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If you would like more information about my boxing card encyclopedia "America's Great Boxing Cards", please go to www.americasgreatboxingcards.com. In the years since its 1st publication my book has become the reference on boxing cards. The descriptions below are short excerpts from the book, which also provides actual prices from auctions and sales on thousands of boxing cards, hundreds of images, and checklists of sets that had never been studied methodically before. Also below are card galleries of various issues, which I am providing for everyone's easy reference.
I will try to make the gallery as close to chronological as I can.
And in answer to a question I frequently get, no, the cards here are not for sale. This is a museum page dedicated to public education; I don't even own many of them. Wish I did. If you are interested in buying boxing cards please use the menu bar at the top to go to the boxing cards for sale page.
Date(s): July 2, 2005. Album by Adam Warshaw. 1 - 235 of 235 Total. 54654 Visits.
1 Pre-1870 John C. Heenan CDV by Fredricks. This is the earliest verifiable boxing card. Until the late 1850's the photographic technology did not permit commercial scale, affordable production of photographs. Fredricks was one of the first to make albumen images, a skill he learned in France and brought to the States in 1855. By the time this card was issued as part of his commercially produced "Specialite" series of famous personages, Fredricks owned a large studio and gallery in New York City. His work is featured in a number of museum collections, including the Smithsonian.
2 N167 Jem Carney. One of four cards issued as part of N167 by Goodwin, it is the first series of boxing cards inserted into packages of cigarettes.
3 1887 N28 Allen & Ginter Jimmy Carney. N28 cards are the most common of the 19th Century tobacco boxing cards and among the easiest to collect in high grade (ex or better) because they are printed on thick, high quality cardboard. The set consists of 50 cards, ten of which depict boxers. On the card backs is a checklist of the issue.
4 N29 Jack McGee. Following the success of the N28 series of fifty cards, Allen & Ginter issued a second series, which Burdick dubbed N29. We know it is a second series because it says so right on the card backs. N29 cards are more difficult to find than N28 cards but still readily collected.
5 N29 Allen & Ginter Patsey Kerrigan.
6 N43 Frank Murphy. Acting on the old adage that more of a good thing is better, Allen & Ginter re-used the images of the N29 set to create the set that Burdick catalogued as N43. The set features the fronts of the N29 cards within oversized cards that depict colorful boxing and decorative paraphernalia alongside. These cards are large, even bigger than modern cards, and were used in 20-packs of cigarettes, as stated on the card reverses. They are in very high demand.
7 This is an album page from the 2nd series of Allen & Ginter champions albums, ACC designation A18.
8 N162 Old Judge & Gypsy Queen Charlie Mitchell. There are five boxers in this colorful and extremely popular multisport lithograph set from Goodwin: Jack Dempsey, John L. Sullivan, Jake Kilrain, Jem Smith and Charlie Mitchell. All five are IBHOF members. The card backs contain a checklist. N162’s are moderately difficult but not rare.
9 N162 Old Judge & Gypsy Queen Jack Dempsey.
No, this is not the heavyweight champ. This is the original Jack Dempsey, a great middleweight champ nicknamed the Nonpariel. The other fellow is William Harrison Dempsey. He took the name in tribute to the Nonpariel and it stuck.
10 N174 Jack Dempsey. The second major boxing issue from Goodwin consists of albumen photographs in nine formats; the set is very complex. Cards with the rectangular bottom logo are sometimes found with a distinctly pink hue. I have no idea nor, frankly, does anyone else, whether only certain boxers have cards in certain styles, and to state otherwise is to speculate. I have a comprehensive checklist in my book but new variations do surface. N174 cards sell for high prices when they are found.
11 N174 Gypsy Queen Tug Wilson. Issued only with two formats, GQs are scarcer than OJs. The thick-skulled Wilson came to the US from England, stood in with Sullivan for long enough to win a $1,000 challenge purse for lasting, and returned to England to open a grocery business with the money.
12 N174 Peter Jackson. This format of N174 has the pink cards. Jackson was the best of the 19th century black heavyweight contenders, denied a shot by Sullivan. He and Corbett fought to a draw.
13 N174 George Godfrey. He is misidentified as "Joe" Godfrey. The most common format N174. Godfrey was another black contender. This and the Peter Jackson are the earliest known cards of black boxers, so they bring a premium from specialists. Godfrey was elected to the Bare Knuckles Boxing HOF.
14 N174 Bob Fitzsimmons. Sorry for the lousy scan but this card is rare and was issued in Australia.
15 N174 large screen Gypsy Queen. There are four known cards with the large GQ legend with only 1 example of each fighter known.
16 N174 large screen Gypsy Queen Willie Clark.
17 1887 W.S. Kimball Champions of Games and Sports (N184)Patsy Cardiff. Not to be outdone by its competitors at Allen & Ginter and Goodwin, W. S. Kimball & Co. issued its own set of champions cards. There are five boxers. The card fronts are found with or without the company name wrapped around the portrait of the subject.
18 N184 John L. Sullivan, with logo around the head. These are the rarest of the regular tobacco sized multisport champions lithographed issues and owing to thin borders and weak cardboard are very hard to find in nice shape.
19 N150 John L. Sullivan. One of four poses found in the issue.
20 N157 The Sunny South. Boxer is likely Paddy Duffy, an IBHOF member.
21 1889 Kinney Hold To The Light Metamorphic (N223)John L. Sullivan. This is a unique, extremely rare issue. The cards’ images change when held to sunlight. The Sullivan, gets long hair and a beard when he changes. It is a layered set of images on thin stock and is vulnerable to damage.
22 1889 S.F. Hess & Co. (N332) Jack Havlin. S.F. Hess, a Rochester, NY company, issued a very rare series consisting of an unknown number of blank-backed photographic cards of boxers and other celebrities in a format very similar to N174. The issue is so rare that it is meaningless to speak of the 80+ known cards as a set.
23 1887 Lorillard’s Mechanics Delight (N269) Jimmy Elliot. Lorillard issued this sought after set of fifty numbered boxing cards in 1887. Personally, my favorite 19th century set; I appreciate the broad scope of subjects, the numbering, and the write ups on the backs of the cards.
24 N269 Lorillard Mechanics Delight Tommy Warren. An early lightweight champion.
25 N269 Lorillard Mechanics Delight John L. Sullivan. One of two Sullivans in the set, both carrying the same card number.
26 N269 Lorillard Mechanics Delight Bill Poole. A gangster and nativist political enforcer immortalized in Herbert Asbury's "The Gangs of New York" who was drawn on to create the "Butcher Bill" character in the movie. Murdered by Irish gangsters affiliated with John Morrissey (our next card subject), his last words were "I die a true American." His funeral procession drew thousands of onlookers.
27 John "Old Smoke" Morrissey. The Tammany politico and gangster was one of the toughest bare knuckles brawlers of pre-Civil War NYC and founded the Saratoga Springs track. Served in Congress and died a very wealthy man. His crew murdered Bill Poole, though not on his orders. He and Poole had a bitter blood feud based on Poole's nativist sentiments.
28 1889 History of Poor Boys and Other Famous People (N79) Jake Kilrain: Although not really cards, the two booklets in this series that depict boxers are popularly collected by 19th century boxing card collectors. The booklets were produced by Duke and show various Duke products in addition to detailed biographies of the celebrity subjects. The elaborate cover art is what makes these items popular among collectors. The two boxer subjects are John L. Sullivan and Jake Kilrain. The set is popularly treated as an 1888 issue, but that is clearly wrong; the last paragraph of the Kilrain biography states that he and Sullivan had signed in January 1889 for a July 1889 championship bout.
29 1893 Lorillard Red Cross Long Cut Tobacco (N266)Choyinski[sic] and Goddard. The set designated N266 by Burdick consists of 25 known unnumbered cards. It is one of the easiest sets to date; 1893 is printed right on the fronts of the cards in very small, faint print below the “Red Cross” name. Each oversized “tall boy” card depicts a match between two fighters and illustrates a specific move. Some of the illustrations show blows permitted under the rules of the London Prize Ring (“L.P.R.”), but not under the modern rules for gloved prize fights. Card backs contain a short blurb about the fighters and fight depicted, and a huge Red Cross advertisement. These colorful cards are larger than average tobacco cards but smaller than postcards, trade cards or cabinet cards, which accounts for both their desirability and their difficulty in better conditions.
30 N266 Fitzsimmons v. Dempsey. One of the two keys to the set showing Jack Dempsey and Bob Fitzsimmons, who fought for the middleweight crown. Fitz held two titles at once (middle and heavy) at a time when there were only three weight divisions.
31 N266 Murphy v. Weir
32 N266 McAuliffe v. Myers
33 N266 Hall v. Pritchard
34 N266 Frazier and Daly
35 N266 De Baum and Campbell
36 N266 Dawson and Needham
37 N266 Chambers and Clark
38 1895 Mayo Cut Plug (N310)Joe Chonskia [sic]. Mayo produced a series of 35 subjects with photographic depictions of many of the biggest stars of the day. The set features two front styles: names at the top and names at the bottom of the image.
The fighter whose name was routinely mangled by the card companies, San Francisco native Joseph Bartlett Choynski [ko-yin-ski] was the first great Jewish-American fighter. Although he weighed about 170 he was a heavyweight who fought most every contender and champion, and defeated Jack Johnson early in Johnson's career.
39 Mayo Jim Corbett, name at bottom variation.
40 Mayo Jim Hall. There are extreme print variations found in the name at bottom Mayo issue. They are detailed in my book. Ones like this, missing the artistic enhancements, are the rarest.
41 Richard K. Fox cabinet of Bob Fitzsimmons. Fox, publisher of the Police Gazette, was a well known photographer and prize fight promoter. Cabinet cards were populaly issued in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They are called “cabinet” card or “premium” card because their size usually exceeds 4” x 6” and were often displayed in curio cabinets. Many were issued to promote various organizations and businesses. Some were even issued by boxers to promote themselves, or sold individually by companies capitalizing on the card collecting craze to sell mass-produced images of celebrities.
42 Richard K. Fox cabinet Tom Hyer. Hyer was one of the first American heavyweight champs, winning acclaim in a 101 round (yes, that is correct) bare knuckles title fight in the 1840s. He successfully defended against Yankee Sullivan in the 1851 and then retired to run his bar and gang in New York City.
43 This is a carte de viste (CDV) of Jem Carney. About the size of a modern photograph it was produced in the 1890s.
44 Stevengraph silks of Kilrain and Smith. An English issue of four cabinet-cards that frame very finely woven silk fighter portraits about the size of a bank check.
45 1895 Newsboy Cabinets (N566)Peter Jackson. The National Tobacco Works issued a gigantic set of several hundred cabinet (4 1/4” x 6 1/2”) cards in the early 1890’s, popularly listed as an 1895 issue. I know of 4 boxing subjects, John L. Sullivan, Jim Corbett, Peter Jackson and Bob Fitzsimmons, depicted on at least 14 different cards.
46 N566 Newsboy Bob Fitzsimmons with Campbell mount and Boston Herald advertisement back
47 N566 Corbett. One of the full body poses. Campbell mount.
48 ca.1909 James J. Jeffries self-issued cabinet card w/Sarony image. Sarony was a well-known photographer of athletes. Jeffries made several cabinets in conjunction with his 1910 comeback.
49 T218 Sam Langford. Perhaps the most widely collected T-type boxing cards are the T218 cards of Champion Athletes and Prizefighters, issued with various American Tobacco Company products. The T218 cards are beautiful examples of turn of the century lithography. The cards measure approximately 2 ½ x 2 7/8 inches, and typically contain a short write-up and fight statistics on the backs.
50 T218 Jack Johnson, side view. In my opinion the T218 set is the nicest looking of the 20th century lithographic sets.
51 T218 Stanley Ketchell
52 T218 Sam Langford Tolstoi back. Mecca is the most common brand of T218. Hassan is slightly more difficult to find than Mecca, say on a 55:45 ratio. The Tolstoi back is rare.
53 T218 Willie Lewis.
54 T219 Willie Lewis. The T219 set is a cut down version of T218 with only 50 boxers. Compare this card with the T218 Lewis image for the cropping. The basic cards in the set are the Honest Long Cut (“HLC”) brand cards. The Miners Extra brand is uncommon. The Red Cross brand is rarely seen.
55 T220 Charlie Goldman. Issued with Mecca and Tolstoi cigarettes, the 50-card set designated as T220 by Jefferson Burdick in the American Card Catalog is one of the two “basic” boxing card sets from pre-World War I era of the 20th Century.
56 T220 Silver Borders Charlie Goldman. A significant border variation exists in the T220 set. All cards are commonly found with a white border. For some reason, 26 Mecca brand cards were printed as well with a silver border.
57 T220 Mecca Silver Borders Joe Coburn. Note the man at the left.
58 T220 Coburn white border. The man’s image clearly was removed after the silver bordered printing, since the plant leaves that replaced him still form his silhouette. Why the American Tobacco Company bothered to remove this man from the picture is unknown. It proves that the silver cards were printed first. I have never seen a white bordered Coburn with the man at the left intact.
59 T220 Silver Borders Kid Lavigne.
60 T220 Silver Borders Mike Donovan. This card blew my mind when discovered early in 2006. Until then all catalogs carried the silver bordered variation of T220 as a 25-card subset of the 50-card issue including Jack Goodman. This card was the 26th silver border discovered and is the only known specimen. I have since determined that Goodman does not exist and removed it from the checklist. The silver set thus consists of 25 cards.
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63 1910 Dixie Queen T223 John L. Sullivan. The same 50 cards in T220 were issued in a smaller format on coarser paper as Dixie Queen premiums. They are quite rare.
64 T224/T229 Pet/Kopec Cigarettes Monte Attell. Abe's brother Monte was a title holder. Pet and Kopec were West Coast brands with very limited distribution. Pet brand cards are rare; Kopecs are all but impossible to find.
65 T226 Red Sun Puglistic [sic] Subjects Willie Lewis. This set of 50 cards is very tough to find and very desirable; a high grade near set of 46 brought over $22,000 at auction some years ago.
66 T227 Abe Attell. A multisport set of 24 known (1 missing) cards with 5 boxers issued in a large format similar to modern cards with images not seen on any other T cards, the T227 Honest Long Cut or Miners Extra brand set is very desirable, especially because of its four baseball players. Abe Attell was a Jewish-American champion who was the go-between in the 1919 Black Sox scandal.
67 T227 Ad Wolgast
68 T227 Johnny Coulon. Every boxer in T227 was a champion and is in the IBHOF. The others not shown here are Frankie Klaus and Jack Johnson.
69 T227 Jack Johnson. Sorry about the front damage (white spots).
70 T227 Frank Klaus. I really like this image.
71 1909 Jeffries Championship Souvenir Playing Cards Bob Fitzsimmons. The W.P. Jeffries Co. created a really nice set of playing cards depicting boxers and boxing matches from the past. The card back shows Jeffries, fat and happy in a bowler hat.
72 E75 has 20 line-drawn cards issued by the American Caramel Co. The cards are checklisted on the back. It is one of the most common caramel sets.
73 A little tougher than E75 are the American Caramel Co.'s E76 issue, also of 20 cards with checklist backs. They can be distinguished based on typeface and fonts.
74 E77 Al Kaufman. Issued by the American Caramel Company, the same maker of the E75 and E76 sets, this particular set has 24 cards including two wrestlers and is very tough to find.
75 E78 Frank Klaus. Cards from this set are rare. The card fronts are similar in format to the E79/80 cards, while the card backs are very similar to the E75/76 cards. There is no branding or manufacturers designation on E78 cards. A checklist of the 25 cards in the issue is provided on the card backs.
76 E79 Marvin Hart. E79 is one of the most widely collected boxing caramel card sets. E79 card back contain a partial checklist and reference 27 "Scrappers", giving the set its nickname. Card backs are printed in black; very rarely will be seen in red.
77 E79 red back.
78 E79 Jack O'Brien and Partner
79 E80 Attells. E80 is one of the more difficult 20th century boxing sets. E80 references 44 Scrappers on the card backs, which have a complete checklist of the set. There is overlap between E79 and E80; very likely the 79 red backs were some of the cards listed on the E80 backs.
80 ca. 1910 Jim Jeffries uncatalogued card. A candy issue from around the time of the Johnson fight, these cards are quite difficult to find.
81 ca. 1910 New England Gum Co. Jeffries and Johnson flip card. Another Jack v. Jeff card.
82 This rare strip card uses the E79 and E95 art. Found on a sheet with other subjects. Sheets are known with ad backs for a confectioners.
83 One of a multitude of postcards created to profit off the Jack Johnson v. Jim Jeffries bout set for July 4, 1910 in Reno, Nevada. This particular card was postmarked from Reno the day before the fight. One of a popular format of the day, different colored pieces of cellophane were to be held to the card to isolate the image of Jack or Jim. The same principle was later used to make 3-D movies.
84 The Max Stein company issued a series of athlete and other celebrity postcards. Their earliest efforts, ca. 1904, have two known subjects. Hugo Kelly and Jack Beausholte.
85 Max Stein ca. 1915 PC of Jess Willard, who defeated Jack Johnson and reigned as heavyweight champ until Jack Dempsey demolished him in 1919.
86 Frank Moran by Stein.
87 1927 York Caramel (E211) King Tut (obviously not his real name). This rare set of cards depicts fighters of the era. Burdick catalogued it as E211 and attributes 60 cards to the set, but about half that number are known today.
88 1927 York Caramel (E211) Frankie Genaro. The Burdick Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has only 2 E211 cards.
89 E211 York Caramel Andy Divodi.
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91 1933 Goudey Sport Kings Max Baer. Goudey’s sole multisport issue depicts four fighters: Baer, Dempsey, Tunney and Carnera.
92 1951 Berk Ross Hit Parade of Champions (W532)Sugar Ray Robinson. This ugly multisport set was issued in boxed sets for sale directly to children in 1951, in four series. The cards came in two-card panels with a perforation between them.
93 1948 Kellogg’s Pep Tony Zale is the sole boxer in this small, thin black and white cereal insert set.
94 W-511 Dempsey. Strip cards are a backwater of collecting that are getting increased attention with the huge jump in prices on other vintage cards. This card of Jack Dempsey and manager Jack Kearns comes from a set of strip cards that was catalogued by Burdick as W-511. A Ruth card also is known, as is a Luis Angel Firpo. The cards can come with more than one number.
95 W515 Dempsey. Another ten-card set, I like the art on these. Reminds me of comic book villains from the 1920s and 1930s.
96 This W515 Tendler and the next one show a variation. The set was issued in two formats with one about 20% larger than the other.
97 Note the arms on the two Tendler cards
98 W551 Jack Dempsey. A ten-card strip set of boxers, all of the subjects are champions.
99 Here is a full W551 strip. Uncut strips are becoming rarer as people cut them up looking to have them slabbed.
100 W565 Benny Leonard. These cards were issued in sheets of 25 and were meant to be cut out from the sheets and used to play cards.
101 W565 Izzy Schwartz and Young Stribling. The bottom row of cards on W565 sheets does not match the playing card format of the rest of the cards.
102 W580 Joe Choynski. W580 is a large set of strips from the 1920s. It has an undetermined number of cards.
103 W580 Jack Johnson. A strip of 10 cards with Johnson is the most frequently found uncut W580 strip.
104 W590 Harry Wills. A rather interesting set, typically erroneously sold as W580, this undetermined number of strip cards (issued in sheets of 25 cards) has a distinctly different type face than the sans-serif W580 set, some different subjects, and all different images. The baseball cards in the sheet are designated W590, so I am adopting that nomenclature here since the cards are on mixed subject sheets. The legends on the Dempsey, Leonard and Wills cards indicate an issue date of about 1925, as Leonard retired and Dempsey lost his title in 1926.
105 W529-1 Leonard
106 W529-3 Leonard
107 W529-4 Leonard
108 W529-5 Leonard
109 W529-6 Britton
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112 1948 Leaf Jack Dempsey. The 1948 Leaf boxing set is one of the two post-World War II boxing sets issued by a major gum manufacturer (the other is the 1951 Topps Ringside set) before 1990. It consists of 49 different cards, plus an unissued extremely rare Rocky Graziano (with fewer than ten known examples, most collectors do not even consider the Graziano to be part of the set).
113 1948 Leaf Joe Louis. Printing quality is the biggest condition concern with 1948 Leaf cards. The card stock itself is fairly thick and holds up well, but the printing can vary from atrocious to breathtakingly nice. Front image registration is the single worst problem with the set. The set was printed in three passes -- black, red and blue – and relatively few of the cards actually align perfectly for all three phases. When the printing lines up exactly, the result is a crisp, sharp image and a very nice card indeed, but if any phase misses the mark by even a millimeter, the entire image is thrown off. Many collectors of this issue will sacrifice corner sharpness or centering to get a properly printed card. The card fronts also suffer from inking irregularities.
114 1951 Ringside Abe Attell. This set was Topps’ sole full-fledged venture into the boxing market. The 1951 Ringside set was issued in two 48-card series. The second series is roughly twice as hard to find as the first series.
115 1951 Ringside Tiger Flowers. This card is very popular and sells for a considerable premium.
116 1951 Ringside Barney Ross. Card fronts show a color image of the boxer (a painted photo called a “Flexichrome” was used) with the name and division in a box. The illustration quality varies with the quality of the source materials. Champions of the past have gold laurels surrounding a plate with the title and dates of title above the name. The present-day champions have a crown on the card.
117 1951 Ringside Gene Tunney. Card #95, Tunney is very tough to find. Although not short prints, two other cards are notorious problem cards: Joe Louis (#88) frequently has terrible centering left to right, and John L. Sullivan (#69) is often off-centered towards the bottom.
118 Uncatalogued pre-war arcade card of Georges Carpentier. These cards were issued in Coney Island and sold only at that location. They are quite rare. I have seen a few of them offered over the years. The image was stolen from the Blue Boxers exhibit set.
119 1925 Blue Boxer Carpentier.
120 1930s Rogers & Peet Gene Tunney.
Issued by a haberdashery (clothing store) ca. 1930 in packs of 4, these blank-backed cards are quite difficult to find. Four boxers are featured: Tunney, Schmeling, Sharkey and Baer
121 M-Unc. (1946): Several years ago, when I first started collecting boxing cards, I remember seeing a few of these cards offered for sale. They appear to have been issued in New York City at Stillman's Gym and also on a few newsstands and were produced by boxer Kid Herman, whose image appears on the back of the envelope in which they came. The cards feature all heavyweight champions from Sullivan to Louis, with the Louis card dated “1946” on the front. The post card-sized, blank-backed cards are printed on a thin chipboard similar to what was used for strip cards in the 1920’s. The set was sold originally in a packet for $0.25. It has been reprinted with additional cards, probably in the 1970s, although the reprints are themselves rare.
122 1920s Underwood & Underwood Jack Dempsey: Underwood & Underwood was known for licensing photos. Many baseball sets from the 1920’s have the U&U copyright on their images. Apparently, U&U also tried its hand at producing postcard-sized cards of its own. Dempsey and Willard are the known subjects, indicating an issue date ca. 1919-1920.
123 This advertising header for an ESCO machine solves one of the mysteries of Exhibit boxing card collecting. ESCO issued cards in sheets of 32. The 1921 set, which this card advertises, has 58 known boxers. Where are the other 6 has long bedeviled collectors. This broadside answers the question: the other 6 are wrestlers! Note the header is printed on scrap stock--its back is a partial sheet of postcard back art.
124 E282 Goudey Oh Boy Gum Jack Dempsey and Tom Mix. From a series of at least 30 movie-related cards. I think the other fellow is Dempsey's manager Jack Kearns.
125 1924 Benny Leonard standup card from the Flying Fists serial. The only example of this item I've ever seen.
126 La Salle Hats Kid Lavigne
127 La Salle Hats cards. A set of 8 cards given in an envelope as a promotional device for haberdasheries.
128 This would be 7 of the 8 cards in the set plus an original envelope.
