November 14, 2019: Sports & Americana Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/14/2019
This is a simply marvelous grouping of white-backed Exhibit cards from boxing and wrestling in the 1960s, a blazing essentially Near-Mint array that boasts some of the biggest names in the two sports. Quibbling aside about whether professional wrestling qualifies as a sport, it certainly qualified as colorful in the 1960s, with names like Haystacks Calhoun, Bruno Sammartino, Buddy Rogers, et al., who plied their trade in what often seemed like neighborhood basements as hardy practitioners laid the groundwork for what would become a commercial behemoth just a few decades later. Boxing was arguably in its own Golden Age in the 1960s with the arrival of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), along with luminaries from earlier eras like Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Ingemar Johansson, Sugar Ray Robinson, and company. The condition is outstanding, mostly Near-Mint with perhaps a few Ex-Mt, with a wonderful, uniform presentation and clean white backs. The Boxing breakdown (15): Clay, Patterson, Johansson, Liston, Elorde, Giardello, Hank, Johnson, Jones, Lane, Logart, Mims, Olson, Pastrano and Rinaldi. The Wrestling group is similarly pristine, virtually Near-Mint throughout (16): Calhoun, Thomas, Sammartino, Rogers, Drapp, Ellis, Gomez, Graham, Haggerty, Heffernan, Jonathan, O’Connor, Rocca, Thun, Torres and Vargo.
1960s Boxing and Wrestling Exhibits With Clay, Patterson, Liston (31)
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