The Thrill of Victory

It is officially esoteric sticker month here at the archive. Today we take a look at a relatively unknown large (in dimension) set called ABC Wide World of Sports.

Now, if you are of a certain age you remember this long running sports anthology series that ran on Saturday afternoons and was hosted for what seemed like half a century by Jim McKay. I used to watch it religiously back in the 70's.

In keeping with the theme of the show, Topps issued a sturdy sticker set depicting 24 images from the show, artfully selected so as not to display logos or full faces. These stickers measure a fabulous 5 1/16" x 7" in size-yikes! Here is one of my favorite shots:



Here's another cool action scene:




The stickers are quite well made and must have been bonded to the backing paper with super glue as they are immovable on my set even at this late date. It must have been high quality backing paper as it is snow white three and a half decades later:



The stickers were sold in packs costing 19 cents, as this Ebay grab shows:



I have seen these in at least one price guide but was unable to turn the listing up. In the interest of scholarship here is the full checklist:

1 Basketball
2 Boxing
3 Figure Skating
4 Football
5 Pole Vaulting
6 Women's Gymnastics
7 Water Skiing
8 Men's Tennis
9 Motocross (Front View)
10 Ice Hockey
11 Surfing
12 Kick Boxing
13 Relay Race (Action Shot)
14 Formula 1 (Tri-view action shot)
15 Freestyle Skiing
16 Rodeo (Bronco Busting)
17 Formula 1 (Two Cars)
18 Horse Racing
19 Motocross (Grabbing Air)
20 Relay Race (Start of Race)
21 Men's Swimming
22 Skydiving
23 Slalom Skiing
24 Formula 1 (Accident)

The cards are untitled, those are my descriptions. Written ABC and Topps copyrights are in small type at the bottom along with the card number. I don't know why some sports repeat in such a short set. Another Topps mystery I guess!