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[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by G1911

Thank you, really. I don't want to totally hijack this board into a focus on my favored sets or be annoying with all the pedantic details lol


I like the historiography angle. Minor sport collectors have done little of the documentation that exists for other areas of the hobby, even niches that are equally small or smaller (non-sport N cards have a wealth of secondary documentation, for example, although less collectors as 2 cards of equal rarity picturing a boxer and an actress will have the boxer sell for many multiples more with more bidders). I am happy to have a copy of Jones; it's easy to get a lot wrong when you are the first to do something, especially in the period before wide use of the internet and iPhones that make sharing images easy. Adam's book is leaps and bounds better and I still frequently use my copy (I think the 2nd most recent version) when I come across stuff outside my main focus. I can't remember the last time I came across a card from a set that isn't in there somewhere. Pretty much all of the online sources are similar to these two books though lacking some of the more obscure sets, or are littered with clear errors and don't really add to what is contained within Adam's catalog. I hope he continues to put out updated editions as we are unlikely to ever have a better general catalog and guide to the entirety of vintage boxing cards.

I have several notebooks worth of notations from my teen years just trying to catalog the basic sets of N/T/E boxing and recording the details, plus hundreds of pages of digital files, photo archives, records form other collectors, primary source documents, and more notes from more recent years. I have begun compiling them into an academic style book-like work on the E and T sets only, perhaps expanded to include the N series but I know much less there and am reluctant to ever claim authority. What I really want to do is put out a free .pdf book-like work with full citations and including all the information known to me so I can open it all up to peer review and audit, as I have surely made errors and am missing many puzzle pieces of evidence.

It might be too big of an ask of the hobby to read what will probably end up at over a 300 page manuscript before images are added, covering just a handful of sets E75-E80, T9/T218-T229. I finished the draft of the much shorter E section, but am rather dissatisfied with the quality of evidence for the caramel issues - I have been able to produce little in the way of primary source documents that we have produced in abundance in recent years from the pages of the United States Tobacco Journal and other sources and we don't have recent discoveries like the T220 sheet that completely shift our understanding of production, timeframes, process, and how their makers operated and produced these cards. It's at least a lot of fun to take a trip through my old notebooks and get things organized so I can find what I am looking for in less than 3 hours.

I hope you will be able to put it all together one day Greg. It would be another great resource for the hobby.

Don't think to yourself that it ever has to be perfectly free of errors or all-encompassing to put out. You can build on it as the years go on and more information comes out. I would think you have a pretty solid foundation to build on as it is.

With the detailed work you've done, I'd imagine you could put out specialty guides just on individual sets.