The Topps Archives

3-2, Top of the First

2012-02-01T17:47:00.001-05:00

In faithfully writing this blog twice weekly for the last three-and-a-half years, I have tried to put aside what is often referred to as Conventional Hobby Wisdom (CHW) and take a fresh look at the facts surrounding the myriad permutations of the Topps Universe. A while back I started dissecting the various 1951 Baseball Candy issues and explored the possible print runs of the five subsets in that grouping. At the time I had thought there were three separate printing of the Red Backs, based upon how the two variation cards in the set interacted with some very specific big league transactions. Alas, my contribution to the CHW seems to have been wrong.

These two transactions involved Gus Zernial and Tommy Holmes. Both were above average players but certainly would not be considered stars of the game in 1951. Zernial was sent to the Philadelphia Athletics by the Chicago White Sox via the Cleveland Indians in three-way deal on April 30th, 1951. He has two Red Back cards: one with the Chicago logo and one that is merely blank as the logo has airbrushed out. It is clear that the Chicago version came first.

Tommy Holmes was talked into managing the Boston Braves Class A affiliate in Hartford Connecticut near the end of spring training, on March 20th and departed the Braves for the Chiefs soon thereafter. On June 19th, with attendance faltering and the Braves floundering, their manager Billy Southworth got the ax and Holmes, a fan favorite, came back to the bigs as manager and occasional player in an attempt to put some fannies in the seats and wins in the books. It didn't work and Holmes was riding the pin in Brooklyn the next year while the Braves would linger that season before moving to Milwaukee.

Here is Holmes on His Hartford card; only the text was changed, they even kept his cap with the Boston logo. This could mean they didn't airbrush it away because he returned to Boston before the second run of Red Backs was printed but that assumes there was an orderly process occurring at Topps HQ and that is something that was probably not happening in the crazy early days.

Back in Brooklyn, Topps used two types of cardboard for the Red Backs in 1951-a creamish looking one that tends to get quite dingy as time passes and a brilliant white one that retains its brightness to this day. The thought I had at the time was that the Boston version of the Holmes card had been issued after June 19th but think now it came first. Indeed, Bob Lemke pointed this out in a December 1986 Baseball Cards magazine article. Bob's CHW is aging quite gracefully by the way.

My reasoning was based on the following permutations of variations:

Zernial Chicago-cream
Zernial Philadelphia-white
Holmes Hartford-white
Holmes Boston-cream (Boston cream, get it?!)
and the fact the sister set of Blue Backs had been printed after June 15th (and only on the brilliant white stock) as they show Andy Pafko in a Cubs cap, reflecting his trade on that date. My mind had three press runs of cream, white, cream firing across my synapses but if you take Holmes Boston card coming first then all the cream stock Red Backs should have been printed in the first rum as Zernial is on cream backed cards with his Chisox cap. The white stock came second (Zernial Philadelphia) and probably right around the same time the Blue Backs were printed.

I still have to sort out some backs on the Connie Mack All Stars and Team Cards in 1951 but want to to do a bit more research on them before posting. I've always said this blog represents my thought processes on the early days of Topps and I just proved it!

Alternate Reality

2012-01-28T17:56:00.002-05:00

Well kids, thirty years later a partial solution to the second 1967 baseball high number sheet has been revealed. A Current Friend o'the Archive sent along a partial sheet scan of the top three rows on the alternate sheet.

To refresh your memories, the 12 rows on the known full sheet were printed in this order (SP = Single Print, DP = Double Print):

DP1
DP2
DP3
DP4
DP5
DP1
SP1
SP2
DP2
DP3
DP4
DP5

Given the disconnect between that array and what has been shown in the major price guides as purported double prints, the second sheet has always been the key to determining which numbers were printed more often than the other high numbers. This new information is not what I expected,as the upper left corner shows:

The top row matches the other sheet (DP1) but the next row is SP1 on the other sheet and it appeared as the seventh row previously. The real kicker is the DP1 row repeating again so soon. We get:

DP1
SP1
DP1

That's now four "Pinson rows" over two sheets. Now the question is what do the other nine rows look like on this alternate sheet? My theory on overall print totals per row over both sheets remains intact but I suspect there is at least one more surprise on that second sheet. The above sheet is a finished proof by the way, meaning the backs were printed as well. Finding/figuring the next nine rows could take another thirty years!

All Business

2012-01-25T19:24:00.003-05:00

On the rare occasions that I decide to plumb the depths of my hard drive looking for stray scans that have been misfiled, possibly due to various degrees of being overserved or underfed, something pretty cool usually turns up. Tonight is no exception as this little guy magically appeared as I was looking for some long lost documents somewhere to the right of what used to be the C:/ prompt:

Don't bother calling, the number has been long disconnected from the Topps switchboard.

A couple of clues can help us date this card. First off, Topps started using the "Topps" name on their Bazooka penny packs in mid-1958; before that the said "The Atom", as in "The Atom Bubble Gum". With nuclear annihilation a lot more probable once Sputnik let out its sonorous, orbital beep, Topps probably felt it was a good time to split from the atom. Our second clue is the "Brooklyn 32" postal code. Two digit city codes we replaced in 1963 by the now ubiquitous ZIP code. So this business card dates from sometime in the 1959-62 time frame. The old "SOuth" telephone exchange could have been in used after 1963 but makes me feel quite ancient as the use of such phrasing slowly faded away as I was growing up.

While Sy was well known enough to the point of not needing to share such mundane things as his job title, the simplicty of his card pales when compared to that of Ted Rehm, a Louisville agent or sales rep for Topps:

The Berger card places him in Bush Terminal, the corporate home of Topps at the time. Mr. Rehm's places him in a residential area, so he was quite possibly operating out of his house. Ted's card is from the same era as Sy's.

Vend For Yourself

2012-01-21T09:57:00.099-05:00

One of the early sales and marketing strategies employed by Topps centered on vending machines, or "automatic merchandising" as referred to in the trade. Some of us would know of such machines from the glorious times of our misspent youth at the arcade (and I don't mean the video game arcade) or buying gumballs at the grocery store when Mom got her change at the checkout.

The use of coin operated vending machines to sell low cost merchandise dates back to Victorian times (the first one sold postcards) and in a more familiar way, the first gumball machine was introduced in 1907. The use of such devices really took off following the invention of the cigarette vending machine in 1926 as this had the effect of allowing the large, established network of tobacco jobbers (wholesalers) in the US to branch out and distribute anything that could be sold where cigarettes were vended unattended. For a company such as Topps, which had longstanding ties to the tobacco jobbers from the American Leaf Tobacco Company days, this was a boon to business as their gum could be sold alongside cigarettes in taverns and lunch counters by wholesalers they were familiar and comfortable with.

Topps sold their gum in non-automated displays as well but were players in the vending field as well before the war intervened. After the war though, they fully embraced the use of such machines and in 1947 appointed Charles Zubrin, a key figure in their history, as supervisor of their vending program. By 1949 they had created an entire Automatic Merchandising Division and named Zubrin as its Director of Sales and a year later he was the Merchandising Director of the division. Soon thereafter Topps announced they had greatly expanded their distribution chain, adding many additional automatic merchandising jobbers to their already bulging roster.

The vending machines would initially sell Topps Gum tabs and Bozo gumballs but once Topps started making cards they also sold these on their own. Amazingly, an old vending box from 1949 surfaced recently, as uncovered by Mickey's Sportscards. This plain, unmarked box, held 500 tiny X Ray Roundup cards:

The above box, or more properly, sleeve held 500 cards and there were six in a larger carton, described as the same size as a cigarette carton. That actually makes a lot of sense if Topps was trying to use a packaging form familiar to the tobacco jobbers. The collation on these was quite poor; only about 30 different cards per sleeve and, oddly, over the entire "six pack" as well. Yes, 3000 cards yielded about 100 of each example! I would estimate the above box would be the earliest form of vending packaging used by Topps as only a couple of sets predate X Ray Roundup.

There was an earlier vending find of these a few years ago, albeit without any boxes being mentioned and a sampling is shown below:

The more familiar form of packaging for these cards was a Pixie gum pack:

It looks to me that the red "X Ray developing paper" used to decode the back of the card is packaged on top of the card proper. The inner wax wrapper holding the gum was dark green on the examples I have seen; the outer wrapper is plain paper:

X Ray Roundup sold well but a final print run may have led to overproduction after the marketplace was saturated and probably led to a number of vending sleeve returns. Comic book ads from 1949 touted the fact you could purchase small groups of these cards from Topps for fifteen cents, which came with a small plastic viewer to decipher the back. The original developer, as you may have surmised, was flimsy cellophane, as evidenced by this ad:

There is a related set of stamps, which will be commented upon separately, as therein hangs a tale.....

Wonder Wheel

2012-01-18T23:40:00.002-05:00

Well pardners, a couple of Google searches with slightly altered search terms has resulted in a really neat shot coming your way in living color. We first visited Topps 1950 Hoppy Pops about six months ago, where the wrappers for the lollipops were the main attraction. But first they were the subject of a short article in a trade magazine in their year of issue:

The black and white photo does not do the box cover justice. Have a gander at this:

Someone replaced the Hoppy Pops with Dum Dums for the auction (it was sold in 2010 for $720) but this is indeed the box in question. The back has a nice photo of Hoppy that would have made a handsome display on a feller's dresser:

Now, can we find color scans of Rudolph Pops or Santa Pops? You can click that link for Rudolph but I haven't written about Santa Pops yet.. Since Christmas is still eleven months away, an out-of-season peek will have to do:

Great '08

2012-01-16T16:16:00.001-05:00

Further to my previous post on the murky origins of the American Leaf Tobacco Company, one of the predecessor companies to Topps owned by the Shorin Family, I obtained from Carol Jablow last year a clipping from a February 1968 tobacco trade journal that speaks for itself, although I will offer some detail after you all take a gander:

This seals the deal for me date-wise as far as the Shorin family (actually, the Chigorinsky family at the time) and the founding of the ALTC. Whatever involvement Morris Shorin had with the earlier ALTC (circa 1890-91) , as owned by the Salomon family and, perhaps, in an even different configuration from circa 1897-1904, by a separate group, it seems the version started by him dates from 1908. The 1890 "official date" always given out by Topps predates Morris's arrival in the US and as described in the caption, does not seem to correlate with the facts as understood by Manny-Hanny's loan department.

So why did Topps insist that the ALTC was founded by Morris Shorin in 1890? It does not seem to make a lot of sense as that part of the narrative started in the late 50's or early 60's, well after the ALTC had been dissolved and a good dozen or more years after the death of its founder. Like so many questions involving the history of the company and the family, the answers are slow in revealing themselves.

Window Treatment

2012-01-12T19:08:00.000-05:00

The advertising materials used by Topps in the early days of card and novelty production were quite varied. Television was not yet entrenched in homes when the first Topps sets started coming out in 1948, so radio and print ads were really the two biggest methods available. Topps would provide their jobbers with advertising materials to be passed on to the retailers to help sell product and the earliest example I can find comes from 1949-a window display for Flip-O-Vision:

There are some big stars used to entice the kiddies to spend their nickels: The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are still well-known today and Burns & Allen, Johnny Weismuller and Margaret O'Brien would not be far behind. Kay Kyser though, the bespectacled middle aged gentleman above Harpo and Chico, would not be a name known to many. Kyser was a bandleader in the swing era who had a TV show that was enjoying some popularity in 1949 but just a year after this set came out, he walked away, never to return. He eventually ended up becoming President of the Worldwide Church of Christian Science.

Four years later Topps had taken the muted tones of 1949 and turned them into the bright colors of 1953:

Color movies had started to appear more frequently by 1950 so bold colors were showing up more and more in Topps packaging and ads. This took another 22 years to reach its logical conclusion, when the crazy quilt 1975 Baseball window display was unleashed on an unsuspecting public:

The Topps Sports Club has been covered here previously but the use of the window display to push yet another Topps product is a little brash, no?

Animalistic

2012-01-09T18:47:00.003-05:00

Topps was in the midst of a fabulous run of sensationalized subject matter on their cards in 1950-51: after Hopalong Cassidy had been introduced, the company issued a lurid set of 100 cards entitled Bring 'Em Back Alive, which depicted fantastic jungle scenes allegedly encountered by the explorer Frank Buck and then the multi-series Freedom's War, with all sorts of explosions and mayhem depicted. Bowman was also issuing similar cards (Red Menace) in this time frame. Then came a lengthy protest from a group called New York Veterans for Peace, a letter writing campaign from large numbers of concerned mothers, some negative publicity in the press and before you knew it Freedom's War and Red Menace were yanked from the shelves by their respective manufacturers, each at least a series shy of completion and much to the chagrin of each firm as enormous profits were wiped out almost overnight.

While intolerance and censorship are nothing new, they do make companies react. Bowman had made their mark after World War 2 with a number of sets depicting the carnage and violence created by man and Topps was never a company to shy away from salacious material; there are bare chested women depicted, National Geographic style, in Bring 'Em Back Alive after all but there were lots of parents who controlled lots of allowances and they would not be given fresh ammunition by Topps, at least not immediately.

In the wake of the Freedom's War debacle, Topps president Joseph Shorin announced they would cancel any more orders and come out instead with a second series of Frank Buck cards. Today we know that a series called Animals of the World ended up assuming the numbering of Bring 'Em Back Alive, depicting one hundred very tranquil looking beasts, all taken from artwork by an artist named Mary Baker. Take a look at a Bring 'Em Back Alive example first:

.

That is a typical example from the set and not even the most shocking one. Now compare to a typical Animals of the World card:

That is actually one of the more action packed examples from this set. Quite a difference, no?

Let's look at the backs, BEBA first then AOTW:

Note the wording about "This Series" near the bottom of the AOTW card. Since there was no first series, we have to rely upon what Joseph Shorin said about a follow up to Frank Buck. Now, this is not the point of today's post, despite the long winded wind up. What piqued my curiosity today was an item description in the 1989 Topps/Guerney's auction catalog concerning original Animals of the World artwork, which states:

"ANIMALS OF THE WORLD

These 11 full color paintings are the originals produced in 1949." The picture accompanying the lot looks like this:

Those look pretty close but not identical to Bring 'Em Back Alive but in no way, shape or form depict subject matter from Animals of the World! Take a look at these Net54 Vintage Non Sports Club gallery pages (BEBA here and AOTW here) and see for yourself. That ostrich in the lower left corner is scary looking!

So what happened? I'm not really sure but suspect that Topps could not obtain licensing for a second series of cards from Buck's estate, then for some reason halted production of the artwork for the second series and instead went with Mary Baker's paintings, which were well-known as part of a children's book, instead. This could have been done to save money but I think it probably was instead foisted on the public to show all the alarmed Moms of the world what good, wholesome eggs they were down at Topps.

Good News Bad News

2012-01-05T07:40:00.011-05:00

As luck would have it, I was perusing some old NYC/Brooklyn books yesterday and spotted, in plain view, a picture of the building that housed Morris Shorin's American Leaf Tobacco Company in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. That's the good news. The bad? It's a low-res shot and it was taken a little before ALTC would have moved in.

Morris Shorin (Chigorinsky at the time), I am 99% convinced at this point, was making and selling cigars and other tobacco products in partnership with a man named Metz (or Melz) from at least 1905-07 before obtaining a loan and starting the American Leaf Tobacco Company in 1908, possibly reviving the name of a firm that had probably shut down a couple of years earlier. I would really like to get the story of the whole ALTC history firmed up but need access to some information that itself needs to be tracked down.

Chigorinsky and Metz operated out of a building at 140 Throop Avenue on the bustling Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant border (and which was possibly the prior location of ALTC in the 1890's). This would have been an ideal spot for a tobacconist's shop and was located quite close to where the family lived at the time. What is known is that sometime between 1908 and the summer of 1917 (probably much closer to the former rather than latter date) the ALTC moved to 7 Debevoise St in Williamsburg, just a couple of blocks away from 140 Throop Avenue. This too would have been prime retail territory but the building would also have facilitated a second story business; possible retail and wholesale operations were undertaken at the same time. Two stories of apartments comprised the 3rd and 4th floors.

Located down the street from a huge vaudeville theater and next to a cafe, 7 Debevoise St was captured in a Brooklyn Daily Eagle Post Card around 1906. I found the shot in a great book by Richard L. Dutton called Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Postcards 1905-07 and have cropped out the building to show here (twice, as I have tried to enhance the picture). I am not sure if that second story sign (which I cannot yet decipher but might say Can Can) was for #7 or #9 (building to the right of this one). While not quite an ALTC shot, I'm getting closer!

State Of Confusion

2012-01-03T19:35:00.001-05:00

Perhaps the Summer of Love vibes were strong enough to reach Duryea, PA in 1967 but the Comic Pennant insets that came in that year's football packs were enough to make one think some banana peels must have gotten mixed into the Mac Baren at Topps HQ How else can one explain the downright groovy sayings that adorn this 31 subject insert set?

Here is a prime example of one of the team oriented cards-note how the snarky saying is wedged in there:

The back is pure period tan sticker back:

We'll come back to the back in a minute. Topps only had AFL rights in 1967 so the nine teams in the league such as Oakland -- "(Fat People in) Oakland (are Usually Icebox) Raiders" -- were rounded out in the Comic Pennants with a couple of college-themed stickers suck as "Notre Dame (Hunchback Of)" and a whole lot of amusing and borderline offensive sayings such as "Down With Teachers" or "Nutstu U." There was also a "Confused State" and my personal favorite:

It's hard to tell but that is actually a card and not a peelable sticker. Look at the Jets sticker and you will see the score line where the sticker was meant to be peeled. The card version is also lacking the "Peel Off Pennant Carefully" line. The back of the card sure look sticker-stock-like but it's cardboard and not the usual tan backing paper:

To make matters even more confused, Beckett states that there is a style in "adhesive form with the pennant merely printed on card stock". Well, if true that makes three types but I am thinking they thought the cardboard version had a sticker back, hence the, ah, confusion, but maybe there is a third version.

The stickers were allegedly withdrawn due to their outrageous sayings, which theoretically accounts for their scarcity but it is possible the short, 132 card AFL set also did not remain on the shelves all that long. Yanking the stickers would seemingly make another type of insert necessary and there is no other option in '67. The stickers do seem offensive in many respects and I am thinking two could have been pulled prior to distribution (33 would be an expected set count for standard-sized stickers) so it is possible I guess but definitely not a given. The cardboard version is also stated to have been sold on its own; no pack exists to my knowledge but it could have been a fun pack item in such a scenario.

Who Ya Callin' Short?!

2011-12-29T11:53:00.009-05:00

The earliest piece of true hobby research I ever pulled off was in the early 1980's, when I sussed out a black & white picture in an old hobby magazine of a 1967 Topps high number sheet. I did this because the accompanying article mentioned it showed the Brooks Robinson card (at the time thought of as the ne plus ultra of all short prints) as a double print on the sheet. Well, I thought to myself, that's odd, and then with the help of a magnifying glass and a team checklist book, pieced together all 132 cards on the sheet and then typed it all up (yes, on an ancient device called a typewriter) and tucked my schematic away. I am glad I did that as I lost the original picture sometime later, although I have since found other examples of it, like so:

That is described as the "B" sheet, which means it was on the right side of the full 264 card sheet; the "A" sheet would have been to the left, although I think they were actually printed in a horizontal orientation. Pay attention now, there will be a quiz at the end and you will have to use math! After years of relative stability in their printing patterns, Topps started mucking around with things in 1967. Counting from 1961, the first year of expansion in baseball, their set lengths were 587, 598, 576, 587, 598, 598 again (1966), then 609, before dropping back to 598 in 1968, the final year before another MLB expansion would occur and set sizes would grow beyond anything ever seen before.

Topps also had consistently printed additional cards on each press sheet when compared to the checklist cards in this period, thereby giving the purchaser some cards from the next series plus the checklist card for the following series (in what was technically the prior series pack) and ensnaring their young consumers in a ceaseless march to the last series of the year where the extra cards and checklists would elegantly resolve. But in 1967 they changed how they did this and also went over the 600 mark for some reason, which is not entirely clear and was not supported by their being more teams or players. The was also a distribution problem with the 1967 high numbers and many locales did not receive them, especially west of the Mississippi River. Add it all up and you have a recipe for scarcity.

Now, getting back to the uncut high number sheet. While the above scan is truncated at top and bottom, if you count the descending rows and use DP for double print and SP for single print, you can label them as: DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4, DP5, DP1, SP1, SP2, DP2, DP3, DP4, DP5. The odd placement of the two SP rows has always caught my eye and led me to think something was afoot but eventually I forgot about this happenstance.

Well we have to jump ahead a few years, to when I found a list of 1967 high number DP's in The SCD/Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. They had DP's where I had SP's. I then checked one of the Beckett books and found their list did not mesh with mine either. I e-mailed Beckett and got a response that their DP listings had been created by direct observation of a (possibly partial) uncut sheet. The source of SCD's listing was never revealed to me but it seems now it was based upon tabulation data and not an uncut sheet. It was clear though that Beckett had access to a sheet that was different than the one I had sketched out. So I created a spreadsheet to show all the possibilities and came up with something quite interesting:

	SUBJECT	B SHEET	SCD	BECKETT
531	7TH SERIES CHECKLIST			DP
534	BAUER	SP	DP	DP
535	CLENDENON
536	CUBS ROOKIES (J. NIEKRO)
537	ESTRADA		DP	DP
538	MARTIN
539	EGAN	SP	DP	DP
540	CASH
541	GIBBON
542	A'S ROOKIES (MONDAY)	SP	DP	DP
543	SCHNEIDER
544	INDIANS TEAM
545	GRANT
546	WOODWARD
547	RED SOX ROOKIES	SP	DP	DP
548	GONZALEZ		DP	DP
549	SANFORD
550	PINSON		DP	DP
551	CAMILLI		DP	DP
552	SAVAGE	SP
553	YANKEES ROOKIES	SP
554	RODGERS	SP	DP	DP
555	CARDWELL
556	WEIS	SP	DP	DP
557	FERRARA
558	ORIOLES ROOKIES (BELANGER)	SP
559	TRACEWSKI		DP	DP
560	BUNNING
561	ALOMAR
562	BLASS	SP	DP	DP
563	ADCOCK	SP
564	ASTROS ROOKIES	SP	DP	DP
565	KRAUSSE
566	GEIGER		DP	DP
567	HAMILTON (YANKEES)
568	SULLIVAN	SP
569	A.L. ROOKIES (CAREW)		DP	DP
570	WILLS
571	SHERRY
572	DEMETER
573	WHITE SOX TEAM
574	BUCHEK
575	BOSWELL
576	N.L. ROOKIES
577	SHORT
578	BOCCABELLA
579	HENRY
580	COLAVITO
581	METS ROOKIES (SEAVER)	SP
582	OWENS		DP	DP
583	BARKER (YANKEES)
584	PIERSALL
585	BUNKER
586	JIMINEZ	SP
587	N.L. ROOKIES
588	KLIPPSTEIN	SP	DP	DP
589	RICKETTS		DP	DP
590	RICHERT
591	CLINE	SP
592	N.L. ROOKIES
593	WESTRUM
594	OSINSKI
595	ROJAS
596	CISCO	SP	DP	DP
597	ABERNATHY	SP
598	WHITE SOX ROOKIES
599	DULIBA		DP	DP
600	B. ROBINSON		SP
601	BRYAN	SP		DP
602	PIZARRO
603	A'S ROOKIES	SP
604	RED SOX TEAM
605	SHANNON
606	TAYLOR
607	STANLEY	SP
608	CUBS ROOKIES		DP	DP
609	JOHN

The 7th series checklist also appeared on the 6th series press sheet, so is more abundant in theory than any other 7th series card but we'll treat it as a true high for our exercise here today. If you look at the data you will see that 11 cards identified as short prints have no corresponding DP designator from either SCD or Beckett. Logically, these 11 cards are the true 1967 high number short prints and they are all from the row I call SP2:

552 Savage
553 Yankees Rookies
558 Orioles Rookies (Belanger)
563 Adcock
568 Sullivan
581 Mets Rookies (Seaver)
586 Jiminez
591 Cline
597 Abernathy
603 A's Rookies
607 Stanley

Conversely, 11 cards that are in my SP1 row are Double Prints on both the SCD and Beckett lists (I suspect #601 Bryan, a Yankee, was left off the SCD list inadvertently):

534 Bauer
539 Egan
542 A's Rookies (Monday)
547 Red Sox Rookies
554 Rodgers
556 Weis
562 Blass
564 Astros Rookies
588 Klippstein
596 Cisco
601 Bryan

Then there is the curious case of the 11 cards shown as DP's in the other two lists and also on my sheet:

537 Estrada
548 Gonzalez
550 Pinson
551 Camilli
559 Tracewski
566 Geiger
589 AL Rookies (Carew)
582 Owens
589 Ricketts
599 Duliba
608 Cubs Rookies

A nice, neat 11 cards and all appearing in the row I have dubbed DP1. The next three rows (DP2, DP3, DP4) are not designated by either price guide but I have them as DP's. Beckett, if using a partial sheet, may not have caught these and SCD just doesn't mention them. I have them all as DP rows in order to make the Beckett sheet work,

Did you notice all three of these "odd" rows (DP1, SP1, DP2) appear as a single grouping on my sheet? Let's replicate them at the top of a theoretical second sheet:

DP1
SP1
SP2

Still, what of Brooks Robinson?

SCD has him as an SP and the old thoughts on Brooks were based upon a vending box hoard's yield many years ago that was shy on Brooksie's. If we presume his row (DP5 on my sheet) was not a DP row on the "Beckett" sheet, we can extrapolate the rest of the sheet:

DP2
DP3
DP4
DP5
SP1
DP1
DP2
DP3
DP4

Maybe not in that exact order and not ironclad until the second sheet turns up but the math works. This gives a final tally that you can check yourselves, of:

Rows DP1, DP2, DP3, DP4 = 4 appearances each over two sheets (16/24ths)
Row DP5 = 3 appearances over two sheets (3/24ths)
Row SP1 = 3 appearances over two sheets (3/24ths)
Row SP2 = 2 appearances over two sheets (2/24ths)

My SP rows would not have been known by Beckett, so there are now 24 rows present and accounted for! It may be disproven someday but right now I'm sticking with it. As for the promised quiz-see if you can rearrange the theoretical second sheet to match what Beckett would have seen on a partial while still maintaining consistency with the list of SP's and DP's in the full 7th series list above and then have it prove out over 24 rows.

Pop Secret

2011-12-25T13:20:00.003-05:00

Well Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah folks! Just a real quick one today, albeit holiday themed.

One of the most obscure Topps issues was sold at Christmas 1950 and featured everybody's favorite reindeer:

That is from Chris Benjamin's The Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non Sports Cards 1930-1960, the only place I have ever seen one.

You can barely make out the manufacturer information but it's clearly a Topps product; it was made by Topps Candy Division, which would only be around for another year or so. This was a close copy of Hoppy Pops and Santa Pops, and a distance cousin of Play Money Pops. Here, maybe you can read all of the fine print, I only verified the Candy Divison details:

Naughty Not Nice

2011-12-20T17:59:00.005-05:00

One of the problems with buying vintage unopened Topps packs is that there is a lot of bogus product out there. Wax packs are notorious for being pillaged, filled with commons and then resealed but cello packs are also created in ways to deceive. However, the most obvious problem packs right now are "Christmas" rak paks.

Generally, these have a Holiday themed header card and three pockets of four cards each. The earliest ones are from "1952", the latest ones stretch into the 1970's. They are all 100% fake, produced well after the fact by third party sellers.

Here is a typical example:

That mix of black and red backs does not seem like something Topps would have ever done! Sadly, these are being sold in volume on eBay and many sell for healthy prices. Here is a later one from "1958" that is quite heinous:

The Bessent and Berra cards are nasty; off-center and dinged cards are common in these fantasy packs. Here is yet another example from "1968":

Other variants exist with header cards that are mostly white, with a candy cane motif and feature artfully aged staples. I can't find a scan of one right now but they are out there and probably predate the ones above to the point they could have been produced in the late 60's or early 70's. The first mention of these I can recall was in Sports Collectors Digest over 20 years ago, when they were (initially) presented as being legitimate to the era, if not Topps.

Unopened pack dealer and expert Steve Hart has been interviewed in a good piece on many bogus Topps packs, well worth a read. Don't let the grinch get you this holiday season!

Bak to Raks

2011-12-18T12:39:00.005-05:00

1969 was the last year of the 3 x 12 rak pak arrays. Starting in 1959, when three 12 card cello packs were overwrapped for point of sale purchase displays, Topps had stuck with this winning formula for over a decade. But 1969 was the last year of many Topps pricing schemes; 1970 would bring a shift to larger and more expensive packaging across all lines.

The 1969 raks are essentially the same as the 68's:

That NEW tag stayed with the 69's; can;t go wrong with a good thing!You can really see how loose the cards would get inside each pocket. Football was again a match for baseball:

The only real changes in the header card from 1968 to '69 would have been to the Topps production code (a very helpful dating tool) and at some point in the year a switch from Brooklyn to Duryea as the place of manufacture: I need to find clearer scans to determine when they did this on the raks; it was about the the time the fifth series baseball cards were issued but if they had old stock showing Brooklyn, they may well have let it run out unless there was a compelling business reason not to. The baseball and football raks above came from Huggins & Scott's site.

Once again the hockey cards also came in raks (just Topps I think, not OPC):

As with almost all my tough hockey scans, that is from Bobby Burrell's fabulous Vintage Hockey Collector's Price Guide. Hockey raks would have been produced in tiny numbers relative to baseball and even football. Remember, if you are buying these off eBay, watch for fakes-there are far more of those and repackaged "Christmas" raks than legitimate ones out there.

Redundancy Stamp

2011-12-14T23:35:00.002-05:00

Well kids, me and Mrs. Archives have addressed the last of the Christmas cards and boy, I could really have used some help tonight. Oh address labels are one thing but what a feller really needs is a personalized name stamp to help address things properly.

Don't have one? Well, hop into the WABAC machine and dial it up for 1949:

and let Bazooka, the Atom Bubble Boy lead the way:

Wotta deal, eh? That's from a series of comic book ads taken out by Topps in DC comics that year in a major marketing push to sell more Bazooka. I'll post more of these; they are reminiscent to me of a time when the staid print advertising world was about to be rocked by the brash new medium of television.

Rak Attack

2011-12-10T17:37:00.001-05:00

Looking up details on Topps Rak Paks for my previous post led me to some more images and I feel like this is about to turn into a multi-post look at Topps biggest retail packs. I certainly bought the majority of my cards this way from 1970-74, many of them from a fabulous store called Coronet.

The modern Rak Pak, as we saw last time, debuted in 1968. Ditching the old, three-cello overwrapped style pack, Topps lost the individual cello's and created individual pockets for three cells of cards:

The "new" label is clearly to show the pack itself has been redesigned but why do they still say 3/10 cent packs? I guess Topps wanted you to know you were saving a penny! You got 12 cards per pak, so 36 per rak.

The football raks were similar in '68:

Believe it or not, Topps sold hockey cards in raks as well:

The ability to sell any type of product using one template was very appealing to Topps as it helped to reduce costs. Rak paks were designed for variety and toy stores and were prevalent from what I recall of them. I have tried to identify a Non-Sports rak from 1968 but there do not seem to be any sets that would really work, except possibly Hot Rods. A lot of Topps sets that year were odd-sized or short in length. I would think sports had a longer shelf life generally and the raks would be a better fit for sports cards due to the length of the seasons. I will keep looking though.

Nice Rak

2011-12-06T20:11:00.008-05:00

Thanks to a (sadly) current eBay auction, I think I have stumbled onto the end of the Trading Card Guild era at Topps. Long story short a bogus 1967 baseball rak pak is currently up on the 'bay but it's clearly a homemade job and I shall not link to it. I did some research on legitimate Rak Paks though as a result and think I resolved the end date for the Guild. First, let's look at some raks!

Basically, any rak pak prior to 1968 would contain 3 individual cello packs encased in an overwrap plus a header card stapled to the end of the overwrap, which extended a bit to accomodate the staples for the header. The first of these appeared in 1959 if I am not mistaken and Topps used them for any variety of issues, not just baseball.

Here is what a proper '66 rak pak looks like:

You can see the three cells (plus a really great insert) and how they are overwrapped, plus the header card is stapled to the whole package, it's flaps sandwiching the rak proper. This is how any rak through 1967 should look. In fact, here is a legit '67:

You can see the three cello packs still, plus the old style header card attachment. I can't get it to reproduce properly here but the text at the bottom right of the header says Topps Chewing Gum. The next year, the cellos had vanished as Topps moved to the more familiar version, sans individual cellos and utilizing three "cells" or pockets of loose cards, with a fourth cell that enclosed the header card.

Those last two raks are from Mark Murphy's excellent Unopened Pack Guide. It's a little outdated as it was last updated in 2002 but is chock full of useful information.

But that's not why I am posting all this today. The real reason? Take a look at that 1966 header card again, along the bottom, under the EXTRA SPECIAL FEATURE line, it says "Trading Card Guild Mfr." That is the latest date I have seen associated with the Trading Card Guild and likely marks the end of their run. It is increasingly apparent to me that Topps would haul out the Guild for any product sold without gum, i.e.non-confectionery items be they in vending, cellos or raks. I suspect this was due to their contracts and no-competes on various, if not all issues, a problem worked out by 1967 it appears.

The Guild livery was more obvious on some raks than others. Check out this classic 1962 Civil War News rak, a scan I pinched from an Abraham Lincoln site:

Amusingly, there is no Trading Card Guild ID on the rak but it certainly pushed the educational aspect. That rak theoretically held about 40% of an entire set, although I am sure some duplicates lurk within!

Paper Trail

2011-12-03T15:05:00.001-05:00

We saw last time how Topps used a paper envelope wrapper to market two test sets from the 1968-69 era. This was not the first time they had done this and it was way back around 1956 when they tried for the first time to use a paper wrapper.

Round-Up (more properly Western Round-Up but no matter) was one of the last, if not the last Topps set to be issued in Giant Size. A paper wrapper exists, although for what purpose is hard to say as it does not seem like it would have been an ideal to keep the gum sanitary. The set's penny wrapper is far more common and it was also sold in what Chris Benjamin has described as five cent "layered" cello packs so there may have been some experimentation going on with the nickel packaging. It appears a piece of tape (see left border) may have held the pack together.

The other 1956 paper wrapper is from Flags of the World, which also got the envelope treatment a dozen years later. I can only locate a scan from the same Bob and Jeff Marks article from The Wrapper #92 that featured the envelope version as well:

Other wrappers from other sets could also exist as these are very rare. If anyone has further background, I would love to hear it.

The Envelope Please

2011-12-01T17:40:00.001-05:00

I've been mulling some pieces of paper of late, namely some very rare Topps wrappers. Last time out I showed a 1968 test basketball wrapper, which was really a paper envelope. This type of "wrapper" made the little light bulb go off above my head as I knew there was also a paper wrapper associated with the 1970 Topps Flags of the World issue. Actually, it turns out there were two.

We have seen in previous posts that Flags of the World were a recurring theme at Topps; indeed at many other confectionery and tobacco companies as well, since they were tried and true sellers back in the vintage days. 1949, 1950 and 1956 saw Flags issues from Topps, then a break occurred until 1970 when another issue came out, possibly in the wake of a general, societal push to make U.S. school kids more aware of the United Nations in the late 1960's. I'll get into the numerous permutations and inserts of the 1970 issue someday but want to focus on its paper wrapper.

Jeff and Bob Marks, writing in The Wrapper #92, cite a five cent wrapper comprised of a test sticker affixed to tan envelope. I only have scan from the article to demonstrate:

The 61-75 handwritten notation at the top is in line with other Topps test pieces I have seen. The 61 is the project number; the 75 is a bit more mysterious. Most Topps production codes from 1966 onward use the last digit to signify the year of production but only for retail products, where the full code resembles something like a Social Security number. Test codes often seem to end in 5, just like what is shown above and are usually in the shorter format we see here.

Compare this to the 1968 test Basketball wrapper:

I actually found a back scan of the basketball wrapper since last episode:

You can see the flaps of the envelope quite clearly. I would ignore the handwritten date at the top, I suspect it was added by a collector, not Topps.

So why envelopes? Well, Topps was already using them for certain mid 60's issues, mostly of the "novelty" variety as opposed to cards. Wise Ties is one example but there are quite a few others from this time frame so they were on the mind of Topps brass at the time. Usually though, they were for products that came without gum.

Two scenarios seem likely to my mind: Firstly, Topps may have been testing wrappers; I am assuming it was cheaper to use an envelope vs. a wax wrapper. The envelopes could also have been used in a scenario where the cards were being tested and it was easier than cranking up the ol' wrapping machinery just to use some already available envelopes. It is also possible both actions were occurring at the same time.

The way Topps tested products at the time was interesting. Internal pitches were made by Woody Gelman's creative team, using mockups often times grafted together from some new artwork and pre-existing product. Topps executives would then be asked to approve a project based upon such presentaions. This was a highly competitive process and only about 1 in 10 projects would get the go ahead. At this point full design of a proof version would occur and sample run of very small size would be run off by the printer; often this would only be 22 or 28 cards of the planned total. Sometimes these would be complete cards, other times only fronts were produced. Short runs such as this were likely responsible for all the black & white mid 60's test issues; these short runs could have been for both internal and external use, I can't quite tell and both scenarios are possible.

Once they had some cards to hand out, Topps would form a focus group, where kids would be gathered at a test site, sometimes run by a third party. Cards would be distributed and observations made as to how the children reacted to cards and how they would play with them. Other times they would go to a local elementary or junior high school yard in Brooklyn, near Topps HQ in Sunset Park and hand out test packs (hard to imagine that going well today but it was a different time) to gauge the reactions. Both methods could have been used for a single product, either in tandem or one after the other. These are the points where I believe the envelopes would have come into play.

Once this stage was finished, the product either got killed off, dramatically reconfigured or advanced to a retail test. Sometimes tweaks were made before the test boxes hit the shelves, sometimes not. In Brooklyn, this was where the mythical "Cortelyou Avenue Candy Store" would enter the picture. In Pennsylvania, following the move of the confectionery production line and warehousing to Duryea in 1966, retail tests were made in a similar fashion in Scranton and environs, near the plant. Packs would generally be made of white waxed paper, with a sticker affixed to the front and sometimes a smaller one, listing ingredients if the pack held gum, slapped across the back and acting to help seal the pack. Tested products would have to pass this trial before full retail production commenced. Even after the final test, some refinements would often be made to the cards; usually (but not always) these were minor in nature.

The method was not foolproof as some sets would test well but vanish without a trace at the retail level. Still, Topps apparently did a test for every issue they wanted to retail; although this would seemingly exclude recurring annual sports issues such as baseball and football. Any baseball or football supplemental sports sets would have gone through this process however. These envelopes would have been a quick way for Topps to test product; so much so I wonder if they were produced for other sets. Their rarity would make this a difficult proposition to research. The stickers affixed to the envelopes would have been reused for the wax tests packs I think.

The five cent price points on both the above wrappers would point to 1968 or early 1969 tests as Topps went to ten cents on their retail wax packs in mid 1969. The box that the Flags test packs came in is also known and carries a Brooklyn address with a zip code. Topps changed to a Duryea address in mid 1969 so that further locks the date in. I mentioned another paper wrapper for Flags of the World and I'll get into that next time.

Dribble, Dribble

2011-11-27T18:38:00.004-05:00

Well I snagged a real sweet test card off eBay just before Turkey Day. I have a goal of collecting one card from every set Topps released at retail from 1948-80; this conveniently leaves off some of the real tough proof issues such as the 1966 Punch Boards but with some sets it's really hard to tell if they were released to the public. There are still some doozie's in there though.

One set that falls into this category (and others) is the 1968 Test Basketball release. The cards are extremely rare but they are printed in black and white, which has always made me suspicious of their non-proofiness, for lack of a better term.

It looks like he's practicing in a high school gym-the NBA was not always the glamour league that it is now. You might also note the card displays Default Topps Block Print, a hallmark of many mid 60's test and proof sets. There are 22 cards in the set and the backs make up a puzzle of Wilt Chamberlain, looking very vertical:

I think the two bottom right corner cards are just black while the two above them just show a little knee. The cards came in a paper envelope style of pack:

It looks like a typical Topps test pack sticker but the word is that it's on an envelope. The cards are rare, the insert would be rarer still; I have never seen one. I have a theory on these cards (both test basketball and other black & white issues of the era) and this type of envelope wrapper and wll get into that next time out.

Khan You See Me?

2011-11-25T00:53:00.003-05:00

New network TV shows in 1967 had a distinct international flair. Tarzan, Daktari, even a show called Cowboy in Africa filled the airwaves. But the farthest flung locale on the boob tube in '67 was India, with Jay North (Dennis the Menace) playing a character named Terry Bowen searching for his father, with his faithful companion Raji (Sajid Khan) alongside in show dubbed Maya. Taking after the movie of the same name from 1966, the presumably dyspeptic duo traveled by elephant (which had the handle of Maya, get it?) through exotic locales that were shot on location.

Sadly such lush scenery could not sustain the show and it was cancelled after 18 episodes, failing to compete against The Dating Game/Newlywed Game juggernaut and The Jackie Gleason Show in the 7:30-8:30slot on Saturday nights, demonstrating that kids were still outside playing before Daylight Saving Time kicked in, while their parents watched more adult fare. Really, that is a bizarre lineup for a kids show to fail against!

High hopes at NBC had led to optimism at Topps and a card set was released in conjunction with the debut of the show. The end result is that Topps ended up dumping excess inventory on the secondary market and Maya ended up being about as common a set as can be from the 60's. A seeming never ending supply of vending boxes has permeated the hobby and as a result the 55 card set is quite cheap today and $15 would be paying too much for a NM set.

The cards are s-o-o-o-o-o-o pedestrian:

The reverse shows why the set is sometimes called Mysteries of India:

but there is a bit of a wrinkle. While vending boxes by the hundreds were unleashed, wax packs ended up being very short lived. The wrapper is quite eye-catching:

The puzzle is the sand in the Vaseline. Shaped like the pieces from Superman in the Jungle's puzzle, I am reasonably certain that set's 16 pieces have the same shapes as Maya's. Here is a piece of the puzzle, Maya-wise:

Compare that to Supe's visage a year or so later:

It's blurry but it's a match! Supe's just as ragged (there would be color left on the remainder piece after the Maya puzzle was punched) asTopps recycled the puzzle piece shapes after Maya tanked. Both these sets sold poorly but Superman in the Jungle only had a limited US release and the cards are hard to find today, let alone the puzzle pieces. Maya puzzle pieces can sell individually for as much as the card set so they are tough as well.

Jay North ended up joining the U.S. Navy and was honorably discharged in 1979. His mother invested his earnings from Dennis the Menace and even though his acting career petered out in the mid 70's, he did not suffer from the financial problems most child stars went through. In fact, he works with an advocacy group that reaches out to former "acting kids" who have trouble adapting to real life.

Burlaps We'll Meet Again

2011-11-19T12:39:00.000-05:00

This may or may not be the kickoff of a look at how Topps seeded their checklists in the 1960's and early 70's, in a manner I refer to as the Theory of Checklist Relativity. Click that backlink if you haven't been here for long to get a little more flavor if you like; there are three different ways this was done over the years (and wich I will not get into today). The gist is that Topps would print the next series checklist with the prior series of cards, thereby previewing the next series. This preview generally appeared at a ratio of 1:2 compared with the other, earlier checklist card on the sheet, which was almost always double or even triple printed.

The same checklist (well,almost - it was never a perfect replica) would also appear in its rightful place on the next series sheet, double printed and the next series checklist would then mingle in. And so on and so on until the last series of the year. Primarily associated with the annual baseball cards, this method was used at various times with other sports as well. It also produced the "inevitable and much dreaded checklist card" in great quantities, to quote the Great American Flipping Trading and Bubble Gum Card Book.

Normally the checklists printed with two series would look alike, except for the occasional typo. In 1968 though, Topps tinkered with the design of their baseball cards after the first series was released, thereby creating two distinctly different 2nd Series checklist cards. The first 109 cards in the set were part of series 1 (yes, the series should total 110 using the "Rule of 11", hold that thought) and had what can only be described as a coarser grain to the burlap looking substrate. For reasons that must have been aesthetic (the first series cards are just ghastly looking) or print related (browns always seemed to cause trouble for Topps, see the 1962 baseball cards for a prime example) , Topps switched to a finer grained burlap going forward, starting with the 2nd series.

The 2nd Series Checklist beautifully illustrates this point. First series, coarse grain, first press sheet:

Now take a look at the same card but from the second press sheet (it is #107 if you are curious):

The Wheatena look is gone! The missing 110th card is explained by the 1st series Checklist appearing not only in its own slot in a row with 10 other cards that world normally repeat at least once over the 264 full sheet but also in another slot unrelated to the other row. Why Topps felt the need to do things this way is a mystery.

Bazooka Pops

2011-11-17T07:46:00.002-05:00

Oh, the oddities that hide in plain sight in the Topps universe! I was marveling at a box of 1967 Topps Baseball acquired by a collecting buddy of mine (hi George!) and noticed this little piece of esoterica along the bottom and side:

As we shall see momentarily, these pops were dubbed Twin-ee pops. They went for a nickel and I guess were designed as a counter display item, right next to the baseball cards and Bazooka logs.

These must not have lasted long but tie back to a neat bit of company history. Back in the late 1940's, when Topps was trying to find an iconic mascot for Bazooka, Joseph Shorin became impressed with an add campaign for Popsicles, which featured a character named Popsicle Pete. He eventually hired the man responsible for refining the character for the Joe Lowe Corporation, one Woody Gelman. Fittingly, the mascot created by Gelman is promoting the product that landed him the gig at Topps.

Alas

2011-11-13T09:16:00.002-05:00

One of the reasons Topps became such a dominant company was their international marketing plan. The strategy was a smart one and is most often associated with their operations in Canada where they started pushing their gum products as early as 1947. Another outpost was England, where they purchase an interest in A&BC in 1958 and of course there was Venezuela, where baseball cards, usually the first couple of US series, were sold with Spanish backs printed especially for (and in) that country. But their first specific Spanish language set was issued in 1952 and took direct aim at the Mexican market.

Wings was a highly successful, multi-series issue that followed the landmark 1952 Baseball cards in both size (Giant) and appeal (massive). The series was marketed well into 1953 and consists of 200 brightly colored cards of various aircraft. The Shorin's, used to doing business in Central and South America for many years while in the tobacco trade, turned to Mexico during World War 2 to import raw materials to continue manufacturing Topps Gum. It seems likely their familiarity with the area led to a full release of all 200 Wings cards Spanish backs.

Here is one card, in all its defaced glory:

The front is identical to the US issue but the back is not, although the graphics are the same:

Here is a US back for comparison:

The indicia at the bottom and the number & title block wording remains in English but the rest of the card has been translated to Spanish. The entire 200 card series was transformed this way, although at one point it was thought only the first 100 cards had been produced and the backs of the second series had only been proofed but that is clearly not the case. You can find blank fronts of the last 100 cards though.

The set in Spanish is becoming easier to find of late and if so inclined, could be assembled with a little effort. Their efforts south of the border would take a few years to find consistency but Topps was clearly thinking big in 1952.

In The Jungle, The Mighty Jungle

2011-11-10T08:21:00.005-05:00

Superman has been a trading card character almost as long as he has been a comic book character. The tale of his origin, both the actual, artistic birth of the character and the fictional narrative centering on Krypton are essentially folk tales by now. The original classic set depicting the Man of Steel was made by Gum, Inc. (Bowman's predecessor) in 1940-41 is considered one of the top non-sports sets in the hobby, with some devilishly difficult high numbers and an active collector base conspiring to price it out of the hands of many collectors by propelling the 72 card set into five figures. It is NOT, however, the only high priced Superman set out there, thanks to two Topps test issues.

The first of these, the black and white Superman set issued by Topps in 1965 and/or 1966 was discussed here a while ago (click here and then scroll down a little) and exists in a test version that is quite tough and a regular issue with two variant reverses that is quite easy. Then there's Superman in the Jungle, which was almost an unknown set for the first quarter century of its life. While values have fallen of late, it's still a pricey set to put together and many of the extant cards are actually blank backed proofs.

Superman in the Jungle was tested by Topps around 1968 in the U.S. and clearly did not resonate with the kids who saw it. Consisting of 66 cards with well rendered, color drawings and an insert puzzle piece set numbering 16, it is a hobby rarity today. The display box is a genius work of Norm Saunders:

The wrapper is also well done, although this is actually a photo that is offered on eBay:

I am hesitant to call that a Saunders work and his website does not mention he drew it. He did, however, do the inks for the cards. Here is a proof that show the artwork:

Colorful but fairly simplistic art may have doomed the issue in the States. Here are a few more, with characteristic off center backs and like the above proof and many other images on this page, from the Legendary Auctions archive:

The 16 puzzles are not your garden variety Topps insert and are die cut. They are taken from the box cover and here is a real nice proof showing them all:

Having spent the money on art and testing, Topps was certainly in a bit of a hole. The solution? License the set to their partially-owned British subsidiary A&BC.

The A&BC version of the set is a little smaller (about a 1/4" each way) than the U.S. standard sized cards, as was usually the case in the UK but replicated the set otherwise. The English wrapper is adapted from the US box art and is nice, colorful but a bit crude:

Here is an A&BC front and back:

For reasons that escape me, the A&BC set is far easier to obtain than its U.S. counterpart. The whole concept of the set is bizarre but that's the way things were back in '68! As for how things were back in 1940, not too different, artwork-wise:

Pigskin Phooey

2011-11-05T14:43:00.000-04:00

I did a little inquiring after my last post on 1955 Topps All American Football and it seems whatever reasoning went into determining the Short Prints in this set went out around the advent of the USB 1.0 era. 20 overprints is indeed the consensus and that would mean for every full press sheet of 220 cards, 20 appeared three times and 80 twice. I'll have to leave it at that since I don't own a price guide business and can't determine why bad information continues to persist in some quarters.

So with that, I will leave you with some eye candy. The standard Trading Card Guild cello box of the era looks like it came with a nice, colorful header card. Perhaps they came with every issue that was cello-ized; that deserves some research real soon.

That scan is from the PSA site and the story there about the cello box find of 2008 is worth reading. And I should have shown it last time but here is the famous card of The Four Horsemen:

On Leather Steeds They Ride

2011-11-03T07:55:00.005-04:00

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death. The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, Layden. The former a harbinger of the end of the world, the latter the Notre Dame backfield from 1922-24. Oh, and the centerpiece of the 1955 Topps All American Football set.

Unable to sign NFL players due to Bowman's exclusive contracts, Topps turned to the college ranks for the third time in seven years to compete with a 100 card set. A card of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame (#68) anchors the set but there are numerous big name players within. The set is a classic, possibly the most collected vintage football set in the hobby. A fairly recent find of unopened cello boxes has driven many high quality cards into the marketplace and brought down prices but does not seem to have brought any clarity to a major feature of this set: 34 allegedly short printed cards.

All American was printed on 110 card half/220 card full sheets, 11 rows of 10 cards per half. Or, depending upon orientation, 10 rows of 11 cards. With some rare exceptions (1952 Baseball high numbers), Topps would muck around with short prints on a row-by-row basis for their Giant Size cards. That would mean a 110 card sheet as was used in 1955 should have a total number of short prints divisible by either 10 (portrait) or 11 (landscape). 34 does not work in this scenario but an examination of a partial uncut sheet reveals a haphazard arrangement.

This fifty card partial appeared in a Legendary Auction awhile back; another partial is known with the same configuration and subsections of it have also been sighted:

The back is intact:

I plotted all the numbers onto a spreadsheet and here is what I came up with:

The lack of a pattern across full rows or columns makes me wonder if the SP's are properly identified. And there are 31 of the 34 on less than half the sheet, which does not make sense. Anything is possible, especially since Topps was stuffing over 20 cards into some cello packs in their final beat down of Bowman but I would have expected three rows of cards to show up with SP's occupying each slot. Another problem is that there would have to be some overprinted cards if 34 are short prints. While I cannot find any listings for overprints, I have to think they exist. If anything, I would have expected a run that hinted at either 20 overprints and no short prints but if you throw over 20% of the set into one pack, I guess you have to throttle things a bit. Tinsley and White had swapped backs in the first run, in case you were wondering why I highlighted them.

Did Topps mix up their short prints in a random, yet biased pattern? Is the conventional hobby wisdom on the SP's flawed? I am not sure what the answer is yet.

Bubblemaker

2011-10-29T11:29:00.002-04:00

Still on a bit of a Hallowe'en theme, confectionery style, as I found this while trying to organize my hard drive. I can't really add much to it as it speaks for itself except that I cannot recall my kids getting Bazooka in their candy sacks ever! We used to get the old five chew rolls or a regular tab on occasion but that practice seems to have passed. Too bad.

Still, if you ever wondered how Bazooka was made, here is one version-enjoy:

You Drive Me Ape, You Big Gorilla

2011-10-27T08:56:00.005-04:00

While I never really have my scans and notes together at the right time to do too many topical posts, today I am breaking with that scattershot approach to take another look at the fairly amazing 1967 Topps Blockheads.

As noted previously, these were a series of a dozen Hallowe'en masks that were more like hats, with a couple of slits to allow the wearer to see the outside world. The story is that the slits were too small to be safe and the issue was pulled. I have never been able to verify that but it does make some sense. There could also have been a public outcry against some of the designs, which in the typical Topps fashion of the time, celebrated certain vices a bit too boisterously for some folks.

Five of the masks popped up on Ebay recently and are worth a second look. There were at least three of one of them, #11 The Ape, all of which were missing one eye-slit punchout and were described as prone to such Cyclopean behavior. The Ape is actually too big ( 14 7/16" x 8 3/4") to fit my scanner but I have nailed the Ebay scan to show what it looks like:

These are scarce but it turns out I overpaid as a group of four popped up afterwards from a different seller and went for a song (note to self, do not cancel eBay search after winning bid):

Clockwise from top left, those are:

#2 The Pirate
#3 Mad Scientist
#7 The Hippie
#12 The Skull

Between the knife clenched in the Pirate's teeth and the cigarette dangling from the Hippie's lips, there was enough to make a lot of parents peeved. Did this kill the set?

The backs are really great and show the level of detail that Woody Gelman was driving for:

The bandaids are a nice touch! I suspect those four examples were all from a single box, which would have held eight loose Blockheads, unwrapped and without gum for 15 cents apiece. Chris Benjamin's Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards No. 4, has a picture of the retail box:

The set, as I have written before, was repurposed into an issue called 3D Monster Posters. Benjamin also shows that retail box in his guide:

As very little is known about that set, I have to think they were just the same ol' Blockheads, renamed, based upon the box cover artwork and lower price point. 1968 would be the logical date of issue for the "posters". The fact all 12 poses were reiussed and no variations are known, would seem to support more of a poor sales scenario than a parents protest being responsible for the scarcity of these today.

Topps issued Hallowe'en and Monster themed sets from 1959 through about 1971 on an annual basis, although some sets were reissued from year to year, probably to sell off overstock. A similar run of Valentine's Day products coincided with these dates as well. A lot of things changed at Topps after 1971 and there may not have issued similarly-themed Hallowe'en sets again until the reintroduction of Monster Initials in 1974.

Sheer Strength

2011-10-25T18:53:00.001-04:00

I finally got around to securing a solid scan from the Huggins & Scott site of the 1968 Topps 3D Prototype card of Brooks Robinson, thanks to an intervention from friend o'the archive Neal Kane. The card sold for $27,500 without factoring in the buyer's premium and frankly I think it went a bit low, a sentiment echoed by a lot of other folks. Still, almost $30K for a baseball card is pretty impressive! Here is a real clear view of Brooksie:

The scans help clear up a little mystery I was poking around last time I posted on this card. It appeared the back was so sheer that it was either skinned or very transparent. However, after seeing the catalog pictures and examining the back scan, it appears the harsh lighting at the National really allowed the card to seem like less than it was:

There is some foxing, especially along the bottom but the back looks pretty white. I also took a closer look at the example shown in the Standard Catalog, as detailed here, and I think it is uncracked, meaning there are at least three examples out there.

In case you missed it, Jon over at the always excellent Fleer Sticker blog found the original source photo, which is as common as the prototype is rare. Click on through to see.

A Ripping Yarn

2011-10-21T18:55:00.002-04:00

I ran across a scan of a pretty rare insert today, the 1959 Topps Elect Your Favorite Rookie, which was made of paper and inserted in packs touting the rookie team contest Topps used to hold annually. The inserts are quite hard to find so scans are not easy to come by but the thing that caught my eye was the little rip at the top (or side, depending upon orientation):

You can see it just left of the fold. It is exactly the same as the little rip on the 50's and 60's tatoo packs that I have long suspected were produced on the original Topps gum wrapping machine, first used by then in 1938 to wrap Topps Gum but likely decades older by the time it was put to use by the Shorin's. You can see it a little better on the other side of the insert:

Bob Lemke has another scan of different one (an actual ballot) at his wonderful blog, take a look here.

Topps must have cut these on the same machine that they used for packaging the various tattoo and gum tab issues. The rip is a byproduct of this process, most likely from the cutting stage, where I suspect a small pin held down the insert (or tattoo or gum wrapper) which would have been unspooling from a large roll while a cut was made and then the just-cut paper was dragged across the pin, leaving the rip as it moved on to the next phase of production.

While the insert contest and premium cards of the era probably were printed on and cut from the same size sheets used for the regular issues they were packaged with, this implies another process and possibly another location as I have a reasonable level of confidence this ancient machine resided on the first Topps production floor at 60 Broadway, Brooklyn and never left until it was decommissioned in the late 1960's. When developers converted 60 Broadway to condos a few years ago, I wonder if they had to clear this old behemoth out? Old office furniture was found in the basement of another old Topps space at 134 Broadway during a similar conversion, so anything is possible!

What A Rush

2011-10-17T13:39:00.001-04:00

I glommed this picture from a Legendary Auctions catalog a while back and have been trying to piece together what is an odd little puzzle, with a definite Valentine's Day flair.

The carton held all three of these boxes, two of which are 1970 in vintage and one (Nice or Nasty Valentines) from 1971. The markings indicate it was a subscription series for a Novelty Assortment, which is not helpful, although the 2nd Series designation may mean a Christmas themed 1st Series was issued; certainly something came before. Would a 3rd Series have been for Hallowe'en? I am thinking Topps was recycling some unsold Valentines cards from 1970; perhaps this was the norm for the holiday-themed sets? The Valentines and Hallowe'en Topps issues of the 60's and 70's are not well documented, so anything is possible.

I am curious if other series were issued like this-any Archivists out there with some info?

Greetings

2011-10-10T18:00:00.002-04:00

Hot on the heels of my last post on the Topps Sports Club News 8" x 10" premium photos, the irrepressible Howard Schenker has sent along a scan of the Bobby Clarke photo:

You can see that the inscription is similar to the one on the Griese photo. Now that is what I expected but when I went back to look at the Garvey photo at 1978, The Year It All Began, it was lacking the inscription: and is "signed" in white ink, not black. Gadzooks!

There is also a tagline I cannot make out in the lower right corner. [Update 11/4/11: Howard Schenker comes through again-the tagline says Full-Color Print,Inc. (212 947-1060)]. The photos would come as part of a "kit" for each sport, something that will be looked at in a bit more detail once some more scans and recollections come in (and following a short break while me and Mrs. Archives visit the home of the National Archives this week).

I do want to try and find scans of the Joe Morgan and Dave DeBusschere photos; I am inferring their existence from other sites (that's why I stated "I think" in relation to the checklist) and would like to see the visual evidence of their existence.

All The News

2011-10-09T00:52:00.005-04:00

Topps launched a very high profile collectors club in 1975, although it is not too well known today. Dubbed the Topps Sports Club, a coordinated effort across all four sports brands was launched, with wrapper side panels ads enticing kids to join. The ads were similar on each sports' wrapper:

The hockey panel is from the well-illustrated Vintage Hockey Collector Price Guide. The panel looks like it was identical on all four wrappers and it also came on the Mini Baseball pack as well. $2.50 would get you in:

For the record, the mailing address was a loud shout from my childhood home. There was also at least one print ad, probably in Boy's Life magazine:

That is from the Project Baseball 1976 site by the way. The newsletter that came with membership started off at 6 pages and then was winnowed down to four. I only have the second issue, which features 1975 Football:

As a bonus you got an 8" x 10" color photo of a popular superstar tucked away inside:

Griese is printed on very glossy, thin paper stock. Other photos in the set seem to include Joe Morgan and Steve Garvey, Bobby Clarke and Dave DeBusschere. There could be more. The Garvey and a little more backstory can be found here.

The project seems to have died out pretty quickly; I suspect the price was a little too steep for the times.

The Long And Short Of It

2011-10-07T16:58:00.003-04:00

I took a hard look at some data on the 1953-54 World On Wheels set recently to see what kind of patterns might emerge in my quest to determine how the two very short series of high numbers were distributed. The most obvious pattern is that the first 80 cards are locked into a repeating series of eight cards based upon the color of the information box on the obverse. This would follow a precedent set by the 1953 Topps cards, which were grouped by their obverse color blocks on the press sheets. As there are no uncut WOW sheets that I am aware of, the 53's will have to serve to illustrate the principle:

It would appear that it was preferable, at the time, to group large blocks of color together, even if it meant the backs would have to be coordinated with the fronts and half would have to be printed upside down:

The next year, Topps would print the 54's in a way that I think illustrates how the WOW sheets would have been composed:

Notice how the predominant pattern is grouping of the background colors into clusters of eight; World On Wheels first 80 cards follow this type of grouping as well. To refresh your memory, here are the first 8 cards in the set:

In addition the first eighty cards of WOW consists of subgroups of 4 that have two full bleed tops and one left side block and one right side block, except for the final group (red) that has no full bleeds. All three main types of vehicles (Sports/Speed, Antique and Modern) are well represented in this first group of 80. Sporty or Speedy cards have full bleeds, although Topps screwed up one or two. Antiques and Modern cards have partial color blocks. In case you are wondering, there are 56 sporty/speedy cards, 67 antique and 57 modern in the full set.

The next group of 12 cards then follows a pattern of 2 reds, 2 greens, 2 pinks, 2 yellows, then 4 consecutive blues, all but one of which (a sole antique model) shows a modern car and mostly the 1953 models at that. This color pattern then almost repeats over the next 12 cards. But 12 is unwieldy and if you are counting along at home that brings us to 104 cards. That certainly seems at odds with the logic of the design of the sheet since after #100 the mix of the three car groups returns. However, if you divide the blues into two groups of 2, the pattern reverses and runs blue, yellow, pink, green, red, resting at #100 with not a post 1953 model in sight. All well and good but the earlier of the two wrappers clearly advertises the set as covering the period of 1896-1954:

Hmmmmmm................

Since Topps press sheets were actually two 100 card half sheets printed together on a 200 card master sheet at the time, my guess is that the first 80 WOW cards were printed on both of the 100 card half sheets with 20 slots left available on each. One sheet would have a run from #81-100 then, while the other could have had a single printed run of #161-170 on it, with another 10 cards from the #1-180 run overprinted, or perhaps just a double printed run of these ten. The first 100 cards of the set are quite easy but the scarcity of the high numbers makes it hard to believe a large run was issued of the ten high number cards.

So now I wonder if a second printing of the first 100 cards took place, without the 1954's included, or vice-versa. When I was a kid, all the boys in the neighborhood would go nuts over the new car models introduced each fall. Had I been buying WOW cards in late 1953, I would have wanted a look at the 1954 models very badly. Topps may have made the cards showing these into an early version of a chase card, seeding very few of them in the packs. Extrapolating further, having issued cards showing the 1954's, Topps then pulled them for another run solely of the first 100 cards and sold only this true first series in cellos, which would not have had the 1954 descriptor on the wrapper, just the generic Trading Card Guild logo or even nothing at all.

Starting at #101 the color patterns become more random but the left/right/two full bleed color blocking returns for a bit. And then, at #125 we get a run of cards where the left and right bleeds become elongated, one each in a matched left and right combination, and ten in overall number, ending with a red grouping that concludes at #144. This indicates a ten card grouping that could have been designed on the fly for some reason; maybe my first theory is wrong and the second series had the #161-170 cards mixed in where this grouping of ten elongated bleeds fell on the sheet but I suspect not.

Take a look at these two cards to see what I mean. I'll show the normal "short" bleed first, then an elongated one:

35% of the card top is white. Most of these left/right bleeds in the set are this way. But in our little ten card mini-run, they look like this:

Only about 20% is white. To match up with the upside down red counterpart, another elongated left bleed card was needed. I am not sure why this elongation occurred; perhaps it was designed after all the other cards had been finished. Another oddity is that the rest of the low numbers that appear after #144 are all of the antique variety, all the way out to #160, somewhat mirroring the #81-100 run of modern cars.

Now at this point in the set we get to where #161-170 should be inserted but given that they are priced half again as much as the "super high's" that have blue backs, I don't think that they were printed after the first 160 cards. What did come later were the 1955 model cards that comprise the super highs. And thanks to Friend o' the Archive Lonnie Cummins, we have a wrapper that shows a date spread culminating in that year:

There would have been a nickel pack issued as well; the '55 dated wrappers are tough and not even John Neuner, the "Wrapper King" knew of them and they do not appear in the Non-Sport Archive wrapper book. Remember that the last ten cards from #171-180 come in blue backs and much, much scarcer red backs. Remember too that the color bleeds touching the left or right card edges on the first 170 card fronts do not fully extend to the edges on the last ten, nor does the big block with the card title on the back. The last ten cards were clearly designed and printed in a different manner than the 170 that preceded them. Let's look at the three varieties again, full bleeds first:

Then note the difference below with the color bar:

See how the bleed of the title color bar stops before it hits either the left or right edge? The same thing occurs on the blue backed cards.

All of the first 170 cards have full bleed color bars on the back. Now the switch to blue is a huge mystery, even to this day but this is just about as weird. It's almost like they were printed with another set and shuffled into the WOW packs. One issue that had a similar blue motif on the reverse was the 1955 All American set. AA would have been printed right around the time the new 1956 models were introduced though, not the 55's.

Pricing for the two high number series goes like this:

#171-180 Blue: Par but about 10-12x compared to #1-100. #101-160 go for about 2x of the first series cards.

#161-170; 2x par

#171-180 Red: 3x par

Well, there is plenty still to ponder.

Tying One On

2011-10-04T19:12:00.001-04:00

OK, I am really punking out today and this will be a short post. I am in the middle of putting together some more data on the 1953-54 World On Wheels set but it's gotten convoluted and won't be ready for few more days. Instead I want to take a peek at the back of a pack, name 1968 Wise Ties, already covered here previously.

I purchased an unopened pack and was going to slice it open at a flap but thought better of it as the passage of 43 years has not weakened the glue one bit on this sucker:

Not only do you get a full checklist of ties on back, you get to see these were made in Hong Kong, famous for its fine haberdashers. If you are wondering the pack measures 9 1/4 " x 3 13/16". There is no production code, possibly due to Topps trying to import the product as a novelty or perhaps actual clothing. Actually, it's likely due to their no gum or candy being in the pack.

There have been some finds of these but I suspect mot remain sealed. I still can't find a color scan of a tie out there in the wilds of the web. Back atcha soon with some more WOW...

Bleed For Me Baby

2011-09-27T20:12:00.003-04:00

Time to take a look at some patterns in the 1953-54 World on Wheels set, a classic Giant Size Topps creation. I picked up an almost full set last week and as luck would have it, it came in a binder with 8 page sheets. These sheets actually revealed a pattern to me that may help crack the code of the set's odd printing.

The first thing I noticed was that groups of 8 cards all share the same color block, although some blocks take up the entire span of the card top. The above sheets shows the first 8 cards in the set. This pattern continues until we hit #80. The full sequence of 8 card "color blocks" runs Blue, Yellow, Pink, Green, Red, Blue, Yellow, Pink, Green, Red. Perfection! Even the lone card with a full bleed color block, # 49, which depicts the Long Island Automotive Museum, has a hint of yellow on it's upper left border. This makes sense, it was printed amidst a run of yellow:

After #80 we get matched pairs. Here is a sheet running from #81-88:

Does this mean yhe first series ended at #80 and not #100 as most guides suggest? Quite possible I think but it's not an iron clad case as Topps was using 100 card half sheets in the time frame this series was printed.

Pink makes its first appearance starting at #85 by the way. I won't show every iteration but we then get a group of four blues, four more pairs, then four pinks, ending at #104. Then there are groups of the familiar 8 in yellow and blue, bring us to #120. Three groups of four follow (ending at #132, followed by 12 reds! Those are probably a group of 4 and and then an 8 but who knows? Groups of four then alternate again until we land at #160, generally considered to be the end of the second series. Remember, each group of 2, 4, 8 or 12 runs consecutively in an odd,even pattern when the colors are matched up. Then we get to #161, which features ten 1954 models:

Missing, one-sorry (it's a 1954 Hudson). The colors now run out of sequence. There are five matched pairs in the series (yellow, pink, blue,, green and red) but they are not consecutive and exhibit randomness. This group of ten is far more difficult than the prior 160 cards and the pricing is higher by a factor of about 15 to 20! So they were either deliberately short printed or tacked on at the end of a run. Either way, they are tough. Plus they have a whole new style of caption, a sort of Deco looking font.

The fonts in the set are organized in a logical way and there are three of them used in the entire set. Here is the Old Time font used for any vehicle from 1920 or earlier:

Newer models had a font that is now called, fittingly, Bazooka:

While this Nash font shows the Deco look:

Note the small font underneath identifying it as a 1953 make. A couple of 53's don't have the year shown in front for some reason but all of them that do have the little 1953. 1954 brings a new look for the new models, prominently showing the 1954 model year in the main caption, at least for US and UK makes:

Foreign makes, other than the lone example from the UK ( Bristol) all feature small, three wheeled cars but totaling only two in the run, get a Bazooka font for their 1954 style caption:

While all 1955 models, which appear in yet another run of ten difficult cards, get the Deco treatment as well:

The end of the set again arrays in five colors with unmatched pairs. I am missing a few but nine of these are US models, with a total of five makes from 1955 plus another three-wheeler thrown into the mix:

The big story with the cards from #171 to 180 though is on the backs, although there is another oddity as well. Here is #176, an austere looking Chrysler from '55 (not sure if that is red, or orange which would have been a new color):

The back looks fairly normal but red backs in the last series are ridiculously tough and priced at a ratio of something like 30-1, if not more. That's because there are, for some bizarre reason, more "common" blue backs:

These are easier than the cards from #161-170, or so the conventional hobby wisdom goes. Note the gap to the left and right of the blue bar at the top of the back. every card from #1-170 has full bleeds to the left and right edges; the cards from #171-180 do not and it suggests they were printed separately. The blue color for the end of the run has not been explained anywhere I have looked.

The red back also lacks the full bleed:

There is one other thing....while that Chrysler red back above has a full bleed front color panel, it may be miscut. I only have the one red back super-high so can't quite resolve it, since it's possible the reds bleed to the edge (can;t find enough examples to tell) but the blues all have a sliver of white off to the cut edge of the color block:

This too suggests a different print run as the first 170 cards all have full bleed to the side and top of the front color block. As we have seen with the 1953 and 1954 baseball cards, Topps would match colors when printing cards in this fashion in a"pivot point" grouping of four. The white border certainly does not seem to suggest the final ten cards were printed like the previous 170.

So what does it all mean? Well, we have the late December of 1953 contest expiry on an insert that came in the five cent packs and given the long lead time Topps had on their dated inserts, late spring of '53 is certainly a possibility for the first series. The 1954 models are more vexing; did they come out with a second series in late 1953 or were they a true 1954 issue added on to a second run of the second series, or even a delayed run that only came out in '54? And don't even get me going on the super high's! Plus there is an old hobby publication referenced by Chris Benjamin in his 1930-60 Guide that stated Topps added 20 cards to the set in 1956!

I think I will ponder this a bit more, there are still the full width bleeds to think about. Those may have something to do with speed.

Pinpoint

2011-09-25T00:37:00.006-04:00

This will be the first of two or three posts about the 1953-54 Topps World On Wheels set. Issued hot on the heels of Wings and actually identified by the similar two syllable "Wheels" on the wrapper, WOW was a fabulously well illustrated set.

That;s one helluva an illustration, no? My concern tonight though, is not the cards, nor their stellar wrapper:

No, I am after bigger game, namely identifying the issue dates of this set. Much like Wings, World On Wheels was a major hit and enjoyed high volume sales over almost a full year. Here, check out Wings, which were introduced a little after the 1952 baseball cards, was being sold into 1953 alongside the third series baseball pasteboards (indicating about May 1 on the calendar), The item to the left of Wings is Clor-aid Gum, a Topps attempt at unseating American Chicle and their Clorets Gum, which would not end well for the boys from Brooklyn:

World On Wheels has some fascinating components,not the least of which are two, 10 card high number series that extended the set well into 1954 (oh, that's for another day). The wrapper above shows a 1954 end date, which puts the cards being issued in two 80 card series in 1953 and a ten card "topper" once artwork on the 54's was available, probably late in the summer of 1953. The set has oodles of''53 models within the "regular" series, which ends at #160. The highs though, give a peek at the 54's in the run from #161-170 and some 55's in an even higher run of ten up to #180. More on these phenomena shortly.

A lot of speculation as to the date of the set still takes place today, almost sixty years hence. I can tell you that a contest insert issued in the pack has an expiration date of December 20, 1953. Topps had long lead times on their pack inserts advertising contests and premiums back in the 50's, some stretching almost a year form the date of issue, although I would think the first series of WOW came out in the spring or early summer of 1953, once Wings had sold its last and had an expiry about six months in the future:

It would seem then, that WOW had a shelf life approaching 18 months-impressive! I'll have more on this next time out.

Flipped Off

2011-09-21T19:33:00.004-04:00

Back to 1949 today again kids-I want to take an introductory look at an obscure Topps product called Flip-o-vision. Clearly named after a newfangled machine called television, the Topps version was a flipbook of 30 thin "pages" that the purchaser had to bind together with a rubber band to flip through. They were sold in an elongated five cent pack that held 10 three scene panels and some gum.

There was no corresponding penny pack as one would have held a mighty short movie. Also, following what I presume to be slow sales of their five cent Magic Photo/Hocus Focus packs earlier in the year, Topps reverted to briefly selling different products in their penny and nickel packs when Flip-o-Vision was issued in the summer of '49; they would return to penny and nickel price points for the same product again in early 1950, probably after seeing that one and five cent versions of Bazooka did not dampen sales when marketed together.

I lied before, it's actually, it's really 29 scenes and a cover panel that make up each "movie", as this excerpt from Woody Gelman's ideas book shows with Dick Tracy giving us a look at a panel as well, courtesy of Heritage Auctions:

Here is another shot from from Heritage:

That's Chico Marx and Marilyn Monroe by the way. That shot really gives you a good idea of how choppy the movie would be! Here's a back shot of one scene, just so you can see what it looks like:

And here is a better look at a front, showing the old font used with Topps Gum in the "Topps Production" line:

It says # 20 and a checklist of 49 subjects (all actors and actresses, not movie titles) was advertised on a wax paper insert that presumably was in each pack, making it the first Topps Checklist ever issued. Some on the original list are thought to have never been issued or pulled very early in the run. The common wisdom is that they were pulled due to copyright issues or complaints by the actors depicted but no one really seems to know. The current checklist is thought to number 51 according to Chris Watson in the Non-Sports Bible but Chris Benjamin has written in his Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards that #60 is known, and that number is not shown as a known movie in the NSB so there could be at least 52 subjects out there. It's possible of course that there are 60 of these little buggers out there but they are not widely collected and like so many of the pre-Hopalong Cassidy Topps sets, not a whole lot is known or written about them.

Topps had high hopes for the set, which was tied in to a promotion with some New York City movies houses but the it must have sold poorly as it was being liquidated as overstock by the spring of 1950. However, there is some tantalizing, albeit tenuous evidence that these little flip books led to the 1951 and 1952 baseball sets. That is a story for another day though and one that will have to keep for a while. In the meantime, go here for an interesting read on all types of flipbooks.

Counter Point Of Sale

2011-09-17T10:58:00.000-04:00

For some reason I have had the scan below for a long time but never got around to posting it here. I have written extensively about Topps Gum, the Shorin's main bread-and-butter product before Bazooka became what it became. Much of the success that came to Topps because of these humble penny tabs came because of their marketing savvy. The counter top display for the "Chanegmakers" is one such example:

The spot display tub held 100 tabs of Topps Gum (originally only one flavor came per tub but that changed) and the retailer got a handy redemption certificate he or she could accumulate and put toward some nice housewares or clothing. The tub above is made out of cardboard and is not all that sturdy. An earlier version, which I do not have a scan of, was made of metal and was probably changed over to cardboard during World War 2 as the military needed as much metal as possible for the war effort.

Topps sold the tubs to their jobbers or wholesalers, if you break the figures down, at around 38 to 40 cents per tub, if a full carton was bought. The jobber probably retained about 35 cents per tub so the retailer made a whopping two bits for each full tub they sold. Still, it was a phenomenally successful product and it helped hundreds of Mom and Pop stores keeps the lights on.

Dice Is Nice

2011-09-13T17:27:00.002-04:00

Every year or so it seems I run across an issue that is not exactly vintage but strikes a chord that seems Archives-worthy. For over a decade now, Topps has issued Heritage sets that mimic the design of a classic and vintage Topps set but include current players. The anniversary matchups are a year off (the first set was released in 2001 and used the 1952 Topps baseball design) but they are basically spanning a fifty year gap (much like your webmaster this year).

In 2010 a 1961 design was used for Heritage baseball; basic but fairly attractive and uncluttered except for the annoying logo at upper left (I despise them on TV as well):

It's the back that got my attention as it is a replica of the 1961 Dice Game in-house test that is among the rarest of all Topps sets:

Compare that to an actual Dice Game Reverse:

Pretty close, except for all the indicia on the newer card. The take away is that this absolutely confirms the 1961 Dice Game cards were a Topps creation as they originals have no identifying marks on them. Retro is clearly in these days, as this 2011 Topps Lineage 3-D card of David Wright shows. I've already blogged extensively on the 1968 3-D set so figured I would throw this on here as a bonus.

That card is not cut straight! The 3-D effect is very "deep" (the player in the background completely disappears when you tilt the card one way and moves around a bit when you tilt it the other way) but I like the effect on the 68's a little more, even though it's not as technically advanced.

Now, when do we get some retro Punchouts?

Little Wonder

2011-09-10T15:33:00.002-04:00

I finally managed to get ahold of a 1948 Topps Tatoo wrapper for the Archive ant it arrived today. I was all set to deposit it in the super-secure storage device I maintain at the Main Topps Archives Research Complex but when I measured it just before doing so, I found small surprise. First things first-and I mean that-this was indeed the first Topps novelty gum product, issued in June of 1948, or just when school was letting out and the tatoo market would be at its apex:

The fold line obscures it but that is a 1948 copyright and as we already knew, it was a Bubbles Inc., product. I blew it up a little so you can see:

The Tatoo is muted in color, as expected and the little rip, endemic to all the smaller Tatoo-type wrappers, shows at the right below but it would be at the top in a vertical position:

These came in the "Tourist Pouch" configuration, as detailed here. I still desperately need a Tourist Pouch so I can mine its secrets but have not had any luck even finding a color scan of one. The front of the wrapper is indeed quite slick as I thought it would be but the surprise was that the wrapper measures a full 1/4" shorter than I presumed it would. The width was the same 1 3/16" that it's younger brother had in 1949 but it's only 1 3/8" long. I don't know if a smaller gum tab was used in '48 or if they just used a shorter wrapper. As always with Topps, I have learned to expect the unexpected.

Sly Sy

2011-09-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

Sy Berger, who was pretty much the public face and voice of Topps for a good half century or so, is on record in numerous sources as stating the caramel in the packs of 1951 Baseball Candy reacted somehow with the coating on the cards (presumably red and blue backs) and caused children to be sickened. Take this quote from a 2001 USA Today article for instance:

"The finish smelled like kerosene,"

Then have a look at Mint Condition, by Dave Jamieson, where Sy Berger states:

"You wouldn't dare put that taffy near your mouth....I won't mention the printer's name who printed the cards but we ended up suing him, and that '51 series was really a disaster."

Other than the fact that it was caramel and that the whole story is likely BS, ol' Sy is right on the money!

Now I do not blame Mr. Berger, who likely was reading from some PR flack's sheet for most of his professional career, for any of this. He was after all, a good company man. But here's the rub: I have done almost a year's worth of extensive digging into the early history of Topps and have read through pretty much anything there is to read about the firm in 1951 on Google Books, The New York Times website, any number of old newspaper archives and numerous books and periodicals and cannot find one contemporary account of any child being sickened by the caramel packaged with the 1951 baseball cards. Zero. Zip. Nada.

In fact, if you look at this scan from an old auction showing how the caramel was packaged in the five cent packs, you can see the candy was segregated from the cards:

Now I do not know if the candy was individually wrapped in the penny Baseball Candy packs and I certainly could have missed a key reference somewhere but with no evidence from 1951 showing up I am really having doubts about this story. Plus but that team card is from the first printing of that set so the caramel wrap was in the earlier packs.

What I think actually happened is that Bowman slapped Topps with an injunction and forced them to stop selling Baseball Candy in 1951. I think the team cards that say 1950 on the obverse were a desperate attempt by Topps to stop the injunction by displaying an incorrect date and it failed (It has been known since at least 1960 that the undated team cards were issued first and then reissued with the 1950 date). Further, I think that the 1952 dated box for Doubles packs means Topps felt they could market the cards in that year as the players involved had contracts that were in effect or the subject of the injunction and that once the 1951 season ended the right of Bowman to enforce their contracts for that year ended. I have not been able to find the legal citations supporting this yet but there is later litigation between the companies that hints at it.

I am also starting to wonder about Sy's story concerning leftover 1952 high numbers being dumped into the Atlantic Ocean in 1960 while he acted as a Supercargo but doubt any evidence to the contrary exists. With the Baseball Candy issues, there is definitely a chance of proving it wrong but I do not have a subscription to Lexis.

For Two Cents Plain

2011-09-05T14:45:00.002-04:00

It's not an election year in most parts of the country but I am in a presidential mood today. A while back I took a look at the 1949 Golden Coin issue that ended up being reused in any number of ways by Topps until 1965. Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins recently sent a long some box scans of the 1949 version that seem to support the notion the cards did not sell well when first issued.

Check this box out. Not only is it in really nice shape but it adds a new layer of mystery to the set:

Yes, Topps has added a coin to the pack i order to move more product. They must have done this quickly as the main tag line on the box indicates "another coin in every bubble gum pack" but the splash lozenge clearly states 2 coins are now being sold. If you look closely at the lozenge, it appears to be stapled in place:

I would surmise that the packs look the same as when originally issued. The additional coin does not seem to have mattered much as the set was being liquidated as overstock by early 1950. I'd wager there are more mysteries lurking when it comes to this set. Any other Archivists out there have anything good?

Mama Don't Take My Flexichrome Away

2011-08-31T19:55:00.004-04:00

With apologies to Paul Simon, I thought today would be a good day to take a look at a coloring process that was a big part of Topps artistic arsenal for many years. Flexichrome is a word often used to describe original Topps images and unless you are a photographer who put in time in the dark room,you would generally think of it as a retouched black and white photograph. Well, thanks to a restless mind and a spare couple of bucks, I was able to mine the wilds of Ebay and come up with the source document for all things Flexichrome:

While the first color photograph was taken in 1855 (or possibly a bit earlier) and a better process had been developed by 1877,it was pretty much all do-it yourself until 1898, following which there were several commercial refinements introduced prior to World War 1. Color photography and the related developing and printing processes were very much a European enterprise until Kodak introduced a color film called Kodachrome in 1935, initially for use in filming 16mm movies but later expanded to still prints and slides by 1941, the same year they offered widespread processing and printing of color prints. A mere year later, a more "modern" process called Kodacolor was introduced, which made it possible for one piece color negatives to be produced, thereby aiding in inexpensive printing and reproduction of color prints. World War 2 and shortages in the aftermath would delay widespread adoption of color photography by amateurs until around the end of the Korean War. Slowly but surely the print and lithographic world turned from black and white to color in the mid 50's.

What was good enough for Uncle Fred though, was not necessarily something that worked in commercial applications. Once color trading cards again became widespread after World War 2, most early efforts were made with illustrations. As photography began to replace such illustration, in no small part thanks to the 1952 Topps Baseball set, a need arose to enable retouching and coloring of photos for "accurate" reproduction on the cards. Around 1949 Kodak marketed a process they dubbed Flexichrome and it quickly was adopted by many companies. As this article in the October 1949 Popular Mechanics shows, it was not a simple process and ironically it was often used on black and white originals in order to produce vivid color products.

To help out their customers, Kodak offered a series of guides to be used by photographers and printers. A guide for using Flexichrome was introduced in 1950 (that is the cover of it shown above) and it was over 40 pages in length! Let's look at a few excerpts, shall we?

OK, so far so good. Now, for a brief overview:

OK, definitely not in Kansas anymore. This is clearly a process designed for use by professionals and very serious amateurs. For instance, here is a basic list of what you will need to get going:

I have to check but I think I just ran out of Vitrolite Glass..... Here is a handy visual guide that shows the entire process in 18 easy to remember steps. Number 6 is quite unsettling:

A talented artist could do any number of things with the process:

Now let's review:

That's an estimated 15 minutes per picture, plus the drying time. Now imaging doing that for 80, 200 or 407 pictures! No wonder Topps needed a stable of artists to make their cards look good. The heyday of Topps Flexichromes runs from 1952 through 1962 or so, when better processes started crowding it out, although it was used into the 1970's and the dyes are still available today, even though film is now just a quaint notion much like corsets or a decent Hollywood movie.

Let's take a final look. Here is a version of a 1953 Who-z-at Star card I have effortlessly made into a grayscale picture with my graphics editor:

I know I am simplifying things with ol' Forrest but Who-z-at Star to me is one of the classic flexi-sets. Here is the finished product:

Once again, I am just amazed Topps was able to carve any profit at all out for their cards and gum with all the massive production and support costs involved.

Good Night Irene

2011-08-29T16:00:00.001-04:00

Just a quickie kids-Hurricane Irene has cut power to the main Topps Archives Research Center with nary an electron in sight so it is iPhone only right now. Hopefully we will be back soon but until then why not check out my article on early Topps card sizing in the latest issue (#261) of The Wrapper.

Plane Crazy

2011-08-24T13:03:00.001-04:00

The many mysteries of Topps Production and Marketing seem never-ending. Recently, Friend o'the Archive Howard Schenker sent along a scan of some packaging for a toy issue called Fighter Planes. The box scan he sent is well-executed but the set itself is not well known so sales must not have, ahem, taken off:

That young lad looks like he could step into an episode of Leave It To Beaver. The pack is essentially a reproduction of the box artwork:

There is a handy checklist on the back and we can see the pack is an envelope and not a true wrapper:

As always, the indicia is helpful:

While the artwork just screams 1950's, the type face and Made In Japan notation put this into the 1960's to my mind. Just what year is unclear, although the Non-Sport Archive wrapper reference indicates 1957 and while some of the dates in that book (which is quite useful and well illustrated folks) are off by a few years, the attribution must have come from somewhere.

Woody Gelman kept a wrapper example in his files:

And in this scan from the aforementioned Non Sport Archive, we see a ten cent version was issued at some point:

There is no extant scan but Chris Benjamin, in his The Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards, No. 4 writes that the ten cent pack has a Duryea credit, which puts it at 1969 or later. Benjamin also shows only twelve planes for the later issue's checklist, just half of the five cent version. I want to dig some more and see what turns up on these planes. If you have an idea, drop me a line.

They Waited 'Til Next Year

2011-08-18T07:37:00.002-04:00

NOTE: I now believe the Red Back printing information below to be incorrect; it appears only two press runs were made. See here for more information. 2/1/12

On occasion, during my random scourings of the Web, I run across an item that gives me pause. A couple of weeks ago, while trolling around I came across an empty box of Doubles, the designation given by Topps to the last method of distribution of the 1951 Red and Blue Backs. I have covered the various gyrations and iterations of this release before, narrowing down a Theory of Everything that ties the set into the Baseball Candy issues that Topps launched in their initial salvo against Bowman's perennial sports issues but a new angle has expanded matters a bit.

Doubles are well known and packs are prevalent to this day thanks to a large warehouse find in the early 1980's:

This pack has two Blue Backs within but more often than not they had Two Red Backs in them. After the caramel scare of mid 1951 where the product, then known as Baseball Candy, was pulled from distribution due to an alleged chemical interaction between candy and card that was (maybe) sickening people. While the Baseball Candy issues more likely were pulled due to an injunction obtained by Bowman and not over the poisoning of the first wave of baby boomers, the results were the same and the candy had to go. That left a pile of cards sitting in Brooklyn, something the Shorin's abhorred.

Ever willing to repurpose a trading card issue, Topps renamed the set Doubles and proceeded to repackage their intricately planned set in to singles, separated from their original, two cards panel configuration, presuambly by a small army of caramel resistant workers gahered together in the waning months of 1951.

A box bottom has recently been photographed and while it looks rather plain, it contains a key detail:

Can't see it? Here is a closeup of the indicia:

Yes, it says 1952! This now requires me to completely revise the perceived order of issue for these little guys, something I will get into next time out. I still am unsure if these would have been sold alongside the 1952 Topps Baseball Cards or when they hit the street in '52 but sixty years later, Baseball Candy is slowly giving up its secrets.

Back & Forth

2011-08-14T12:42:00.002-04:00

I've had a little bit of time to do some more digging on the 1968 Topps 3-D prototype card of Brooks Robinson, discussed most recently here. Of note, Friend O'the Archive Ted Boyd has advised that the type of Orioles patch on Brooksie's sleeve dates the photo to 1962 or earlier. This is not an unheard of date spread for Topps. My guess is that the prototype was originally developed in the winter of 1966-67, a period where Topps was focusing intently on non-traditional products, so that's a 4 or 5 year gap between photo and production.

A digital photo of the back, courtesy of Josh Alpert, showing the Huggins & Scott prototype proves it is very sheer:

It almost seems like the back was skinned off but it's probably just a different material than the backing of an issued 3-D card. More than one material may have been tested or pitched to Topps. Here is the front again, in another photo provided by Josh:

The above example is the uncracked one, of course. The material of the card with the crack is unknown at present, although I am working on finding out its composition. However, there may b ea third example out there and it's one that helps tie the cards in to Xograph, producers of the 3-D cards that actually amde it into packs. Bob Lemke alerted me to the fact a picture of a version with a stamped reverse is shown in the 2011 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. Sure enough, it is:

It's a little faint but you can see the word XOGRAPH stamped atop some wording similar to that found on the back of some later production proofs. It's also hard to see but I don't think that is the cracked version of the card, which I recall had a Beckett connection and would not necessarily have been in the competing Standard Catalog. Rob Lifson of Robert Edward Auctions also passed along his opinion as to provenance:

I have never had this card myself but have seen images and heard of it. I think the description as a prototype for 1968 Topps 3D sounds reasonable, and that description carries a very broad brush. Xograph in Texas produced the 1968 Topps 3Ds for Topps and it is likely they made prototypes prior to their small production run. It is speculative, but it certainly seems reasonable that this is what this card is. The fact that the photo is earlier would not preclude them from using it in 1967 or 1968, so that all alone wouldn’t bother me. I’d like to know the provenance, as I’m sure that would answer all the questions, but my best guess is that this really was produced by Xograph (I don’t know if they were the only ones producing this “3D’ product at the time, or just the only one producing cards – if they were the only ones offering this product due to technology patents etc that could probably be looked up and if that is the case would also be extremely supportive). Whatever it is, it does not appear to be intended to be a finished product at all (and that is why there is no Xograph company attribution; even the 1968 Topps 3D cards say Xograph, not Topps, except when hand ink stamped on reverse identifying them as samples). The borders on Robinson look fairly narrow and of course the corners are square. I wonder if this is even machine cut (I can’t tell from the image but if it is not machine cut that would also be consistent with it being a prototype.

The projection on the Standard Catalog card matches the cracked one, i.e. "Nessie" does not have a tail (see my prior posts for this part of discussion). I plan to revisit the projection comparisons at some point but will wait a little bit until I can obtain higher resolution scans, hopefully once Huggins & Scott gets their auction up.

All of this means that there are potentially three versions of the card:

1) Cracked
2) Standard Catalog
3) Huggins & Scott

where 3) is a distinct variation from 1), with 2)'s category presently unattributable.

Spirit of '66

2011-08-11T07:42:00.003-04:00

Not too long ago I took a look at the early months of 1969, when Topps transitioned their manufacturing indicia from showing Brooklyn to Duryea. The move to Duryea was completed in early 1966 and Topps designed a new logo in celebration. Production code dating would soon follow, likely as a way to help coordinate efforts between the creative staff in Brooklyn and the packaging plant in Duryea, with a side trip to Philadelphia for printing.

The new logo, all in lowercase and with a distinctive curved "t", is well known and one I think is a minimalist classic:

Trademark records indicate Topps used this logo for the first time in late 1965, although I have yet to find any 1965 wrappers or merchandising showing it and it was probably phased in slowly, first appearing on letterhead and marketing information for the 1966 sets. Topps then began using the logo on their packaging in early 1966. You can see the '65 baseball wrapper uses a slightly stylized verison of the old Topps lettering that dated back to 1938 and the founding of the company:

The logo then transitioned to a very generic looking one by the time the football cards hit the shelves in late summer:

Some wrappers, usually featuring images licensed from TV shows, didn't even mention Topps:

That Exploding Battleship was being pushed all year by Topps, by the way. For some reason, the massively successful Ugly Stickers had a wrapper that was devoid of any Topps logo as well:

By 1966 the new logo was featured prominently on the baseball packs, which also introduced an early version of the baseball design that would be replicated many, many times in future years.

Some old branding would remain though, such as on this header card on the 1966 Rak Paks:

That's from www.baseballwrappers.com by the way-go give 'em some love! I suspect Topps were using up old header cards and of course the branding/logo wasn't even consistently deployed as this 1966 wrapper shows:

It's Topps, so there will always be inconsistencies but by the time the '66 football season had rolled around they were on top of it:

It's around this time that the production codes started to be developed and used. As I've said previously, those codes require some serious contemplation before they can be dissected but it will happen eventually.

Wow

2011-08-07T15:43:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note today kids, a nod to the Topps Archives auction held at The National this past week. No, I did not have an auction but Topps did and they had some real doozies. I am going to post something from their archives but not something, I don't think, that was auctioned last week. I am talking about and drooling over this alternate 1957 Sandy Koufax picture, that shows Ebbets Field in all its glory:

What a great shot that is-even better than the one on his actual '57 card:

I would love it if Topps did a real, themed set focusing on the classic Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium and Polo Grounds shots someday. It will never happen, but an Archivist can dream.....

UPDATE: August 10, 2011: I just realized I inadvertently swiped the alternate Koufax scan from the fabulous Fleer Sticker Blog and not the Topps site-sorry Jon--too many tabs open at the time! Click here for the Sandy scans and also some other sweet alternate poses.

That's (Proto) Typical

2011-08-03T20:13:00.006-04:00

I am really sorry to have missed this year's National in Chicago. I went to Baltimore last year and had a blast, visiting in person with online buddies I had never met before and wandering the convention hall in search of various treasures. There are so many great cards on display it's hard to suck it all in.

This year one of the true rarities being showcased is something previously looked at here, a 1968 Topps 3-D prototype of Brooks Robinson, which Huggins & Scott will be auctioning soon. I was lucky enough to receive an iPhone photo of it from Friend O'the Archive Josh Adams and after a close look-see, I believe it is a second example of this elusive card.

Produced as a prototype for what became the '68 3-D set, the Robinson card looks something like an inverted '67 regular issue card. I'll show the previously known copy first and then the new one. Ignore the brightness as I have no idea of the camera or scan settings used originally.

In addition to the crack that's on the previously known example (it runs at a 45 degree angle between the O and L before cutting horizontally across the L and into the middle of the E, then turns 45 degrees again and exits onto the right border parallel to the brim on Brooksie's batting helmet), there are some cropping differences. The most noticeable ones are the distance between the bottom of his belt buckle and the bottom edge of the card (there's more, uh, length on the newly found version) and the little blob to the left of the bat just below where the label would be if you could see it.

Rather than give you a couple of crotch shots, I'll show the blob, which I have christened Nessie, for reasons that will soon be clear:

Looks like the Loch Ness Monster, right? That's from the version with the crack. The outside border on this card is thin in the scan but it's there. Now check out the other card's Nessie:

It's grown a tail, stretching left to the border! There are other cropping differences as well but I don't have high-res versions of either card and they are hard to show here.

I am hoping for a back scan to make its way here, it may have some more information on it. Wish I was there to see it in person!

Rooked No More

2011-08-02T19:24:00.007-04:00

Well, following last night's bizarre picture posting problem, which appears to be have been caused by some magical metafile mumbo jumbo that can crop up without warning, much like the Spanish Inquisition, I can present the full, ten card visual checklist of the 1971 All Star Rookies now, like so:

That Munson would be the big ticket item in this set, no doubt about it but the ten subjects are all so rare they would probably go for serious juice no matter who is depicted.

The ten players exactly mirror the 1970 Topps Rookie All Star selections, so this is the full set. John Ellis's photo is taken from his 1970 Yankees Rookie Card:

His Yankee counterpart, Munson, was not taken from the 1970 set photos. Of the remaining eight cards, Foster and Gallagher did not debut with Topps until 1971, although Cain was in the '69 set, albeit with a different photo. Billy Conigliaro, the less famous of these ball playing brothers was in both the '69 and '70 sets as was Carl Morton, while the other guys made appearances in '70. No 1971 photos were used either, so a concerted effort to use fresh photos was made, with the odd exception of that goofy looking Ellis card (that face! that hat!). All the team logos look like the current versions of the time on these cards too; check out how Carbo had the old Reds cap on his 1970 Topps card, which was clearly updated for the All Stars set:

This leads me to believe Topps was using very current shots from their files for the nine cards that did not have a picture in previous set.

I suspect this set will be auctioned, given that these are the first color photos of it that I can recall seeing, so it's out and about someplace, probably at the National which is in full swing as I type this. Thanks again to Craig Williamson for the vintage Topps goodness; I'm hoping he can tell me a bit more about their background so stay tuned..

Hey Rook!

2011-08-01T21:07:00.001-04:00

Sitting here at the main Topps Archives Research Complex instead of being at the National doesn't have to mean all sorts of oddities are being missed by yours truly. Au contraire! Not one but two e-mails bearing rarities have been received on this very day. I was originally going to wait to post about both but one is awaiting a key fact and I just had to show the other as it's one of those once-in-a-lifetime type hobby moments.

New reader Craig Williamson sent along scans of all ten the of the uber-rare 1971 Topps All Star Rookies, an embarrassment of riches and then some! The set has been known for some time and they have always been considered to be proofs, possibly for some sort of Rookie Banquet favor. However, a careful review of the known history of the cards and the well-composed scans sent by Mr. Williamson lead me to believe they are most likely an internal "pitch" creation, not unlike others we have seen here in the past (scroll down a little to see).

The cards are affixed to much larger pieces of cardboard, which is the detail that pushes them into the internal pitch category. Here is a long shot of the Carl Morton that shows this:

Note the pencil or light pen notation in the upper right corner.

The cards are described in the Standard Catalog as being Standard Size and affixed to cardboard measuring 6 1/2" x 9 1/2". Unfortunately I've got to do some serious editing to the files as Blogger is rotating them 90 degrees no matter what I do right now. So I will work out the kinks and post the full visual checklist next time out.

You Can't Go Home Again

2011-07-29T19:31:00.004-04:00

While Topps moved their gum production and card cutting, wrapper wrapping and pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down from Brooklyn to Duryea, PA in early 1966, it took three more years for their packaging to reflect the fact. If you took a peek at the bottom of a box or a wrapper flap from 1966-68, it would show Topps as a Brooklyn company. That changed in 1969, for reasons that are not clear to me but which probably had something to do with a tax advantage. Topps still maintained their executive offices in Brooklyn after the move, where Sy Berger and Woody Gelman worked along with dozens of other people but that was pretty much it.

So when did the change happen? Well, right in the middle of the baseball card run it seems, although like everything else associated with Topps, it's complicated.

The regular nickel wax packs in 1969 all showed Brooklyn when they debuted. Here is a basic pack, from either the first or second series, although it could be a high number pack as well:

You can see that Brooklyn (or, rather B'KLYN) is shown for the Topps address.

It's the same with the 3rd and 4th series pack, which held the Deckle inserts:

But not the the 5th series pack, which held the little rub off decals:

That says Duryea folks! As a bonus, I never realized there were instructions on how to rub the rub offs before researching this post. The change in wrapper graphics to show the instructions may have prompted the switch to Duryea (the fronts would just have been overprinted with the triangle splash on the earlier wrappers).

Now, here comes the tricky part. The ten cent cello wrappers, introduced with ten cards as Topps was trying to put damper on spiraling production costs, show Duryea:

The problem with this cello pack is that it was sold at least from the first through the fifth series. I can only find Duryea versions but can't confirm a Brooklyn cello is not out there. As Topps liked to issue a new series every six weeks or so back then, the fifth series would have hit the streets around July and been printedat most a month or so earlier. But almost every other '69 wrapper I can find shows Duryea, whether it be the Baseball Posters, Man on the Moon or Football. I'll have to keep looking but Topps issued a lot of sets in 1969! For the record, the '69 Bazooka box shows Duryea.

Any Archivists out there who want to help out, send scans to the e-mail address at the top of the frame. Just beware, some sets identified in the guides as 1969 issues are really from 1968 (like Planet of the Apes).

Incidentally, 1966 also marks the beginning of Topps production codes, sometime in the late summer or early fall, which are quite useful for dating certain issues but would require me to use a slide rule to explain and which will be addressed another day. If that's not enough, the curved Topps logo also debuted once the move to Duryea was made in '66. So why didn't Duryea replace Brooklyn at that time on the packaging?

Driven Crazy

2011-07-27T18:24:00.001-04:00

This seems to be the summer for new Topps oddities. No sooner do I sort through the Pocket Baseball Game mystery than Friend o'the Archive Al Richter sends along a real head scratcher. This time though it's not a pack, or a card, or a box or a premium. Rather, it's a license plate:

About the only thing I am sure of is that it postdates the 1966 move of the company to Duryea, Pennsylvania (the curved logo is a post-Brooklyn design). In fact, the little heart instead of a V in love makes me think it could even be from the late 70's. Maybe these were given out or sold in the company store. I have to say the face is a little spooky though....

Made In The USA

2011-07-24T11:21:00.002-04:00

Of all the major sports, when comparing Topps issues and innovation in the 50's, 60's and 70's, baseball and hockey have the most interesting and varied sets and inserts. Considering that until 1966, none of the hockey sets (with the possible exception of the 1954 issue) were issued in the lower 48 and the population of Canada is about 10 percent of the U.S., it's even more impressive.

One of the more elusive hockey inserts of the era are the 1962-63 Hockey Bucks. Distributed as an insert with the 1962-63 Hockey cards, there are 24 subjects in a set known for miscuts, folds, staining and general all around non-mintness. The US Baseball and Football sets from 1962 also had similar inserts and for all their problems, they are quite attractive collectibles. I picked one of these up of the 'bay and after a long wait due to a Canadian postal service strike, it finally showed up here at the main Topps Archives Research Complex. Incredibly, it held a small surprise.

Oh the front was as expected, loosely based on real Canadian currency:

But it's the back that held a secret:

Depending upon your viewing device of choice it may be a little hard to see but the bucks were printed in the good ol' US of A:

The wrappers for the set clearly indicate the cards were Canadian in manufacture, so this was a surprise. Still, the bucks were clearly marked as U.S. product so it was all on the up and up-I guess it was just cheaper to make these in the States.

Flipping Out

2011-07-22T19:05:00.000-04:00

One of the more terrifically tough Topps test issues is 1966's Flipper. Produced in black & white, Flipper was an extremely limited test or in house "pitch" issue that never saw a retail shelf. While the TV show it was taken from ran from 1964-67 the cards are easy to date at 1966, thanks to a copyright line on the back. I took a quick look at the set here in connection with a bunch of similar sets of the same era and don't really plan to address it today except in reference to another issue.

Another Flipper issue exists, called Flipper's Magic Fish and it is a real oddity. The box carries the same copyright line (1966 Ivan Tors Films, Inc.) Tors was a Hungarian director who was a bit ahead of his time and responsible for movies and TV shows alike; Daktari being one of his more well know productions. MGM also gets a credit but the 1966 Tors ID is the thing that dates the issue. The box does not mention Topps for some reason but the strangest thing of all is the two cent price tag. I can't recall any other Topps sets at that price point.

Each fish would curl up in your hand when held long enough and there is even some detail to each of the ten fishes depicted:

That's a paper wrapper and the reverse is what tells us it's a Topps issue (O-Pee-Chee in Canada):

As you can see, the fish were made in Japan and thanks to the the wrapper reverse we have a complete set checklist. My feeling is that this bizarre set was meant to be an insert with the Flipper cards and when that set was abandoned Topps made the best of a bad situation and isseud the Magic Fish on their own. These are hard to find as well and I missed the auction these scans were taken from. I think I can even hear Flipper mocking me with that high pitched laugh as I type this....

The Face of 1966

2011-07-18T13:01:00.004-04:00

Oh, the twists and turns this blog takes! Today we enter the world of fashion and supermodels for no good reason at all, excepting a post I have been working on is not yet ready and I am about to debark on a short journey with Mrs Archives and don't want to leave without a quick look at something esoteric.

Esoteric in this case is a very strange set called Twiggy, which is named after the supermodel that just about started the waifish, heroin-chic look of the late 60's. The set is quite scarce and it is believed to either have failed a marketing test (possibly twice) or been withdrawn just before distribution was to occur. The cards are black and white and measure 3 1/8" x 4 3/8" and have nothing on their backs at all:

The wrapper looks like a test version cello, with no gum included, nor even a mention of Topps:

The clear cello back shows the whiter-than-white reverse:

Twiggy is thought to consist of 34 cards, primarily on the basis of this uncut proof sheet, which has two duplicate pictures (and is a little hard to see). If the columns were lettered and the rows numbered like a spreadsheet, then I1 and C3 are the same as are I2 and D4:

Is that the full set? I think it possible as Topps would often proof only the basic rows that would appear on the final production sheet without regard for any that might reoccur above or below. There are no partial cards along the borders so this very well may be the array.

The box is intriguing for a number of reasons. Here, take a look and see what you can observe:

The most obvious thing, other than the hot pink color, is that the box has a ten cent price point while the wrapper shown above only sold for a nickel. It would seem likely then that the ten cent test failed and the cards were repackaged at a lower price. That test either failed as well or the cards never hit the streets; a distinct possibility as most if not all known extant cards are from either Topps internal files or were sold by employees of the firm at a later date.

The box also helps with dating in two ways. The Topps logo shown on what would be the box bottom is the newer style that debuted with the move of gum production and product packaging to Duryea, PA in the late winter and early spring of 1966. The other clue is the lack of a production code, an internal reference added beginning in 1967 to each new product. Since Twiggy really got hot in 1966 and there is no production code shown on the packaging, I estimate 1966 as the date of the set.

The Twiggy phenomenon was brief and bright, although she stopped modeling in 1970 of her own accord. You can see some other materials and merchandise here to get an idea of how big a deal she was in the go-go 60's.

Let's Go

2011-07-15T10:31:00.001-04:00

One of the things that constantly amazes me is how organized the Topps sales department was in the 1940's. I have seen letters involving orders of only a few dollars and records detailing down to pennies the status of accounts Topps maintained for jobbers and employees alike.

Topps was very, very good at following up their jobber and constantly pushing them to move product. One way they did this was to use a penny postcard to send a stream of reminders. This one is from the wilds of the WWW and is for Stop 'n Go gum, so it pertains to to either the small, 1949 and/or larger 1950 version of the gum that was sold along with the License Plates cards. It's in rough shape but that's probably due to the real cheap stock used:

They certainly grabbed your attention from the first word, those Topps boys did! The use of the word novelty may lean toward this being for the earlier issue but it's really no smoking gun. The front shows this card was never used:

A simple penny postcard was a vital tool in the early days. By 1952 the rate had gone to two cents, so I wonder if Topps changed methods or just went along with the bump.