It’s baseball season, and collectors are looking for memorabilia like baseball cards, programs, uniforms, nodders, pennants and anything else that displays a player or a team name. There are a few greats, like Babe Ruth, who are known by every generation, but young collectors today ignore old players with unfamiliar names and vintage uniforms. Memorabilia can go back to the early 1800s and the English game of rounders. The first recorded baseball game was played in 1846 in Hoboken, N.J. The first players were amateurs, but soon many were secretly paid. In 1869, the first completely professional paid team was created. Modern baseball started when the National League was founded in 1876. The American League followed in 1901. But the game did not become widely popular until the cork ball was introduced in 1911. The game changed, home runs and hits created excitement, and Babe Ruth became the star who made baseball the national sport. Uniforms changed throughout the years, too, going from white flannel shirts, long blue wool pants and straw hats in 1849 to knickers in 1868, shirts with numbers in 1907, sleeveless jerseys in the 1940s and double-knit uniforms with tight shirts and pants in the 1970s. During World Wars I and II, players added a patriotic patch of an American flag or shield. In 2001, the flag was again added. Memorabilia showing old players in old uniforms is hard to find and almost always expensive, so be on the lookout for the ballplayer in knickers or a shirt without a number.

I have two bentwood chairs, one painted white and one stained and varnished. They look like classic Thonet chairs to me, but they’re both marked with a black-ink stencil that reads “Jacob & Josef Kohn, Vienna, Austria.” Another label advises that they have wholesale branches in New York, Chicago and Toronto. What can you tell us about Kohn chairs?

The Thonet Brothers of Vienna received a patent in 1856 for a method of creating furniture by bending steamed wood. Even before the patent expired in 1869, competitors were making their own bentwood furniture. Jacob Kohn and his son, Josef, became partners in a furniture company in 1867. Within a few years, Kohn was a serious rival of Thonet and made chairs identical to Thonet’s. Your chairs were made in 1914 or earlier. That’s the year J & J Kohn merged with a Vienna holding company called Mundus and became Kohn-Mundus. Then Kohn-Mundus purchased Thonet in 1928. Thonet is still in business.

Q: I have five identical Coca-Cola change trays that were used in my grandfather’s drugstore in Nebraska. He opened the store in 1905, so the trays date from sometime after that. Each tray has a dark rim decorated in a gold-colored scroll. The woman pictured in the center has dark hair and is facing right. She’s wearing a lacy white bonnet with a pink bow and a long, wide, pink ribbon that is tied in the front. Her dress is pink with a large, white, lacy collar and a double-strand black tie around the waist. Are the trays valuable?

This 7 1/2-inch baseball player in an old uniform with knickers is a candy container. Old and rare, it sold last fall at a James Julia auction in Fairfield, Maine, for 80.

A: All genuine old Coca-Cola merchandise is collectible. Coke made a series of large serving trays between 1897 and 1920. Almost all of them feature a color lithograph of a young woman and a glass or bottle of Coca-Cola. Smaller matching change trays were made starting in 1900. Your trays date from 1914. The 1914 change trays sell for prices ranging from about $175 to $400 apiece.

Q: I picked up an unusual Rubik’s Cube at a garage sale. Instead of colors, the little squares show the Union Jack, a purple dragon and little pictures of the heads of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Can you tell me anything about it?

A: The Rubik’s Cube, invented by Erno Rubik in 1974, was produced in Rubik’s native Hungary starting in 1977. Ideal Toys of the United States and a British company joined forces to export the toy, which became a sensation. When Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married in 1981, an “official Royal Puzzle” was made to commemorate the wedding. This unusual royal commemorative cube is not like yours, however. Instead, each of the six sides is one large image – Prince Charles, Princess Diana and four Union Jacks – broken up into nine squares.

Current prices

Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States.

¢ Bradley and Hubbard oil lamp, pear shape, copper base, iron mounts, scrolled feet, fleur-de-lis design, 25 1/2 inches, $250.

¢ Schuco monkey perfume bottle, jointed at shoulders and hips, cinnamon-colored mohair, head removes to reveal glass container, 5 inches, $265.

¢ Unger Brothers sterling-silver hand mirror, Love’s Dream pattern, 10 1/4 inches, $275.

¢ Crown Derby lazy Susan center bowl, Imari-style design, impressed mark for 1893, 4 3/4-by-7 inches, $350.