Vintage Card Of The Month: 1949 Topps Magic Corbett & Sullivan

This month’s VCoM is a pair of boxers from the 1949 Topps Magic release. Similar to the 1948 set, the 1949 set was made up of 252 cards from sports and non-sports categories. These are my second and third Magic cards, the first one being the 1948 Topps Magic Billy The Kid I posted last month.

The 1949 set started with Category “A” being Boxing Champions and there were 24 fighters in this category. James Corbett is card #2 and John L Sullivan is #3 on the checklist and what drew me to the cards, besides being unique vintage cards, is that both men fought during the bare-knuckle age. When Corbett and Sullivan fought in 1892 they wore gloves with Corbett winning the championship with a 21^st knockout of Sullivan. This made Sullivan the final bare-knuckle champion and Corbett the first gloved champion.

The Magic cards of this era are condition sensitive with many fading over time and some nearly disappearing completely. Both of these cards are probably a mid-point of the condition sensitive range with some nice dark areas and some detail (more with Sullivan’s card) but there is some fading. I have put all three of my Magic cards in to a binder so hopefully that will halt any further fading.

The categories in the 1949 set includes Football stars (Category C), Actors (Category F) and Aviation Pioneers (Category L) with the big names being Jessie Owens, Clark Gable, Ty Cobb and Amelia Earhart.