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I
shot this box in Bob McCann's booth at the 2004 National Sports
Collectors Convention in Cleveland. I do not recall ever seeing
a nicer baseballs box like this. The condition is remarkable for
being made of cardstock.
Interestingly
when I google Monarch Sporting Goods Company I don't get any
references. I posted an inquiry about this box on Net54
, but to date haven't learned much about the Monarch Sporting
Goods history. Shawn England  posted a photo of a print ad
from Sporting Life magazine which advertises a baseball
endorsed by Hall of Famer Clark
Griffith. The advertising copy states "it's an official
ball", but doesn't elaborate who or what organization
deemed it "official". At the bottom the ad it states
"we make base ball uniforms". In all, from this ad we
glean the Monarch company was successful enough to pay a big
name player to endorse a ball, and they made uniforms. And oh
yeah, the ball sold for $1.25!
Rhys
Yeakley posted that he once bought some Monarch hockey pucks
made by Monarch but
has not seen anything else from the company. So we know they
made hockey pucks at some point. Finally Jim Daniel who has a
killer website baseballglovecollector.com,
posted a photo of a Monarch Sporting Goods baseball glove
endorsed by  another Hall of Famer Joe
Medwick . Apparently Monarch jobbed out the glove. Jim
provided "This Monarch glove was clearly made by Denkert who operated out of Johnstown and Gloversville, NY."
Hunt
Auctions auctioned
this box in August 1999 for $1,675.00. The catalog description
included the following insightful commentary: "This is the first intact example that we've encountered and due to obvious fragility and age will most likely be the only copy we'll handle. Stunning"....
This
was all I could dig up. It wouldn't surprise me to some day
learn Spalding owned them. We at least know Spalding would have
been a competitor in the 1880-90's. A sporting goods company doesn't just appear
out of thin air; it takes some knowledge of sports equipment for
one thing. Until more information or at least clues turn up we
can only speculate. I would imagine some baseball player started
making mitts and balls and selling them on a small scale and the
enterprise grew.
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