This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/1/2008
Graded PSA 9 MINT. Unsurpassed in its class at PSA with only 7 comparable specimens on record, offered is an exceptionally desirable example of one the greatest Jim Thorpe issues ever produced, rivaled by only his famous Sporting News and Goudey Sport Kings issues. This colorful 1955 Topps All American issue pays tribute to one of the most versatile athletes in the history of modern American sports and prominently displays the legend in his Carlisle football uniform. According to legend, Thorpe had to convince Pop Warner to allow him to play football at Carlisle, where he'd already established himself as a track and field star. Of his tryout, Warner remembered how he "ran around and past and through [the defense] not once, but twice." Flipping the ball back to Warner, Thorpe declared, "nobody is gonna tackle Jim." After his All American performances on the college gridiron, he would of course win Olympic gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon before turning pro in baseball, football, and, undocumented until recently by most historians, basketball. A sharp and accurately centered cardboard tribute to the legendary Wa-Tho-Huk.