Like their rivals at American Tobacco, Red Sun Cigarettes used trading cards of baseball players in its products in an attempt to boost sales just over a century ago. This week, we have the rare opportunity to offer cards from a sister series to the baseball product—the 1908 T226 Red Sun boxing set. Red Sun used actual full-length photographs for this unique set, which also stands apart thanks to its unique design featuring olive green borders and a bright red ad for the company’s products on the reverse. Finding actual photographs on boxing trading cards was very rare in the early part of the 20 th century and it’s likely that smokers who pulled them from packs were quite amazed. These sets were popular collectibles among sports fans, who often pasted them into scrapbooks to make newspaper stories of the day come to life. Red Sun boxing cards are among the most rare of all early boxing cards and to find any of them in anything approaching high grade is virtually impossible. That’s why we were thrilled when one of our consignors brought us this group. There are 15 up for bid right now, all of them ranging from PSA 3 to PSA 6 and all are either the finest copies in existence at their grade level or very, very close to it. Vintage boxing cards represent an excellent value considering the relative few that are in the marketplace. They are fascinating to look at and study. You can add them to your collection at a price level often far below their baseball counterparts from the same era. Considering the quality of these cards, it’ll be interesting to see the final bids on these pieces of sports history. See the full listings here: 1908 T226 Red Sun Boxing Cards.
