1923 Olympia Boxing Playing Cards Set and Checklist

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It’s in the Details

Title Olympia Boxing Playing Cards
Year 1923
Size 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″
Images Black and White
Type Game Cards
Number in Set
 55

1923 Olympia Boxing Playing Cards Overview

1923 Olympia Boxing Gene Tunney.jpgThese playing cards were issued by Olympia Games in 1923. As Heritage Auctions points out, they were created for the Canadian marketplace.

The cards utilized a simple playing card design with black and white pictures. Unlike standard playing cards, though, suits and denominations were not present. Cards had an ornate blue ink playing card design on the back. While there were no suits, the cards did have color-coded titles.

Technically, this is a matching game and four colors were featured for the titles. Each card has one of our colors — black, green, orange, and red. The colors are seen in the titles on each card (this card shown here depicts Gene Tunney and has the Light Heavy-Weight title in black, for example).

Some of the cards are actual individual boxers while about 1/3 of the set of the cards had cartoon pictures of generic subjects for various ring terms, such as bell, arena, referee, and timekeeper.

As the cards had standard rounded playing card corners, like other pre-war playing card issues, these are often found in tremendous shape.

1923 Olympia Boxing Playing Cards Checklist

  1. Arena
  2. Arena
  3. Arena
  4. Arena
  5. Bell
  6. Bell
  7. Bell
  8. Bell
  9. Soldier Bartfield
  10. Jack Britton
  11. Joe Burman
  12. Georges Carpentier
  13. James Corbett
  14. Eugene Criqui
  15. Johnny Curtin
  16. Decision
  17. Jack Dempsey
  18. Draw
  19. Johnny Dundee
  20. Luis Firpo
  21. Foul
  22. Frankie Genaro
  23. Mike Gibbons
  24. Babe Herman
  25. Pete Herman
  26. Floyd Johnson
  27. Johnny Kilbane
  28. Knockout
  29. Benny Leonard
  30. Referee
  31. Referee
  32. Referee
  33. Referee
  34. Dave Rozenberg
  35. Rules (English)
  36. Rules (French)
  37. Battling Siki
  38. Jeff Smith
  39. Midget Smith
  40. Bud Taylor
  41. Timekeeper
  42. Timekeeper
  43. Timekeeper
  44. Timekeeper
  45. Gene Tunney
  46. Benny Valger
  47. Pancho Villa
  48. Mickey Walker
  49. George Ward
  50. Charlie White
  51. Jimmy Wilde
  52. Kid Williams
  53. Harry Wills
  54. Johnny Wilson
  55. Rules and Scoring

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