Wednesday, March 4, 2020

W529-7 Big Head Boxing Card

I picked up another boxing card recently.

This time it was a W529-7 Big Head version.  I like this set and will continue to pursue it over time but for now I just have this one. 

Now, Prewarcards.com calls these W-Unc Big Heads but also admits they are related to W529s.  There are 10 cards in the set.
  1. Joe Beckett
  2. Jack Britton
  3. George Carpentier
  4. Jack Dempsey
  5. Johnny Dundee
  6. Fred Fulton
  7. Johnny Kilbane
  8. Benny Leonard
  9. Mike O’Dowd
  10. Lou Tendler
Here is the card I picked up, the Joe Beckett.

 
You can see the J at the top of the adjacent card with a yellow background which I assume is Jack Dempsey's card. 
 
I tend to like the idea of this being a W-Unc set as opposed to being lumped in with W529 since it really doesn't look like the other W529 cards.  It just has the same checklist of 10 boxers. 
 
Here is an example (not mine) of the Jack Dempsey from the set.
 
 
There are also baseball subjects in the Big Head set.  All of these cards, the boxing and the baseball examples, are tough to find.  The baseball set has 20 subjects in it.  Here is an example of the baseball version of Walter Johnson.  Note his name is misspelled Johnston on the card but it is widely believed to be of Walter.
 
 
You can see the similarities in the two sets.  I feel like they should be classified as one set of W-Unc Big Heads that have both baseball and boxing subjects. 
 
What do you guys think?  Do you like these cards or no?
 
Enjoy the hobby all...it's a big one.



1 comment:

Matthew Glidden said...

Hi Andy, given the identical basic design and checklist, I agree with you that these boxers and baseballers fit better as W-UNC. They appear knocked off (or at least imitated) by a printer who'd seen W516s and W529s and reproduced them with a cheaper style. I suspect those 30 original images from IFS (one of Hearst's newswire outlets) found their way to vendors looking for things to sell on boardwalks and pictures houses and led to these strips.