[Merkle923]

Following this site's relationship with, and rules about, George Brace photographs, is at best a roller-coaster. But if I remember correctly their ownership is in flux and nobody's enforcing any copyright. If otherwise, I'll be happy to remove these next few startling finds.

Besides the obvious maddening quality to the Braces (that the quality varies from artistry to take-the-lens-off-next-time) there's one other confounding but sometimes joyous quality-control issue. Brace and his widow understandably were not able to maintain a 100% record of inventory and periodically stuff bubbles up out of collections that Mary Brace insisted did not exist.

Case in point: for years those pursuing a set of good color images of the '62 Mets crashed when it came to Larry Foss, a pitcher the Mets bought from the Pirates on waivers in September. Topps did not get him (or if they did, the images were lost when a bunch of files of obscure players was sent to Larry Fritsch for the "One Year Winners" series in the '80s) and Brace had one decent pitching pose, ruined by a flaw in the negative that produced an unfixable stripe over about a third of the image.

I recently bought a huge collection of Braces in hopes of finding a few white whales or at least some unseen images, and I was not disappointed. I would suggest there are maybe 100 I've never seen before. I don't think any of them are absolute first-known images of guys in given uniforms, but there are lots of really scarce guys and even better, better images of lots of Braces.

Like Larry Foss of the 1962 Mets. TWO superb shots to replace the stripe-ruined ones. If you'll look closely you'll notice that these were not taken at the same time. He's got a jacket on under his uniform in the portrait and not in the pitching pose. The stripe-ruined one is a pitching pose with the jacket. In other words, Brace posed him twice!

More of other guys to come. You'll like his Ron Herbel/Mets.