1923 Olympia Boxing Playing Cards Set and Checklist

Posted on December 2, 2016 by Pre-War Cards

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.jpg These playing cards were issued by Montreal-based Olympia Games in 1923. As Heritage Auctions points out, they were created for the Canadian marketplace. The series is notably a rare one with not many examples typically seen. Olympia named the set simply, “Boxing” or “The Game of Boxing.”

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.

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 high-grade shape.

Numerous big names are featured in the set, highlighted by Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and others. Also included are some big name early Black fighters, including Harry Wills and Battling Siki.

Dempsey is the star of the set and was the heavyweight champion at the time of issue of these cards. He is not only included in the set, but is also pictured on the box for these cards.

Color Variations

Technically, this is a matching game of sorts and four colors were featured for the titles.

While the majority of the cards are printed in only one of four colors (black, green, orange, and red), some of the cards with generic boxing images are printed in all four.

Cards with all four of the variations do not feature actual known subjects: These include cards for:

Arena
Bell
Referee
Timekeeper

Shown here is an example of all four cards for the referee.

Rules/Gameplay

A total of three rules cards are included in the set. These cards are sometimes considered to be part of the official checklist while other times they are not.

In addition to a rules and scoring card, there are standard rules cards in English and French. The reason for the French translation is because the series was issued in Canada where both languages are spoken.

The game was similar to Rummy. Per those rules cards, gameplay is as follows:

Cards are to be shuffled with each player receiving seven cards
Remainder of the card to be placed face down in a pile with one card face up
Players take turns drawing cards from the pile (or the card face up)
Objective is to secure an area card, a bell card, a referee card, a timekeeper card, card of two fighters of the same weight class, and one of the decision cards (decision, draw, foul, knockout) with the same color as one of the fighters.

The decision cards are critical to the outcome. As mentioned, there are four of them an their color must match the color of one of the fighters to win. The decision cards and their color orientation is: