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[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by searching

2 x mid 1920 boxer cards, dont know which set they are from, the backs are blank
Attachment 561072

c. 1923-24 Willards Chocolates V137

Canadian issue.

From a series of 56 boxers

[Writehooks]

Those two cards are from the mid-1920s Willard's Chocolates set (V137), an unnumbered, blank-backed 56-card issue from Canada. They can be found in both sepia or black and white. Biggest names in the set are Dempsey, Jeffries, Fitzsimmons and Ketchel.

[G1911]

Picked up these 3 Red Sun's from a fellow collector. Puts me at 34/50 after ~18 months.

T226's are not from 1908; I would be utterly shocked if they date before Q2 of 1910, when Jack Johnson seems to have signed some deals with American Lithography. I have no idea how this myth started; PSA is still endorsing it today. Most claims to fact beyond the checklist about Red Suns do not seem to align with evidence or even reasonable deductions.

The cards have glossy fronts that damage very easily; slabs tend to obscure this. I see how these cards would get a 3.5 from a grader on a bad day with the new standards, or a 5 on a good day, but after crack out the Willete is the nicest of them. Willets has a deep scratch on the left, and a small corner wrinkle. I'd call that one a 4 and Willete the 5. Willette and Willets were the top POP's.

Jimmy Gardner is the 'get' for me, as he is a T218 subject which is what led me to the other T sets. Jimmy was a very, very good boxer. His brother George was the Light Heavy champ for a time, and another brother, Billy, was an obscure pro boxer. Joe Thomas, who appears in T224/T229, was his brother in law. Quite a family. Johnny Willetts was pretty good, one of the many northeast no decision fighters who appears to have had the better of it more often than not. He appears in series 2 of the T225's. Kid Willette is pretty obscure. I cannot think of another card he had off the top of my head.

[Exhibitman]

Yeah, 1908 makes no sense. The images alone disprove it.



Jim Jeffries did not look like this in 1908. He looked like the one in the bowler hat:



He didn't get the bald and in shape thing going until early 1910 as he trained for the Johnson fight.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Yeah, 1908 makes no sense. The images alone disprove it.

Jim Jeffries did not look like this in 1908. He looked like the one in the bowler hat:

He didn't get the bald and in shape thing going until early 1910 as he trained for the Johnson fight.

Evan Jones' 1993 book has them as 1908 (and he only has 46 confirmed subjects, missing the 4 black 'puglistic' subjects). The 1956 ACC gives no date and a set size of 50, though that may be taken from the back of the cards, listed at a then-high 30 cents a card price. I don't know if Burdick and friends actually had a checklist. Jones' book is all over the place quality wise, but the missing subjects in his checklist might indicate the SP theory.

PSA's checklist only lists the 46 whitey cards (https://www.psacard.com/psasetregist...position/11395). Bizarre, as their POP report includes a Johnson in a 2.5 to make 47 different they have graded, even if PSA refuses to acknowledge reality outside of their slabs. They still list it as a 1908 set everywhere. POP report has a "Kid Williams" card I suspect is a Kid Willette. I don't think anyone at PSA knows a single thing about T boxing cards. I can't tell where there information comes from - for baseball their system for older stuff relies heavily on the Standard Catalog, which makes sense. I don't know where the origin for their boxing database came from.

SGC's POP report (https://gosgc.com/pop-report/result/...T226%29/Boxing) is difficult to take seriously. Some sets are totally messed up and the old data is not there no matter what option you elect, like T220 Silver. T226 Red Sun appears to be all inclusive, but their datasets are so horrible that who knows if it's actually accurate. Their date of 1910 is also not tied to any actual primary source, but it's plausible and it's probably 1910 or 1911.

[G1911]

Was a bit nervous about this one with the eBay 'authenticity' program, since it was listed as "Young Corbett" in the auction title.

I don't think I would agree with this being EX-MT due to the back stain, but who cares about condition for items this rare. PSA shows a 6, a 5, a 5 MC and a 2 in their pop report; SGC turns up nada. I only have a picture of the 6 and the 5(MC), plus the 8 card proof sheet. The 5 I haven't seen is in butcher35435's set on the registry. The 2 isn't on a registry set. I'd love to see images of these or any raw ones.

[wicker56]

A really cool recent pick up, just arrived in the mail yesterday. The bottom left corner states 1914, which would make George’s 20 years old at the time. He actually looks more like 15 or 16 in the photo. George’s was said to have boxed at 145 to 175 in his career. I’d say he’s probably closer to 145 in this picture.