About Us

My name is Kevin and I am a 42 year old card collector living in the suburbs of Seattle, WA. My first memories of card collecting include riding my bike to the local 7-11 on summer vacation to rip packs of 1987 topps and crush green apple laffy taffy’s. Growing up in the middle of Griffey-mania was really cool and definitely shaped my view on what an iconic sports figure should look like. After realizing how many Griffey cards existed and how long it would take me to collect them all, I began to lose interest and I left the hobby in 1992.

After a 26 year hiatus, I began to dip my toes in the water again. I was blown away with how ebay had changed the game and how I could now find anything I wanted to buy instantly and have it shipped to my front door. I started building a modest vintage baseball collection. My best investment was buying several low grade copies of the 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson. I thought this card was grossly undervalued based on its eye appeal and its cultural significance. I started buying this card whenever I could find one in the $1,000 range. I ended up with several PSA 1 - SGC 3 copies that began to take off in value as the card market boomed. I began to see real profits and became hooked on the idea of finding other cards that I thought were undervalued and underappreciated. This hobby has provided a great stress release from my day job as a real estate agent and also introduced a new way for me to share my free time and bond with my 10 year old daughter, Elyana. We began collecting together and looking for the next big thing. After researching under the radar cards and looking for something unique to diversify our collection with, I discovered Cassius Clay.

Most of Cassius Clay’s cards came from Europe in the 1960’s and had such a unique style. I was also fascinated by the debate surrounding the true rookie card. The first affordable option that drew my interest was the 1964 Dutch Unnumbered Beatles w/ Cassius Clay Horizontal. I began to obsessively search for any copies I could find of this card and discovered many other interesting cards of Clay along the way. I found several amazing releases that were much more affordable than the 1960 Hemmets Journal that got my attention because of their eye appeal and low pop counts. I soon decided to focus our collection almost entirely on Cassius Clay. As I have searched for these cards I have met many experienced collectors across the world. I found myself on obscure collectible sites, communicating with people on WhatsApp from Argentina, Spain, Sweden and Italy. I began to realize how little information was available on the internet about this specific segment in the hobby. My daughter and I thought it would be a fun project to create a website solely focused on vintage Cassius Clay cards so that we could share our findings, opinions and personal collection with the world. We began creating CardsofClay.com in the Summer of 2021 and published in February 2022.

We have focused our data heavily on PSA pop reports and tried our best to always focus on the facts. But it is impossible to create a website like this without sharing your own personal opinions on the individual cards, so I understand that our views may seem biased. I wanted to provide this disclaimer: My daughter and I have a large collection of Cassius Clay cards and many of the examples that we talk about on this site are cards that we hold in our own personal collection. These are cards that we plan to hold because we enjoy the thrill and challenge of searching for them and finding them. The reason we have collected the cards we have is based on the research I have completed with a primary focus on eye appeal, historical significance, and supply and demand. We hope that you enjoy the images and information and welcome any comments or suggestions that anyone might have that will help us to make this website as complete as possible. Thank you for your interest in CardsofClay.com!