Monday, March 3, 2008
Muhammad Ali Memorabilia
One of the most collectible areas regarding Muhammad Ali is Site Memorabilia. Typically, Boxing Programs, tickets and posters from Muhammad Alis actual fights. Ali site memorabilia ranges from his early amateur days through to his last professional fight against Trevor Berbick in 1981. Some collectors even collect site memorabilia from his many worldwide exhibition contests which can be just as rare.
The reference guide for any Muhammad Ali Site Memorabilia collector should be the 1997 Christies LA Paloger Auction guide. This book contains many photographs of Boxing Programs, tickets and Posters from the majority of Alis contests.
The desirability and price of Muhammad Ali site memorabilia is governed mainly, and not in necessarily in this order, by:
Significance of the fight:
The biggest Ali fights will always attract even the casual Ali site memorabilia collector and even though they might not be the rarest items, their desirability means they Are a premium item
Clay Liston 1 Ali wins Heavyweight Title for the first time
Ali Frazier 1-Fight Of The Century
Ali Foreman -Rumble In The Jungle
Ali Farazier 3-Thrilla in Manilla
Rarity
For certain Ali fights, more programs and posters were produced than sold at the fight. Site memorabilia for certain fights may have been found hidden away in a warehouse and recently discovered.
Condition
If a program, poster or ticket has fold marks, creased corners or water stains, etc,
Then it will obviously not be as collectible as an item in Mint Condition.
Boxing Programs
Muhammad Ali site programs are probably the most widely collected of all Ali site memorabilia. Many collectors are after the holy grail of collecting every Muhammad Ali fight program. Some of Alis early programs were just 1 page bout sheets.
Closed Circuit Programs were produced during Alis career and these should not be confused with the Actual Site Programs.
Prices for Muhammad Ali Site programs can range from $15 up to and over $5,000 for the rarer programs.
Boxing Tickets
Again a much sought after site collectible, there are different variants of a Muhammad Ali site boxing ticket.
Full tickets, with the stub still attached, are the rarest and most collectible. These are tickets that were purchased for the actual fight and the original owner either could not attend, or he had the foresight to get the ticket attendant to not rip the ticket or the ticket had holes punched in it.
Printer Proof tickets do not have a seat number and were usually produced by the printer as part of the initial print run as spares before being numbered. Still collectible they are not worth as much as the original Full Tickets. They sometimes have holes punched in them so they could not be used.
Stubless tickets are also very collectible, due to the rarity of Full Tickets.
Ticket Stubs can be very collectible especially in the absence of the other variants. This is especially the case with the early fights in Alis career.
Phantom tickets were made for fights that did not take place such as Ali-Liston 2 which was postponed. Always check the date and venue against Muhammad Alis ring record.
Closed Circuit tickets are from theatre venues that showed the fights and are least collectible.
Again the prices of Muhammad Ali site tickets can range from around $50 up to and over $5,000
Boxing Posters
Site Boxing Posters were used in and around the actual venue to advertise the forthcoming fight, date, ticket prices, and usually consisted of pictures of Ali and his opponent. They vary in size and vibrancy but are not usually smaller than say 18x22. Few survived the actual event and thus are indeed very collectible and scarce.
Closed Circuit Posters and movie posters were produced in numerous quantities for worldwide theatre venues but are still collectible.
Prices can range from $500 up to and over $10,000 for rare Muhammad Ali site Boxing Posters.
Conclusion
I have, through the years, collected all types of Muhammad Alis site Memorabilia. However, in recent years I have concentrated on Ali site boxing posters. The main reason was that I would store my programs and tickets in binders hidden away in the loft. My posters would be framed (for protection) and hung on the walls. These posters would provide much discussion and pride with any visitors. The expense of purchasing my remaining wants made it necessary to make a decision to concentrate on a single type of Ali site memorabilia. However I just purchased two full Ali Frazier 1 tickets! We collectors never learn!
Other Site Memorabilia (sleepers)
There are many other items of site memorabilia which in my view make a great investment which are obtainable at reasonable prices. Such varied items that can be seen are commemorative Everlast Gloves from Ali Frazier fights, Pennants from fights, pins, and even seat cushions from the Ali Holmes fight!
Caution
With the advance in todays printing techniques I have come across reprinted tickets, programs and posters from various Ali fights. The same rules apply to site memorabilia as collecting autographs.
Dave Beesley
Muhammad Ali Memorabilia Specialist
I Own the Moon!
Sort of. More precisely, I own the keyword "Moon" in a new cool search engine that lives at SearchBigDaddy.com. Whenever someone searches for "moon" in this search engine, the front page of my site to which this keyword is assigned is displayed in the box above the listing of pages the search produced.
I also own a couple of planets in this solar system of ours: "Venus" and "Mars." If I ever have to run from the future global government, I have places to hide. Interestingly enough, "Mars" and "Venus" get searched quite a bit; apparently I am not the only one who anticipates problems with the future global government. I know this simply because I have access to the stats for the keywords I own in SearchBigDaddy.com.
I also own a few biggies such as "galaxy" and "Universe" as well as "nature" that comes just handy with it. And did I mention that I claimed "big bang" too?
I own quite a few small things too: "electron," "proton," "neutrino," "boson," and "fermion." Small things can be cool. You can easily store them in compact places such a "black hole" which I, obviously, had to claim too. If you think that people do not search for things like "big bang" or "black hole" you are quite wrong.
Moreover, I own some earthly properties. A couple of countries: "Greece," where I lived for a few months and loved it a lot and "Poland," where I am originally from. A few European capitals such as "Athens," "Vienna," "Prague," Budapest," "Warsaw," and "Moscow" (just to spite my Russian friends a bit). I own only one city in the US, but it's a good one: "Beverly Hills." I used to work there, so I should know. At some point, it was one of the most popular searches among my keywords.
It's only natural for someone who owns a "black hole," "big bang" and "fermion" to own "physics" and "astronomy." Yes, I indeed own them too. As well as "mathematics" without which the other two are helpless. In addition, I also claimed a few places of higher learning where those fields are practiced: "caltech," "stanford," "ucla," and "Jagiellonian University," my Alma Mater in Cracow (another of my keywords), Poland which has Copernicus and John Paul II among its alumni. I was quite surprised to see at some point "caltech" among the most frequently searched keywords in my keyword collection.
In this day and age, people who own other people are frequently frowned upon. Since I am not a particularly politically correct person, I thought that adding a few heavyweights in the annals of physics and astronomy was just fine. And so I claimed: "Einstein," "Newton," "Copernicus," "Maxwell," "Planck," "Bohr," "Fermi," "Dirac," "Heisenberg," and "Curie," to name only those I still remember. Yes, people obviously search for "Einstein," but also for "Bohr," "Fermi," and "Curie."
Now, what's the point of all this? That's a very good question, the answer to which is actually quite simple: to generate traffic to my site in a cool, original and memorable way and to create my site public awareness. You see, even if not everyone of those searching for "Einstein" or "Beverly Hills" visits my site and, in fact, very few do, chances are they will remember it because its front page was displayed in the box above their search results.
More articles about topics like that and a variety of others can be found in the Eclectic section of my site at http://www.eminimethods.com/Eclectic.html
Waldemar Puszkarz, Ph.D., is a web veteran with 15 years of web surfing under his belt. By training, he is a theoretical physicist, but his interests are much broader than science and include trading financial markets, sports betting, poker, and researching online business opportunities. He is also an avid book reader and sports afficionado. Currently he is making his living mostly as a day trader. He has been in the trading trenches for almost a decade during which he has traded a variety of financial instruments. He is the owner and webmaster of Eminimethods.com (http://www.eminimethods.com) which provides free common sense trading education and simple trading systems for e-mini and stock markets as well as reviews of honest online business opportunities in Meet HOBO (http://www.eminimethods.com/HOBO.html) section of his site.
