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[G1911]

And got in 5 more Red Crosses for my set build that a friend was kind enough to send these my way. The N266's are easier than the T219 Red Crosses, but still not easy at all, with typically 0 available on the market at any given time. This set is going to be a real pain to finish, as I need 1 of each card in each of the 2 types with the different copyright credit lines, 50 in total. If a set takes less than 20 years to finish, it's no fun though. They are very nice illustrations, giving a visual guide to just how different boxing was in the bare knuckle days and the very different approaches to defense and punching, with each card depicting a real historical fight pairing.

Corbett & Sullivan and Donovan & McCaffrey I had with the other typefaces in the copyright line. Corbett/Sullivan is the key card in the set so it's very nice to cross him off my list entirely, but Donovan is my favorite. Diving into his history with tobacco to try and find evidence for the T220 short printing led me to a few biographies and numerous articles about him from the late 1800's and early 1900's. Donovan either was a saint who dedicated his existence for the second half of his life to mentoring troubled young men and improving other peoples lives, or he had the best PR team on the planet. He has very few cards, his various backed and bordered T220/T223's, an N332 SF Hess, this N266 Red Cross, and in 2013 Upper Deck gave him his first card in a century in their Goodwin set. That's pretty much it. I've been lucky enough to add a gigantic larger-than-imperial size Wood Cabinet of him, but he doesn't have a ton of CDV's or cabinets I have seen to chase either. Not left for me to buy if I can ever find an N332 of him at a sane price.

Griffin/Lynch, Hall/Pritchard, and McAuliffe/Myers I didn't have in either type. Note the top of the Griffin/Lynch card, clearly the sheet margin placing this card somewhere in the top row of a sheet layout. These put me at 23/25 on a basic set, lacking only the Edwards/Collyer and the Smith/Van Heest.

[sthoemke]

Back from PSA.

1955 Nannina Campioni Dello Sport - Rocky Marciano PSA 5

[Exhibitman]

Nice stuff, guys. I added to my Louis collection:



Pretty sure this is an Everlast premium: in hand you can see that the logo was added to the photo.

[G1911]

That’s a great image of Louis.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by G1911

That’s a great image of Louis.

From the same photo session that was used to make his rookies




And this PC;

[G1911]

Picked up a big collection of T220 Silvers with 2-6 copies of each of the 23 'normal' subjects in the set. These are the SGC's. Never get tired of this issue, just tough enough to make it some work to build a short set. This was the set that really got me into T cards with my dad when I was 13. Very happy their previous owner kindly called and sent them all my way for me to examine and add into my sets. Shameless hint that I'm always looking for more to buy

I didn't really look at them closely before acquiring, so I got a pleasant surprise on one of the Gans. The Gans on the right is missing 75-80% of the 'silver'. I have a Coburn that is missing over 90% of it also, not sure if these 2 cards are damaged or if they were from a sheet that had an improper application and incompletely printed. These are the only 2 I have seen with this issue/misproduction. I love these cards too much to take a couple of my beaters and destroy them in experiments to figure out the silver might be plausibly removed without leaving other signs of related damage.

The Coburn here is a good illustration of one of my lingering points of uncertainty with this set. His name is obviously underneath the silver layer. Sometimes black ink along the border frame is completely covered and cannot be seen (or can only be seen under a bright light) by the silver application, other times it is over the silver layer (on very few, if any, cards is the silver applied so perfectly that the black border frame is exactly lined up not to conflict with the silver on all four borders of the picture), usually a mix of both on the same card. The name is usually on top of the silver layer, but not infrequently is found like this, with it underneath the silver, although still faintly visible. The Gans without most of the silver has a thicker print of the caption, and you can see there is a second, faint print underneath it slightly misaligned. On the correctly printed Gans, the silver extends well past the black frame line of the bottom border, yet that line is half under the silver and half over the silver, going in and out of visibility, which is pretty normal on these cards. How exactly the black frame/nameplate and the silver were printed I can not figure out, as any large sample of the cards brings numerous contradictions. I am not surprised that by the time they added the wave 2 subjects to the printing, they cancelled the fancy silver border and just made it white.

[G1911]

And the PSA's, which I had to promise not to crack out . A full short 23 card set, with multiples of most of the cards. Looking at a couple of the cards, I sometimes wonder if PSA has ever rejected a card from this set for minimum size. Joe Gans striking his karate pose is still my favorite of the pictures. A couple of these are even upgrades to my main set which I count as a bonus win, which is now almost entirely in what the graders would call EX-MT/NM condition and I call EX/EX+. Don't think I'm going to be able to upgrade my VG Donovan anytime soon though.