Out of curiosity, Dave Swartz sometimes does computer searches for towns neighboring his home in Luckey.

Recently, something rather rare popped up – a 114-year-old poster of a Pemberville base ball team being
sold on eBay, an online site for selling items. The price being sought was $350 by a San Francisco
collectibles business.
"I thought, gee, that is really neat. They ought to have that in Pemberville," said Swartz, who
works at the Bowling Green State University library. "There are probably people in Pemberville
whose ancestors are among them."
The front of the poster shows very serious-looking ball players with bold red letters overhead calling
them, "Our Champions." Underneath is a list of the team’s game schedule. And on the back –
well, that’s the curious part – is writing stating the poster was property of the Wood County Historical
Society.
"It makes you wonder," Swartz said.
It also has the staff wondering at the county historical center, where the poster was donated in 1986 by
the Keil estate left by two sisters from Pemberville.
"Our records don’t indicate it was stolen," said Christie Weininger Raber, director of the
historical center. Rather, the records seem to show that the poster was deaccessioned, meaning removed
from the museum’s collection, in 1995. But the mystery is – why would such a valuable historical item be
given away by the museum? None of the current staff were present when it was deaccessioned, so they are
questioning former staff and board members about the matter. But so far no one recalls the poster.
According to Weininger, the museum did not yet have a collections policy in 1995 so it’s unclear why the
poster was removed from the site. The present collections policy, created in 1997, ensures that items
are evaluated in a consistent manner and if they are deaccessioned, they are often offered to other
historical sites that might be interested.
It is unusual for the museum to get rid of practically any item that has local historic significance –
especially such rare memorabilia.
"It’s in our data base as an item that we had," Michael McMaster, education coordinator at the
museum, explained after the museum was contacted by Swartz. "We’re looking into how it’s not in our
collection. We don’t get rid of anything."
The poster has historical value, said McMaster, who is a local expert on old-fashioned base ball teams,
which by the way was spelled "base ball" back then.
"It’s a really rare poster. It is very unique," he said. "This is almost pre-baseball card
era."
McMaster contacted the business trying to sell the poster, Amazing Adventure Collectibles, of San
Francisco, and asked that it not be sold on eBay. He was waiting to hear back from the firm, which
appears to be a reputable seller of collectibles.
"They sell lots of stuff," McMaster said, explaining that the poster could have easily been
purchased by the company along with countless other items at an auction or sale. "It’s not like
this is some guy in an alley selling it. They seem very reputable."
The 8- by 10-inch poster shows a fading black and white photograph of nine players wearing similar – not
identical – base ball uniforms.
"No one had the same uniforms back then," McMaster said.
The poster boasts of the 1897 Pemberville team being "prepared to win the pennant in the battle of
the Wood County Base Ball League." It includes the game schedule against teams from Bowling Green,
North Baltimore, Cygnet, Grand Rapids, Tontogany, Prairie Depot and Portage-Mungen.
Despite the high expectations, Pemberville finished fourth in the league that year.