My grandfather, William D. Lamb, was sports writer covering the boxing beat for one of the NYC fishwraps in the '20's. He also was a great artist and I have about 10 of his sketches 18" x 20" of all the old time fighters, i.e. Sullivan, Dempsey, Fitzsimmons, Burns, Ketchel, Corbet, Jeffries, Gans, etc. framed and hanging on the walls of my basement and copies at my dojo, Metro Fight Club.
I also have about a dozen postcards circa the 20's with the old time fighters on them.
But it is what happend to his collection of fight films that still has me shaking my head. My dad was a great handball player and in the early sixties they held the national three wall championships at Palmer Park in Detroit each summer. World champ Jimmy Jacobs would always play in it. Anyway, my dad knew Jacobs was totally into boxing lore and antiquitees (phonetic) so one day after he was splattered by Jacobs in handball he gave Jacobs all of my grandpa's rare fight films. The rest is history, aye? I was only about 12 at the time so I did not know shit from shiolah.
One of my granddad's best buddies was Mickey "toy bulldog" Walker.
Crying shame.