Clay Moyle and son Caleb
I don’t know how many of you reading this will be familiar with the name Nat Fleischer, but I’m sure it will ring a bell for most men over the age of 50. He passed away over 41 years ago, in 1972, and at the time of his death, and for many years prior, the 84-year-old was affectionately known worldwide as ”Mr. Boxing.”
Nat was the founding editor of The Ring magazine, a.k.a. the Bible of boxing, in 1922 and he maintained that role for the next 50 years.
In addition to all the work he performed in association with that periodical, Nat found time to referee and judge more than 1,000 fights and traveled the world as boxing’s greatest ambassador.
He also managed to publish 57 books of history, biography and instruction on boxing and wrestling during his lifetime. An article that appeared in a 1962 issue of Sports Illustrated estimated he’d written 40 million words pertaining to the sport of boxing between the books, magazine articles and time he spent working for New York sports papers in his early adult life.
Now, I am a fanatical collector of boxing books and presently have a total of more than 4,150 different boxing titles in my continually expanding library, so I was well aware of all the books Nat published. In fact, I presently own a copy of each, many of them signed or inscribed by him.
But, two years ago I discovered Nat was an even more prolific writer of boxing books than anybody ever really imagined. That came about when I purchased one of his books from a small used bookstore located in New York.
At that time, I purchased a single book inscribed by Fleischer the bookstore had just listed on-line. Since I learned a long time ago that the old saying “where there’s smoke is fire” sometimes applies when it comes to collecting, I made sure to let the seller know I would be interested to learn of anything else they might have available along those lines.
It turned out to be one of those cases where that comment really paid off.
The seller replied and let me know they’d just acquired a large number of books, manuscripts and personal files that had belonged to Fleischer. They had been kept in storage by descendants for decades, and he hadn’t had a chance to inventory it all yet. In fact, the book I purchased was the first thing he’d listed.
I immediately told him I would be interested in the possibility of purchasing anything else he might have acquired, and eagerly awaited a list of offerings and asking prices.
As it turned out, there was an awful lot more treasure than I expected, but when the seller provided an asking price for the entire lot I couldn’t say “Yes!” fast enough. There was no doubt in my mind it was more than worth what he was asking, and I couldn’t wait to dig through it all.
So, I fired off a check and a week later a number of large boxes arrived at my doorstep and immediately took over residence atop my pool table. It took me weeks to go through it all and properly inventory everything, but I had a ball doing it.
Nate Fleischer
I mean there I was surrounded by a ton of Mr. Boxing’s personal files and belongings!
How cool was that?
Nat inscribed the bulk of the books included in the collection to his son-in-law, and many of them included references to being the first off the press. I was thrilled to add those to my personal collection and then resell unsigned duplicates.
But, my biggest thrill occurred when I realized the collection I’d just purchased included a number of complete unpublished manuscripts by Fleischer. It had never occurred to me that might have produced a number of finished works that never actually made it to publication, as I hadn’t yet read a 1962 Sports Illustrated article that revealed this fact at that particular time.
For example, there was a large 268,000-words bound four volume works titled “The History of Prizefighting in Literature.” I later discovered this monster was never published because it was considered too large by the publishing houses he shared it with at the time. In fact, the collection included a letter from one publisher turning it down for that specific reason.
Self-publishing a work wasn’t really the option then that it is today so this and a number of other manuscripts of his were never published.
There were two other huge unpublished works titled “The History of Prizefighting in New York” and “The History of Prizefighting in Chicago.”
There were also smaller but equally exciting unpublished works written about fighters such as Tom Sharkey, Dan Donnelly and a few others. Holy mackerel, this guy was an even more prolific a writer than most people ever realized!
There were original manuscripts for published books, typewritten pieces that been used in The Ring, and of course a lot of personnel correspondence between Fleischer and various parties.
Some of the files were downright filthy because they’d been in storage so long. I spent hours and hours sorting through a fair amount of it and organizing it all. Those sessions were typically followed with a round of vacuuming to clean up tiny pieces of paper that had flaked off during the process of examination.
Ultimately, I kept some of the treasure, primarily the books, and sold a good chunk of it, including personal files, correspondence and some of the unpublished manuscripts to a university that I knew would take good care of it.
At the time, the bookseller had told me he hadn’t acquired everything that Fleischer’s descendants had in their possession, but he’d acquired everything they were willing to part with at that particular time. So, I held out hope that he’d one day acquire some more and I’d hear from him again.
Sure enough, he phoned me out of the blue two weeks ago and let me know he’d purchased three more large boxes of goodies. He asked if I’d be interested in those as well.
Of course I was, and it was just a matter of how much he was going to want for it. Fortunately, he asked for what I thought was a very reasonable amount, so I purchased everything else he had to offer.
The first part of that order arrived this week and I felt like a kid at Christmas as I opened up the three large boxes. There were many more original manuscripts, but in this case, with one or two exceptions, the bulk of those were for works that had been published, although there was one unpublished manuscript concerning a great 18th century Jewish fighter named Daniel Mendoza.
There were also some very cool scrapbooks that included signed letters to Nat Fleischer from various parties, including a note signed by an early 1900s great fighter by the name of Tom Sharkey, who was donating a watch to Nat for display among his collection of timepieces owned by famous boxers in The Ring’s Museum at Madison Square Garden.
There were a couple of photo albums with many original black and white photographs. The first album pertained to a trip Nat made to Thailand at the request of General Pichai to ensure a world championship bantamweight fight being held there in 1954 would follow the international boxing rules.
Another album titled “1956 Olympics” contained a bunch of original photographs concerning Nat’s trip to Melbourne, Australia. That album included three photos of Nat with heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, who must have made the trip to Australia as well along with a group photo of the U.S. boxing team that year.
As much as anything else, I got a kick out of reading the various correspondence between Nat and others, and reviewing specific documents concerning estimated values of The Ring’s assets, and a certified public accountant’s report of the magazines financial results in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Going through all these materials was a further education into the history of the sport of boxing for me. I couldn’t help but be thrilled by what I viewed as the privilege of being able to handle and view so much of “Mr. Boxing’s” personal files and works.
But, what really blew my mind was coming across that August 1962 Sports Illustrated article about Fleischer, and reading about the unpublished manuscripts that were sitting in his safe at that time, and the realization that they’d somehow found their way into my own home over 40 years later.
What were the odds?
I guess you just never know what might happen as a result of taking an extra step to make people aware of your interests in whatever field of collecting you might be interested in.