Legendary Boxing Prices

[Leon]

My auction partner, Scott, and I have spoken about Boxing card prices recently. They seem to have gone the way of the lower grade caramel cards and baking cards. Now would be a great time to start collecting them.

[Exhibitman]

No, after the auction season ends would be a great time to start collecting them

You are correct, my friend. Prices have dropped markedly even on premium items and it is a great time to pick them up and hold for medium term profits, if that's your bag. As for "simon-pure" collectors w/o any intent to profit, there is great stuff out there at relative discounts to past prices, so now is the time to fill out the collection. If/when the economy rebounds I expect that a lot of these cards will do the same. Of course, that presupposes that the cards show up for sale, which they really don't do very often when it comes to the good stuff; you kind of have to strike while the iron is hot. But that's always been the case with vintage stuff.

OK, found out who got the E78 Johnson but I won't out him/her.

[Jerry G]

I have always been a set builder type of collector. The T9 Turkey Red Boxers were always the Holy Grail for me. Two years ago I had five of them and came to the realization that I would never be able to justify completing the set. So, I sold the those five and went in a different direction. When I noticed that there was not a lot of bidding activity on the Legendary set I placed an intentionally low bid, just for sh*ts and grins. I watched it daily knowing that my bid would never hold up.

Son of a gun! It ended two notches below my max bid. Awesome! I hope I'm as happy when I actually receive the cards.

Here's another example of price fluctuation that was recently noticed. I completed the N28's back in the early '80's and recently decided to complete the N29's. It seems that the current A & G's are surprisingly similar in price to what I paid many years ago. I didn't know whether to cuss or celebrate!

This thread offers a good explanation of what's up. Thanks for the discussion.

[Exhibitman]

FWIW, my research indicates that the boxing market bottomed in the fall of 2010 and has been mildly rebounding since then. Still a very choppy, maddeningly unpredictable one. This series of auctions is going to set a benchmark like the Hull sales did before the crash.

[travrosty]

I am on the autograph side of the boxing collectibles hobby and the same goes for autographs, except a few very rare, high end autographs or very famous and desirable champions like Sullivan, Fitzsimmons, Johnson, they haven't taken as big of a hit or some haven't even taken a hit at all.

otherwise for almost all other boxing autographs, prices have dipped down considerably from the high water mark of a few years ago.

There was a time when you couldn't get a simple Sonny Liston autograph for under 900 dollars, there was a buying spike and prices were going up. When the recession hit I saw a few Liston's going for 500 or 600 dollars, and one even went for about 375. Prices are still not back up to where they once were but probably will slowly rebound.

[oldjudge]

I picked up the Old Judge boxing lot of 13 in the Legendary auction. I only needed the Clow with the serpentine banner. The other cards are available either individually or as a group. If interested, please email me at oldjudge@gmail.com


Thanks---Jay

[novakjr]

What are the chances that the Boxing prices have dropped because of the MMA? Because of the MMA some people may be viewing Boxing as a dying sport, and are going away from boxing stuff...However, even if that eventually proves to be the case, I think ultimately Boxing and Wrestling(real) may become the vintage equivalent to the MMA collectors, and will rise again.