• Steve Lott boxing collection (Lott was Mike Tyson’s assistant manager, and we’re told the collection features some amazing Mike Tyson material!)
• high-grade T206 card collection valued at over $250,000
• fresh collection of 19th-century Baltimore Orioles game programs
• high-grade Topps baseball sets from the 1950s and ’60s
• Josh Gibson 1950–51 Toleteros rookie baseball card
• Dwight D. Eisenhower’s personal presidential golf clubs
• cricket bat signed by Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and World War II Allied Forces personalities with provenance
• “The Colossus” 19th-century folk art hand-carved boxing figure nearly seven feet tall
• Sal Larocca Brooklyn Dodgers collection (Part IV).

Again, the deadline is this Friday, so if you want to be a part of this important auction, e-mail photos and item descriptions to consignments @ lelands (dot) com or call (631) 244-0077 (Bohemia, N.Y.) and talk to a Lelands.com expert.
Visit www.lelands.com.

Of course, the writers of school textbooks tend to take a “macro” view of history, concentrating on wars and revolutions, sweeping social movements and worldwide economic changes, rather than how average people live their lives. That’s to be expected, given curriculum requirements and limited class time. And while it’s understandable that many collectors also focus on famous people and the events and trends they’re associated with, I think it’s good to remember that history’s “movers and shakers,” just like the rest of us, all come from someplace small – a neighborhood, a town, a city, a district – where regular folks work and play, go to school and go off to war, raise food and raise families … That’s all part of history too.

For this reason, I think “local” and “regional” collectors, like local and regional museums, perform a really important service: Because of their focus, their “micro” approach to collecting, they preserve artifacts of their areas’ heritage that might otherwise be lost. Call them grassroots chroniclers or hometown Homers, to me it’s the local librarians, researchers, archivists, museum curators and, yes, collectors who do some of the most vital work in saving our history.

One such person is Marc Blau. Born and raised in Tacoma’s North End, Marc is a graduate of Stadium High School and the University of Washington (where he earned a B.A. in recreational planning and administration) who worked for Pierce County Parks & Recreation for 31 years (retiring in 2004), managed Sprinker Recreation Center and the Lakewood Community Center and is now a sales associate for Winning Seasons, a screen print and embroidery business in Lakewood.

But that’s not all: A sports enthusiast par excellence (French for “big-time”), Marc has long served on the Tacoma Athletic Commission (www.TacomaAthletic.com), which includes chairing the Tacoma–Pierce County Sports Hall of Fame; he’s co-founder and president of the Shanaman Sports Museum of Tacoma–Pierce County (www.TacomaSportsMuseum.com), located inside Tacoma Dome; he’s MC and co-chair of the Tacoma–Pierce County Baseball-Softball Oldtimers Association (www.OldtimerBaseball.com); and he’s assistant executive director of the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame (www.WashingtonSportsHOF.com).

But wait: There’s more! Marc also co-authored (with Caroline Gallacci and Doug McArthur) a FANTASTIC 512-page hardcover book, “Playground to the Pros: An Illustrated History of Sports in Tacoma–Pierce County” (University of Washington Press, 2005), an unforgettable look at some 40 different sports played in the county: football, baseball, basketball and hockey, to be sure, but also boxing, bowling and golf, auto racing, boat racing, horse racing – even horseshoes and soapbox derbies. It’s jam-packed with great photos, and I guarantee that if you leave it in place sight when your friends are around, they are going to be all over it.

As you have probably guessed, Marc is collector of Tacoma and Pierce County sports memorabilia in addition to being a bona fide historian – my favorite kind of collector. Here’s what he told me about his interests:

AmeriCollector: How did you get started?

Marc: I started collecting back in 1984 when I came across some of my Bank of Washington cards of the Tacoma Giants and thought it would be fun to track down some other items related to the Giants, such as a T-Giants bobbin’ head doll and some old programs. I started tracking down former players, batboys, announcers, front office staff and ushers and things just mushroomed. I decided to collect all Tacoma-related items from their Pacific Coast League days and then started going backwards and learning more about when the Tacoma Tigers played in the Western International League from 1937 to 1951. Pretty soon I was tracking down photos and other artifacts back to the late 1880s. And then I started progressing into just about any sport in Tacoma–Pierce County. That is what led to the Sports Museum, which is located at the Tacoma Dome. My collection includes uniforms, stadium seats, autographed baseballs, bats, caps, jackets, trophies, tickets, schedules and much more. I do enjoy occasional items related to the San Francisco Giants and Pacific Coast League teams prior to 1958.

AC: What do you enjoy about collecting Pierce County sports-related items? How do you build your collection?

Marc: I enjoy the stories behind the artifacts, so most of what I have has come from players or family members, and there is a story behind each item. I used to attend shows, but no longer, and I rarely visit shops. I do participate in auctions on an occasional basis, but most of what I find is through friends, networking relationships and dumb luck.

AC: Is there a “holy grail” that you’re trying to find?

Marc: That’s pretty easy: a 1960s grey flannel Tacoma Giants jersey with “Tacoma” emblazoned across the front.

AC: What would you say is the highlight of your collection?

Marc: When the Phoenix Giants moved to Tacoma in 1960 and the Tacoma Giants played from 1960 to 1965, I became a diehard Giants fan and Dusty Rhodes was my hero. He hit something like 26 home runs in 1961 when the Giants won the PCL pennant, and I thought Dusty was destined to make the jump the following season to the big leagues. Heck, how was I to know, as a 10-year-old, that he was on his way DOWN, not UP, and that he had already enjoyed his glory days in the major leagues and World Series?

When I starting collecting, I was bound and determined to meet Dusty and I was fortunate enough to track him down in Boca Raton, Fla. I wrote him a letter and one night at the dinner table I got a call and the guy on the other end said, with a southern drawl, “Hi, Marc, this is Dusty!” It took me a few seconds to figure out who in the heck Dusty was. We had a great conversation and continued to keep in touch.

When Dusty moved to Henderson, Nev., we made a point of going to Las Vegas so I called and asked him if we could meet up. He was more than gracious about doing so, and when he walked in the Mirage Hotel I recognized him immediately. We spent two hours talking (well, he talked and I listened), and he was a heck of a storyteller. I was in heaven and got him to sign a few things for me, and then I gave him some photos and programs to keep from when he played in Tacoma. And, of course, I had a photo taken. I have my Dusty Rhodes bat on my Polo Grounds seat with a New York Giants jersey draped over it – a reminder of his glory years with the Giants.

Not many people can say they actually got to meet their hero? I count myself as one of the lucky ones.

AC: Any advice for other collectors of sports memorabilia?

Marc: Have fun, don’t be obsessed and don’t collect for investment purposes. Not everyone will agree with that assessment, but that is my personal mantra.

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Images courtesy of Marc Blau.

Still agonizing over what to get Dad for Father’s Day?“Playgrounds To The Pros: An Illustrated History Of Sports In Tacoma-Pierce County” makes a great gift! Order it from Amazon.com for $39.95 or from the Shanaman Sports Museum for $46, which includes shipping and helps support the museum – a great place to visit for sports buffs. To purchase, go to www.tacomasportsmuseum.com and click on “Playground to the Pros” at the top.

Jack Johnson at least got a good film drama made about him (“The Great White Hope,” 1970, starring a pre–Darth Vader James Earl Jones) and a terrific Ken Burns documentary, “Unforgivable Blackness,” which first aired on PBS in 2005. Johnson successfully challenged a white boxing establishment that resisted letting a black man contend for a world title; in that sense, he was not only a seemingly unbeatable fighter and a sports “original” but something of a marketing master. However, there was at least one other black fighter who might have defeated Johnson and all other titleholders but never got the chance.

That fighter was Sam Langford (1886–1956), originally from small-town Nova Scotia, but he relocated to Boston to embark on a pugilistic career. He is the subject of the biography, “Sam Langford: Boxing’s Greatest Uncrowned Champion” by local author Clay Moyle of Edgewood, Wash.

A boxing scholar and dealer in vintage books on boxing, Moyle is the right guy to rescue Langford from the oblivion that the fighter sank into during his own lifetime. Between 1902 and 1926, Langford fought some 304 bouts, winning 202 (130 by knockouts), losing 47 (nine by KOs) and drawing in 45. Both Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey were loath to get in the ring with him, but Langford’s inability to get a title shot condemned him to the obscurity of those who “coulda been a contender”: In 1944, he was discovered living, blind and penniless, in a fleabag hotel in Harlem. Asked how he could remain upbeat, Langford said he had his guitar … and his memories.

I really love it when someone with expertise and passion makes it his mission to right a historical injustice, and in my opinion that’s exactly what Clay Moyle has done. In writing “Sam Langford,” Moyle has recovered a lost body of knowledge and rescued a piece of our history. His book is a model for all serious collectors, whatever their fields. Order it from Amazon.com or signed by the author from www.prizefightingbooks.com.

Below, center and right: Sam Langford versus Iron Hague in England in 1909. Images courtesy of Clay Moyle.

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Imagine it: Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, in a whole different age. The 19th century had ended a decade earlier, with the Old West teetering on the edge of oblivion, but neither had completely vanished yet: Men who had survived their service in the Civil War were just reaching the age that a lot of Vietnam veterans are today. Mark Twain was still alive; so was Wyatt Earp. Geronimo had died in Oklahoma the year before, at age 79. (He had been thrown from his horse – some say while drunk, but that may well be a myth – and in an alternative version of the story I once heard the old Apache warrior had driven his car into a ditch, which may have had its roots in the famous photo of him behind the wheel of a 1905 Locomobile with a few braves along for the ride. What IS true is that he lay on the ground all night in the February frost before succumbing to pneumonia at Fort Sill.) Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Bill Cody and frontier poet/former cavalry scout Captain Jack Crawford were planning to break into motion pictures (I actually own a 1910 letter by Crawford in which he says just that; the movies were still silent then, of course), and Pancho Villa was only starting out on the road to revolution south of the border …

Reno must have still been a pretty wild place in 1910, almost 40 years before Bugsy Siegel and the New York mob brought glitz and glamour to the Nevada desert. Because of the abundance of fresh water, Reno was already a way station for wagons and, increasingly, motorcars heading for the coast, and “The Biggest Little City in the World” would have been filled with miners, railroad men, drifters, grifters, working gals, entrepreneurs, students (the University of Nevada had been relocated there) and couples wanting quickie divorces. There were saloons and brothels and gambling dens until Oct. 1 of that year, when gaming was made illegal in the state. (It became legal again in 1931, after construction began on the Hoover Dam: The boys needed some way to blow their Depression-era paychecks, after all.)

In July 1910, however, the bets were still on, and at least 22,000 people packed a specially constructed stadium to see Jack Johnson, originally from Galveston, Texas – the son of freed slaves, and the first black world heavyweight champion boxer – square off against former champion James J. Jeffries.

For years white champions had refused to give Johnson the chance to contend for the title because of his color. But the “Galveston Giant” was a masterful self-promoter – the spiritual ancestor of Muhammad Ali – who knew exactly how to force the issue: by going to the press. After knocking out an earlier champion, the “Fighting Blacksmith” from New Zealand, Bob Fitzsimmons, in only two rounds, Johnson badgered the current champion Tommy Burns, of Hanover, Ontario, to defend his title by dissing him to sportswriters. After two years of ignoring Johnson’s public challenges, the Canadian relented, and in December 1908, in Sydney, Australia, Johnson pounded Burns for 14 rounds until police stopped the fight – as well as the movie camera that was filming the spectacle before the knockout blow was landed, so as not to show a white fighter falling at the hands of black man.

Now, in July 1910 – the summer of hate – the white boxing establishment was banking on the Reno fight ending in Johnson’s ignominious defeat, proving definitively that a Negro could not best a white man in the ring and make it stick. Indeed, boxing greats like John L. Sullivan, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, Tom Sharkey and Joe Choynski threw their support to Johnson’s opponent, Jim Jeffries, the brawny outdoorsman who had taken the heavyweight crown from Bob Fitzsimmons in 1902 and was undefeated when he retired from the ring in 1905.

Jeffries had lived in Los Angeles since the age of 16, when his family moved there from Ohio in 1891. Now dubbed the “Great White Hope,” he was big, tough and fearless – and, given his size and build, had been amazingly fast and agile in his prime – but he had been out of training for the better part of five years. Nonetheless, Jeffries yielded to the urging of supporters to come out of retirement and put the uppity Johnson in his place in a contest tainted with bigotry that went far beyond sports: It cut to the heart of what American democracy and society were all about. This clash between two prizefighters, one white and one black, mirrored the one between white Americans’ sense of racial superiority, mental and physical, and black Americans’ aspirations to the social equality that had, in theory, been theirs since the Union victory over the Confederacy only 45 years earlier. It could even bring out the “dominant primordial beast” in an otherwise liberal socialist like Jack London, who made no bones about wanting to see Johnson get thrashed.

The “Fight of the Century” went 15 rounds before Jeffries – who had been knocked down twice for the first time in his pugilistic career – conceded defeat. Other Americans were not so inclined: Race riots across the country resulted in the deaths of 23 blacks, two whites and hundreds of injuries of people of both races. Moreover, to punish Johnson for his cockiness and his romantic liaisons with white women, he was pursued on trumped-up charges of violating the Mann Act, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman over state lines for “immoral” purposes. Johnson fled to Europe, relinquishing his title in 1915 to a Kansas cowboy named Jess Willard in the 22nd round of a 45-round bout in Havana, Cuba. (Johnson later maintained in a letter to Ring magazine publisher Nat Fleischer that he had “thrown” the fight.)

Jack Johnson returned to the United States in 1920, surrendered to federal authorities and served a year in Leavenworth. He died in 1946 after being denied service in a South Carolina diner, again because of his color: Infuriated, he peeled out of the restaurant parking lot, lost control of the car and hit a light pole. He died soon afterward, at age 68.

Johnson’s life was portrayed on the stage and then on-screen in the 1970 film “The Great White Hope,” starring James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars”), and was the subject of the 2004 Ken Burns documentary “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.”

Why am I telling you all this? For one thing, I think it’s important and timely as we come to the end of our first year as a nation with our first African-American president, and as we approach Black History Month in February.

For another: On July 4, 2010, the City of Reno will commemorate the centennial of the Johnson-Jeffries fight in a program of festivities that will include multimedia presentations, a dinner celebration, panel discussions, films, autograph sessions with past heavyweight champions, memorabilia auctions, book signings and a night of professional boxing. In addition, the organizers of the celebration are joining with civil rights groups and others to petition President Obama to pardon Johnson for his conviction under the Mann Act. (A resolution supporting the pardon was approved by Congress in July.)

I believe that this event, which I hope to attend, is of importance to all Americans – but also to collectors in various fields: African-American history, American social history, legal and constitutional issues, sports history and more. The organizers of the celebration are boxing historian Gary Schultz and USA Boxing executive director Mike Martino.

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Recommended reading:

• Jack Johnson vs. James Jeffries: The Prize Fight of the Century Reno, Nevada, July 4, 1910

Sports memorabilia is a BIG BUSINESS – to the tune of a $1 billion annually, I’ve heard – and a major chunk of that is autograph material. Amid this high-stakes collecting area, Mike is a voice of authority. According to his bio on the Heritage Web site (www.ha.com), “Mike has over 26 years experience and is one of the few universally respected authorities left standing in a field racked with fraud and forgeries. The industry has been plagued by FBI investigations of fraud and Mike is the single most respected repository of trust in the business.”

Mike has appraised sports memorabilia from the estates of martial arts icon Bruce Lee, NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali, as well as St. Louis Cardinals heavy hitter Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball for the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

A couple of years ago, when I was writing a collectibles column called “Northwest Collector” for the classifieds section of the Tacoma News Tribune, I called Mike to ask him about sports memorabilia. In the course of the conversation, I asked him what sports items he collected; to my amazement Mike said he didn’t collect sports material at all – he collected guitars! I never wrote that sports memorabilia story, but I did keep Mike in mind as a story subject himself.

Recently, I interviewed Mike about his guitars and mentioned that I’d seen a number appraised by other experts on “Antiques Roadshow.” Interesting, he replied that those are the guys he hangs out with off-camera or after the segment is recorded.

Some highlights of Mike’s guitar collection:

• A 1961 Fender Precision bass, “my first serious guitar that I got in 1970,” he said. “It’s probably my #1 piece for weight, for comfort, for body contour. I don’t have to think about any player issues and can concentrate just on the music and having fun.” (He plays classic and ’60s rock, by the way.)
• A 1966 Rickenbacker 4005: “That has the best neck that I ever put my hands on.”
• A 1978 ProE II bass guitar owned by John Entwistle of The Who, which Mike purchased at a Sotheby’s auction in London in 2003. Mike has a photo of Entwistle holding this particular instrument, which is the most valuable (in strictly monetary terms) in Mike’s collection.

Mike told me he always goes to the Dallas and Arlington, Texas, guitar shows – “the top two guitar convention shows in the business,” he said.

Here’s are a few more questions I asked Mike:

AmeriCollector: Have you collected only guitars? When did you start?

 Mike Gutierrez: “I used to have a collection of deceased Hall of Famers. At one point I had upwards of 90 percent of them, up to 1988 or so. Then I sold them off.

“As far as collecting guitars, I started around 1970. I have guitars that I would go to the grave with: because of the feel, because of the sound – NOT because of the collectability. You put your hand on that thing, the feel of the neck, and you think, man, I’m home: Everything – the comfort, the sound, is me.”

AC: What makes you want to get a particular guitar?

 Mike: “The design, the sound, the feel of the instrument and its response.”

AC: How do you manage your collection? Do you ever sell your guitars?

Mike: “It’s a revolving door. I have a connection with guitars that I’ll never move. Also I have a revolving group that changes.”

 AC: What advice would you offer to someone who wants to start a guitar collection?

Mike: “Always pick a guitar that feels good and sounds good. If you’re getting a collector guitar (as an investment), you’re a businessman. Decide which you want to be – and you can be both. But if you’re going to sell it, always go for the best condition, in the most original state.”