July Monthly Card Auction ending July 10
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/10/2021
Hall of Famer. Cassius Clay – later known as Muhammad Ali – is featured here in an incredible, Rookie-Era production. Offered is a full, unbroken sheet holding fifty examples of the #23 entry, picturing Clay, from the "World Champion Boxers" series of poster stamps produced by Czeslaw Slania. The uncirculated, non-postal adhesives are revealed in a 5-stamp-by-10-stamp arrangement bordered by the original selvage in each margin. Slania (1921-2005) was a Polish-born engraver of stamps and bank notes whose enduring international acclaim transcends the sports-hobby realm. Slania fashioned more than a thousand postage stamps (for at least thirty countries, including the U.S.), and his highly respected work remains the focus of a popular philatelic specialty. This stamp's portrait likeness of the former Ali celebrates the great fighter's "World Champion" status in 1964, and represents the final design in its elegant series. Although individual Slania boxing stamps are encountered in the collecting marketplace, the full-sheet form is impossibly rare. (Reportedly, this intact Ali sheet survives only in a low, single-digit quantity.) This is an exquisite display piece of universally heralded stature, created by a master to honor a singular athlete!