his 61st home run broke the Babe’s record. The signed 1953 copy of Charles Lindbergh’s book “Spirit of St. Louis” is one of only 1,000.

Marilyn Monroe, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pee Wee Herman….

The celebrity hodgepodge inside this north Spokane basement would make one wild cocktail party.

Imagine football bruiser Dick Butkus rubbing elbows with Mother Teresa while Tonya Harding and Billy Graham look on.

Thirty years of scratching an insatiable collecting itch has amassed quite a jumble of history and pop culture for Jock and Eileen Swanstrom.

There’s a baseball signed by Emmett Ashford, the first black umpire, who officiated Spokane Indians games in the late-1950s. Nearby is a framed proclamation signed by President Benjamin Harrison.

“And there’s modern-day Jack the Ripper himself,” says Jock, 57, pointing to a framed football jersey bearing the number 32 and an autograph everybody by now knows: O.J. Simpson.

Hard to imagine, but next weekend all or most of this stuff should be gone. The Swanstroms’ enormous trove of sports and star-studded treasure goes on the block to the highest bidders in a giant two-day auction.

Billed as one of the Northwest’s top 10 collections, the Swanstroms have more than 2,000 signed photographs and baseballs, 170 baseball gloves and another 70 autographed bats. That’s not counting the jerseys, cereal boxes, trinkets or 350,000 sports cards.

Yes, that’s 350,000 trading cards.

“This is truly overwhelming,” says auctioneer Jeff Owens, who will handle the sale. “We’ve been working to organize this for the last four weeks. Every day I come over and learn something new.”

Jock’s tenuous health is the main force behind the liquidation. He suffers from a chronic irregular heartbeat that three times has put him at death’s door.

A retired corporate vice president, Jock plans to use his profits to travel and relax. Not even he will venture a guess on how much to expect. “We’d love to see $50,000 and go up from there,” says Owens.

Word already is out. Calls from interested collectors are coming in from New York to Pigeon Forge, Tenn.

Jock is the perfect nickname for a man so obsessed with sports. But the moniker, he swears, came from Scottish heritage, not athletics.

He grew up in Minnesota, the son of two avid sports fans who took him to see Jackie Robinson play in Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

But the Swanstroms’ fire for collecting didn’t have anything to do with a bat or a ball.

That began with a trip to a thrift store in the mid-1960s, just after the two married. Some old Mason jars caught their fancy. They bought them and never stopped acquiring.

“Maybe it’s the hunt” that drives collectors, says Eileen, a dance instructor. “When you find something you like, it’s just exhilarating.”

The Swanstroms got most of their autographs by simply mailing items to celebrities along with a polite request for a signature. The response usually is quite prompt, although actress Claudette Colbert took two years to sign her photograph and mail it back.

A good portion of the Swanstrom collection has a Spokane connection. The autographs of swing musicians Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, for example, came during a 1930s gig at the Davenport Hotel.

Another terrific photo shows actress Lana Turner, a Wallace, Idaho, native, selling World War II bonds outside The Spokesman-Review.

There’s even a souvenir ring and program from the Spokane Hawks baseball club, a largely forgotten team that played at Ferris Field during Depression years.

Politicians are the easiest quarry for an autograph hound.

During Dan Quayle’s visit to Spokane, Jock talked the former vice president into signing a baseball. His handlers said he’d only sign his book, but Jock stood in line and whipped out the ball.

Quayle, considering a presidential bid at the time, signed away. “You know,” adds Jock, laughing, “anybody running for something will sign just about anything but a check.”

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