Most Undervalued Boxing Card/Set

[Box-Cards]

Thought I'd share it with you...because I created it.

Deceased (Dec. 2007) Boxing Historian, Hank Kaplan, was a very good friend of mine from the time we first met in Graziano's Lounge in Canastota, NY, at the 1991 IBHOF Induction Events weekend and right up to his passing. He was my primary mentor and key motivator encouraging me to keep working on the Ali Global Card Review project from the first time I mentioned working on it.

He was also the Chairman of the Selection Committee for IBHOF annual inductions and, as such, was not eligible to be nominated for induction himself by anybody else on that committee ... until the end of 2005 when he was talked into stepping down from his Chairmanship position so he could in fact be inducted into the IBHOF the next year, in 2006.

I had made the annual trips to the HOF's inductions for 9 years straight, 1991 to 2000, missed 2001, was there for 2002, then missed the next
three. When I heard Hank himself was being inducted in 2006, there was no way I was going to miss that one. I contacted him early and asked his permission to create a 2006 IBHOF Induction Commemorative card of him, 100 total hand-made, offering to meet him up there early to give him 75 of the 100 I would produced for his own use, my keeping 25 to help cover its production costs. He not only gave me permission, but then sent me the two photographs he would like me to use for it when I mentioned I wanted it to be simple without any text back, just mainly images with minimum face text. Hank's on its front; he is pictured with a young Clay along the ring ropes at the 5th St. Gym, Miami, in Chris Dundee's Gym on the card back.

Hank had an intimate relationship with both Dundee brothers before, during, and after Clay/Ali first came to Miami and turned Pro. He was officially the 5th St. Gym's PR Man and posed Ali for his very first "Cassius Clay" Promotional Cards--one pose of which became the basis for Ali's 1960's Exhibit card.

Of the (25) 2006 Induction Promos I kept of Hank's that year, I made sure to freely distribute about (10) of them to select dealers and exhibitors who also attended that year's IBHOF Collector Show--so that the card would legitimately acquire the providence of being considered in the future to be one of the only true IBHOF Induction Commemorative Promo-Cards that were ever released and distributed during one of the Hall's annual events. I don't really know what Hank did with any of the (75) other examples I gave him the Thursday before his Induction, but knowing him I'm sure he was generous in distributing some during and afterward. He got a real kick and was delighted when he was given them.

I saw one pop up on Ebay.UK a good while back. It auctioned off for a little over $4.50; as I figure it they cost me not just many, many hours to create but ran over twice that (min. $9 apiece) in material-supplies, etc., to do so.

Regardless I was personally involved or not, I think it is fair to nominate this 2006 Hank Kaplan/Ali-Back IBHOF 2006 Induction Promo as possibly being among THE most "undervalued" Ali cards out there today...such is life.

[travrosty]

i dont think any boxing cards are going to 'explode' cassius clay is probably one of the only ones worth buying maybe, just because he transcends boxing and is into the mainstream consciousness. all the other champions, including old time champions, cards can be had fairly inexpensively compared to their counterparts in baseball.

[jheffron]

I've been collecting boxing for quite some time. The items that will increase in value will be determined by influential marketing more than condition and rareity. I also want to say that I am not an Ali bootlicker like so many. I do not and will not collect any Ali cards because I believe he has done tremendous harm to boxing and the society in general. When I was young and impressionable I thought he was cool. But than I grew up. Just look and listen to his rants and insults to opponents and than tell your kids what a great example of decency he is.

[Exhibitman]

I agree with much of what Jim says about Ali; his behavior was horrible to Joe Frazier. I have quite a few of his earlier or obscure cards but that is more a reflection of my personal OCD with breadth of collection and history than any regard for him as a person. My personal avatars as a collector are Jim Jeffries, Joe Louis and Benny Leonard, and I will cop to a modern era collection of Lennox Lewis cards and related materials. Probably not worth the paper they're printed on but I did enjoy his career and personality.

I also agree 100% about condition. Who gives a $hit. The key to everything has been [and will be] supply; the number of cards available from many prewar boxing issues remains at a handful or single specimen for a given fighter. Under those circumstances you take whatever you can find. I just added a very rare card to my collection via trade. It is trimmed and has a back paper pull. It is also the only one I have ever seen, so I am not complaining that it is hacked up.

Not sure about the marketing as driving force idea over rarity, though. This is a field in its very early days of organization. Everything Jones [Seconds Out], Hanvey [Boxing Card Digest] and I did/do could crudely be considered marketing, but as encyclopedists it is more about kick-starting the conversation about the boxing card hobby segment as a whole than pushing individual cards to manipulate demand and pricing, which is how I define marketing. I look at my ideal result to be giving collectors the language and metrics to make for an intelligible conversation about boxing cards. That's more akin to basic organization. If a card is rare, my experience is that collectors will want it without a push if they know it exists. We are all completists and obsessives to varying degrees simply by being collectors. I've picked up stuff I never imagined collecting simply because I had to have that particular Jeffries item, for example:

That said, there are some collectors who've approached me in the past obviously trying to put a gloss on a particular issue in the hope that I'd bandwagon their views and they could use my 'blessing' to market the issue into prominence and profit from the outcome. Unfortunately, I tend to investigate things. Makes for some really funny exchanges as they try to get me to opine on the value of an item that hasn't sold, which I don't do unless you want to retain me as counsel at my regular hourly rate, in which case I will spew opinions for as long as your retainer holds out. J/K.

Ali is by no means the only investment out there, btw. Self interest precludes my explaining except to state that Johnson, Dempsey, Louis, Sullivan and La Motta are all solid performers, and there are a lot more 'sleeper' items out there but I ain't letting those cats out of their bags until I finish getting mine . I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. My experience in boxing card 'investment' has been that you don't see 'breakout' performers like T206 misprints or rare backs but with the right rare items you will be able to name your price in the long term. There are also a lot more opportunities for finds and lucky breaks than in baseball card collecting. In baseball cards every jackass with a box of 1990s Donruss thinks he's gonna pay for college with it.

In general, from what I can see the boxing card market bottomed out during the fall of 2010 and has been rebounding slowly but surely since then, and has picked up steam in the last six months. The Dreier liquidation, which is still ongoing w/Legendary but not under their names [that Baguer lot in the last Legendary was theirs] was sold into a down and slowly rebounding market, so many of the same cards as Jeff Hull sold went for a lot less. I also think that the sheer accumulated wealth that was returned to the marketplace tended to depress prices. I know that the volume of material meant that I had to triage the offerings and in many cases just decide to chase after one or two lots per auction so as not to bust my budget. I ended up getting most of the top priority items on my list [some by sheer luck in post-auction trades] but pulled out of bidding on lots of other stuff that I'd have pursued hard under normal circumstances. Some of the other collectors I've talked with had much the same experience: they plunged into one or two lots and had to pass on the rest. As those lots are broken down and resold we will see the real market prices emerge.

[Box-Cards]

I agree: Supply and rarity in the long run trumps demand over marketing in general. I also believe that down the road and further into the future this may also depend on which era the rarity originated. Late 1800s, early 1900s, and most pre-war rarities are one thing, today's contemporary card companies' marketing attempts at producing "manufactured rarity" by creating the exact same card single in a 1/1 "Gold" version, (/125) in Silver, (/25) in Blue, and (/10) in a Red version, or however they wish to number and designate them, is on a totally different plane than what the hobby used to think of when contemplating something's rarity. "Manufactured rarity" may or may not have been what Jim had in the back of his mind in eluding to value being connected to marketing. Regardless, in today's hobby it seems to have some affect on collectors when one sees what they're willing to bid on them in auction at different times. I'm not a fan of manufactured rarity myself--unless the specific "rarest" version in the series had something extremely special and unique incorporated into it that its other, higher run versions did not. Leaf's move to embed "Everlast" Logo swatches as the relics used ONLY in most or some of the Gold (1/1) Versions of their 2012 Ali Metal's Event Worn series--is an example of what I do find acceptable for "manufactured rarity." Yet they didn't do that in their first Ali-related set release... all their earlier ones with Everlast-Logo swatches were not of the Gold (1/1) version but in the Silver (/20) and some (/60) Bronzes. Manufactured Rarity nevertheless seems to be the dish-of-the-day now across most of the sports card industry.

How do you others feel about those "manufactured rarities" of today?

A note to Jim: Ali "Bootlickers" is offensive, since my post and opinions on some of his cards was just before that statement. If you had a chance to read my earlier posts elsewhere about needing an Ali Panini Valida Back, it offered that my long standing, favorite fighter happened to be Jack Dempsey, and I had completed a Global Card Review on Dempsey's issues first that was rejected by book publishers as not having a big enough audience; their suggesting doing one on Ali instead--so I've been working on that ever since. Deep in the middle of the Ali project as I am, I thought to share with others some of what was known or had been discovered while doing it as well as my opinion of which ones I liked best. A lot of people don't like Ali for various reasons, some mentioned, and that's anybody's right. Still, it is obvious that a whole lot more people around the world undeniably do. I don't dislike anyone based on whether or not they do or don't like him. I always listen and give everyone an equal opportunity to express personal opinions, pro-or-con, as to why without putting them down for it.

Myself, I've been collecting boxing for a long time, too, starting when I first was discharged from the Marines in 1970, Vietnam Era, due to service-connected medical injuries. I started to include collecting Ali's cards around the late 1980s, and I think I was already pretty much "grown up" by then. Even as far as the military goes, I was the type of person who held nothing against anybody else who opposed or didn't want to serve during my same period. I saw it as a personal choice that I personally made in enlisting in the Marine Airwing following a time in university studies, and I held nothing personal against anybody who didn't personally want to do the same thing; privately, I was opposed to the draft as well and believed only those who wanted to serve were the ones I wanted by my side as I served. I never put anyone down or insulted them for not wanting to, including Ali. Whether you do or do not like or collect Ali, it certainly shouldn't be any basis to put anybody else who may feel differently down for doing so. It's a free world.

[Exhibitman]

Daniel, I hope you didn't take my agreement w/Jim as agreement with the political sentiments. I happen to agree with Ali's stance on Vietnam and ultimately he was proven correct as a matter of law w/r/t his status as conscientious objector. My agreement as to Ali is based on his treatment of others in his life, specifically Joe Frazier. I realize that some trash talk is inevitable in gladiatorial sports but Ali went too far with it, especially in the run-up to Manila, and I just don't like the man. I'm also a bit nonplussed by the Ali hagiographers. He was the best of the group in the greatest group of heavyweights to be active at the same time but not by that much: he lost to Frazier and barely beat Frazier in the rubber match; it was literally Futch stopping Frazier before Ali quit on his stool. Norton busted him up in one fight and Ali barely eked out victory the others.

[clamendo]

It really quite simple, I used to collect boxing and
I take a peek here once and a while. Ali cards will always be "undervalued" because many people don't like him and feel he was actually a coward.
Maybe his cards would have been worth more
If he actually would have gone to Vietnam and fought
Along side of Jim. Maybe he could have taken some
Shrapnel and he would have had not only
A championship belt but the. purple heart like Jim recieved.

[nameless]

A lot of boxing collectors, myself included were in the military. Cool I think, whimpy baseball people