Rocky Marciano

What does a signed Rocky Marciano item cost?

The sixteen certified results recorded here, from Heritage and Goldin, mostly run from a few hundred dollars to between two and three thousand: signed postcards and photographs at the lower end, a handwritten 1949 letter and the finest signed photographs at the upper. One result stands far above the rest and is explained below. He retired unbeaten in 1956 and died in a plane crash in 1969, so his supply closed early.

Why are there no cards?

Because of when he fought. This index has recorded Joe Louis's market, and every result there is a card: Louis was champion from 1937 to 1949, when boxing still appeared in card sets. Marciano held the title from 1952 to 1956, by which time boxing had largely gone from them, and not one of the results here is a card. His market is postcards, photographs, cut signatures, documents and gloves. A signer's market is built from whatever existed to be signed in his own years, and two heavyweight champions a decade apart show it plainly.

Why did one pair of gloves sell for seventeen times another?

Because one pair was in the ring. Gloves he wore and signed from his two fights with Jersey Joe Walcott, the first of which won him the title, made $32,400. A signed pair from around 1956 that he did not fight in made $1,920. The signature is on both; what the buyer of the first pair paid for is the fight. The same pattern runs through the paper: a 1952 fight purse cheque that he signed twice made $1,500, several times a signed postcard from the same year, because a cheque that passed through a bank is tied to an event and is hard to fake, as we set out in the piece on cancelled cheques.