On the Graziano issue, here is an entry from my blog in 2009:
July 14, 2009: A New Graziano Surfaces
As my loyal readers know, the 1948 Leaf Rocky Graziano is among the rarest boxing cards and is the most expensive card out there. In May I was contacted by someone who discovered a new specimen of this card in some papers and other cards left to her by her father. Two months later, the card is in a spiffy new SGC 50 (vg-ex) holder and residing in a very happy collector's hands. The purchase price on the card, raw with a guarantee to pass muster with SGC, was reportedly in the same neighborhood as the price that the last one sold for in auction on Ebay (see my report below).
The great thing about this card, from my perspective, is provenance. It came from outside the hobby via a lineal descendent of the original accumulator and was found with some other cards from the set. From a cataloguer's perspective, that is very strong proof that the card was actually issued to the public. It may have been rapidly withdrawn from the market and replaced with something else, but it was issued. Meaning that it is a short print, not a test card or prototype, and that there could be more of these hens' teeth out there for another lucky treasure seeker to find. What is also interesting is that the card is a white back, same as the others I've seen in person, which bolsters the concept that the white backs were issued first, with the inferior stock gray backs coming later on. Another minor insight I had when thinking about the set, bolstered by the cards I have seen and have records of, is that the really garish printing mistakes from the set--missing colors, flipped around printings on the fronts, wrong backs--are all white backs. Perhaps Leaf was working out some kinks early on and those cards slipped out like the Grazianos?
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