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Louis “Ad” Lankford is presented in Helmar’s T3 series with the Salt Lake Occidentals in a full-length throwing pose, ball raised high in his right hand and glove hanging at his side. The cream-colored uniform, red cap, collar, piping, and stockings stand sharply against the green field and luminous sky. Most striking is the hand-lettered “OCCIDENTALS / SALT LAKE” across the chest, which gives the card an unusually strong team identity and makes the image immediately different from the major-league subjects surrounding it.

The original artwork was painted by Natalia Valiukavich in watercolor. She builds the pale uniform with loose cream, gray, blue, and yellow washes, then uses the red trim to define the figure. Lankford’s raised pitching arm creates the principal vertical movement, balanced by the dark glove and broad stance below. The outfield fence, advertising signs, and distant buildings are deliberately simplified, while the pale yellow and blue sky gives the entire image a bright western atmosphere.

Louis “Ad” Lankford was an important pitcher and outfielder for the Salt Lake Occidentals, the pioneering all-Black club that became one of the strongest independent teams in the Intermountain West. Contemporary reports described Lankford as a formidable pitcher, and by 1910 he was being praised as capable of succeeding against very strong competition. The Occidentals themselves occupied an unusual place in early baseball history: they competed successfully against white clubs and, for a period, participated in the otherwise white Utah State League. In 1909 the club claimed the Utah state championship before carrying its reputation westward on a successful California tour. (Negro Leagues Calendars)

Numbered #98, the Lankford card broadens the T3 checklist beyond the better-known eastern Negro League clubs and into the comparatively little-recorded history of Black baseball in the American West. That makes it an especially interesting companion to the series’ cards of Josh Gibson, Bullet Rogan, Oscar Charleston, the Radcliffe brothers, and other Black baseball subjects. Lankford’s card documents not simply an individual player, but a remarkable Salt Lake club whose history was largely absent from mainstream baseball collecting for generations.

Produced in Helmar’s distinctive handcrafted tradition, the card combines original watercolor artwork with an uncommon subject from western Black baseball history and one of the most visually distinctive uniforms in the T3 series.

Original watercolor artwork by Natalia Valiukavich.

• Description: Arm up, with ball
• Team: Salt Lake City Occidentals
• Population (# Sold): 13
• First Date Sold: 2021-06-01
• Latest Date Sold: 2026-10-13
• Card Status: Active
• # Sold in past year: 1
• Highest Auction: $ 84.00
• Average Auction Result: $ 29.70

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