Picked up these 3 Red Sun's from a fellow collector. Puts me at 34/50 after ~18 months.
T226's are not from 1908; I would be utterly shocked if they date before Q2 of 1910, when Jack Johnson seems to have signed some deals with American Lithography. I have no idea how this myth started; PSA is still endorsing it today. Most claims to fact beyond the checklist about Red Suns do not seem to align with evidence or even reasonable deductions.
The cards have glossy fronts that damage very easily; slabs tend to obscure this. I see how these cards would get a 3.5 from a grader on a bad day with the new standards, or a 5 on a good day, but after crack out the Willete is the nicest of them. Willets has a deep scratch on the left, and a small corner wrinkle. I'd call that one a 4 and Willete the 5. Willette and Willets were the top POP's.
Jimmy Gardner is the 'get' for me, as he is a T218 subject which is what led me to the other T sets. Jimmy was a very, very good boxer. His brother George was the Light Heavy champ for a time, and another brother, Billy, was an obscure pro boxer. Joe Thomas, who appears in T224/T229, was his brother in law. Quite a family. Johnny Willetts was pretty good, one of the many northeast no decision fighters who appears to have had the better of it more often than not. He appears in series 2 of the T225's. Kid Willette is pretty obscure. I cannot think of another card he had off the top of my head.
|