[Exhibitman]

Candidly, I think most Ali cards are overvalued based on availability. There are many that are legitimately scarce and deserve a high valuation but there are a lot of Ali cards from "mainstream" issues of the era that carry a substantial premium over equally available cards from the same issues of the other great heavies of the era. To me he is kind of like Mantle in that regard. As for fighting rep, I rate him right under Louis, up there with Dempsey and the other ATGs. I just don't feel any warm fuzzies over the man himself and therefore don't actively pursue his cards and memorabilia other than within the historical context of the cards I do collect. If I'm gonna collect a fighter I really have to like him, hence my pursuit of Jeffries, Louis and Leonard stuff.

And the modern/manufactured rarity cards, don't even get me started, ugh. Horrible stuff IMHO, been poison to modern baseball card collecting, and infects and kills every modern boxing issue starting w/the 1996 Ringside. I was really a booster of the 2010 Ringside issue when it came out a few years ago from the Sport King revivalists but geez, what a fiasco that has been. Two and out, and no wonder. No one bothers with the base sets--just as I suspected would be the case as I wrote on my blog after the 2010 National ["As for the base product, my feeling is that if collectors are going to basically throw away the base cards, the set is a failure"]--and the parallels are stupid things to 'invest' in over the long term, frankly. Not saying don't buy them if you like and enjoy them, but don't count on a black onyx set paying your kid's college tuition, either, especially with no new annual issues from the mfg to maintain collector interest. Lots of 1990s baseball 'investors' learned that the hard way. There was a real chance there to make a product that would fit well with contemporary boxing and have a lifespan--take over from the Brown's issues--but they blew it by weighting the issue to [yawn] the same old-timers as were in Kayo and AW in 1991. Boring then and boring now. About all I bother with from the two Ringside issues are the autographed cards of contemporary guys and I just sit and wait for them to come up at low prices, which they do. Picked up Calzaghe, Barrera, Glen Johnson, Barkley, and a few others at bottom feeder prices. And the artwork can be so fugly and cartoonish on some of those that I may have a friend who does custom cards use the autographs as cuts to make nicer cards out of them.

What was the question?