First Green Bay Packers team photograph will be auctioned this month

GREEN BAY – Former Green Bay Packers linebacker Dave Robinson’s Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II rings will grab the headlines during Heritage’s Summer Platinum Nights Sports Auction on Aug. 27-28 in Dallas.

Robinson has close to 30 items from his career up for auction, but a few other pieces of Packers memorabilia already have, or will, hit five figures by the time bidding is completed.

The most significant?

A 1919 Packers team photograph original glass negative from the Lee Lefebvre Collection, which already stands at $10,500 with the 20% buyer’s premium.

The 4-by-6½-inch photo captures the image of the first team in franchise history.

The photo was taken by Stiller Photo Supply Co. It is one of several Stiller images obtained by Lefebvre, whose family had a working relationship with the Stiller brothers in the early 1920s. 

As many diehard Packers fans know, former Green Bay East graduate Curly Lambeau played one year at the University of Notre Dame in 1918 before returning home.

He reached out to Green Bay Press-Gazette editor George Calhoun, who was instrumental in helping Lambeau form a local football team.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The late Lefebvre was a local photographer who operated his own business. His loved ones felt it was time to put some of his items up for auction, which includes several other original team photographs from the 1920s.

“My husband has been dead for almost 20 years, and they are just sitting around my house doing nothing,” said Cindi Conard, who lives in Green Bay and has kept all the photos in plastic cases at her home. “I figured it was about time they got back out into the public.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting lots from the Lefebvre Collection is the 37 photos of Vince Lombardi from 1959 that represent his first publicity images as the Packers’ coach.

The winner not only receives the actual negatives and prints, but also the legal rights to the images.

“As far as Packers photography goes, this is the most extensive collection dating back to the origin of the team that I have ever seen,” said Heritage consignment director Chris Nerat, who has a significant personal Packers collection and lives in Green Bay during football season. “They are big-time pieces. … Vintage prints would be more desirable, but this would definitely be the next best thing.”

Conard has been a Packers fan most her life and shared that bond with her husband. She attended games with him when he took pictures and always could tell how much he loved it. He also shot plenty of weddings.

“He was very friendly,” she said. “Everybody loved him. He was outgoing. Doing what he did, you kind of have to.”

Of the 14 items from the Lefebvre Collection, a non-photograph is the hottest one right now.

That would be a Packers 1922 Dope Sheet — more commonly known as a game program — for their first win of the season against the Columbus Panhandles at Hagemeister Park on Nov. 5, 1922.

It’s in rather delicate condition, although the eight pages remain intact. The original owner of the Dope Sheet scored the game that day — the Packers won 3-0 — which can be seen in pencil.

Nerat does not believe a Dope Sheet from 1922 previously has been auctioned. There are believed to be fewer than 30 combined Dope Sheets from 1921 and 1922 that exist.

The item had an estimate of at least $10,000 but has blown by that, sitting at $15,600 with more than two weeks remaining.

“Advanced collectors know that the 1921 Dope Sheets are probably the most sought after because that’s the first year the Packers were in the actual league,” Nerat said. “That’s always very special. You have a lot of firsts there, which is really cool.

“But if you are talking rarity, the 1922s are by far and away the rarest compared to the 1921s. I don’t know why, but they just are. I can count on one hand the amount of ‘22 Dope Sheets I have seen in my life. There are at least couple of dozen from ’21. They are both unbelievable and they are both super scarce, but if you want to get picky, and a lot of advanced collectors are very, very astute, a 1922 Dope Sheet is kind of the white whale as far as Packers programs go.”