Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: I brought a collection of boxing cards.

I inherited them from my dad, who inherited them from his dad, who was a boxer in his day, and I think a promoter in the Burlington area.

I guess the story goes, he smoked Turkey Red cigarettes and he would send in the packages, and in turn, he would get these cards.

APPRAISER: So what we have here are T9 Turkey Red cabinet cards.

Uh, they're from 1910, 1911.

There were 26 in the set.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: You have 21 here.

And basically, what happened back then was, you'd get a coupon in every pack of Turkey Reds.

And if you had enough coupons, you could send them in to the company, and you could check off which boxer you wanted.

And it's basically the best boxers of that era.

So you have Abe Attell over here.

He was called the Little Champ.

He was a little guy, five-foot-three or so.

And he actually went on to become kind of a gambler.

And he's one of the central figures in the 1919 World Series, the Black Sox scandal.

You have Sam Langford here, he was a great early champion.

Stanley Ketchel is one of the best boxers of his era.

He fought Jack Johnson, amongst others, but he was actually murdered in 1910.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So it's kind of interesting to see him here.

And here's Jim Jeffries.

He was the heavyweight champion of the world.

And probably the most important is Jack Johnson, today one of the most collectible and kind of legendary boxers of all time.

They were meant to be displayed.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: So generally you'll see tape or pinholes...

GUEST: Mm.

APPRAISER: ...in the corners, and that's... We see some of that here.

But a lot of these, you don't see that.

GUEST: Hm.

APPRAISER: The vibrancy of the color lithography is astonishing.

Yours would grade probably in the fair to good condition.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: Very collectible today, primarily because of the amount of great boxers that are in the set, and just the visual beauty of the set.

If I'm going to put the collection in an auction, I'd appraise it at somewhere in the $1,000 to $1,500 range.

GUEST: Oh, really.

Huh.

APPRAISER: Yeah, in this condition.

Very cool-- great collection.

GUEST: Well, thanks for the information.