Ring Thing

The Topps Vault may no longer be in operation but they left behind a rich trove of images that, despite some hiccups with identification here and there, are a fabulous historical resource. I have a large amount of scans from the Vault piled up on my hard drive and while reviewing a gaggle of them today, re-realized there were Topps file copies of some contracts buried among the photographic images. Today we'll look at those by covering some subjects in the 1951 Ringside set.

These contracts were very basic agreements, unlike those being offered to baseball players at the time via the agents used by Topps, surely due to the fact the Shorin's didn't intend to issue annual boxing (and wrestling) sets.  Ringside, which featured a good number of retired boxers, is missing some big-name pugilists (Jack Dempsey for one) but they sure had a nice roster of talent overall. Here's a release agreement signed by the infamous Abe Attell:

Perhaps he took some merchandise instead of additional cash but I suspect this is just one of two parts, where the other was a little bit more involved and actually executed by Topps.  Here's Barney Ross's:

Topps used Arthur Susskind, Jr. as an agent for the set.  The son of a famous, hard-hitting boxer and longtime ring referee nicknamed Young Otto, the younger Susskind was also well known in the world of the sweet science and indeed in many sports; among other things he was the ring announcer at Madison Square Garden and a publicist for various New York based pro teams and leagues.

Despite the absence of the Manassas Mauler, whose famous Broadway restaurant near the old Garden was humming in 1951 (and exterior shots of which could be found in all sorts of places), many famous names did end up in the set.  Here's Jake LaMotta's release:

Some releases didn't have a dollar amount represented on them and I'm not sure why, Here we see Jersey Joe Walcott signed off using his ring sobriquet:

Walcott slugged his way to the Heavyweight championship in 1951, taking the belt from Ezzard Charles. The other signee here was his manager Felix Bocchicchio, who was a violent man with a criminal past. They look pretty chummy here but boy, boxing really attracted all types of unsavory characters:

(Courtesy camdenhistory.com)

These are all of a kind but the names involved were so famous, I want to highlight a couple more.  Joe Louis was about as big a name as there ever was in the boxing game:

Right behind him in "Q-score" would be Rocky Marciano, who would defeat Walcott in early 1953 for the Heavyweight crown. Here's Rocky abusing the speed bag:

 

Seems like Marciano was good at baseball too:

Another release, another sobriquet:

I'm not sure if Susskind was the sole agent for Topps; the set has 96 subjects and not all of them were even boxers. I mentioned wrestlers, here's one:

Ringside, as we can see, was another of the panelized sets Topps was releasing at the time, where gaudy five-cent packaging was designed to deliver, well, a knockout:

The reverse has what I'm betting is the first use of the word "fistiana" on a pack of trading cards:

Ringside is a fairly deep and very important set in terms of documenting famous boxers. I feel it's quite underappreciated today, in a world where UFC dominates the field of people knocking each other senseless for fun, money and entertainment.

Boxes, Topses And Rockses

A little miscellaneous action today campers! I've got a handful of unrelated scans piled up here at the Topps Archive Research Complex so why not show 'em off for an end of summer post.

I've shown the little nickel box the 1956 Topps Baseball Buttons were sold in a few times here but not the retail box, which is also a thing of beauty:

Smilin' Ted!

Here's more of an oblique look:

And because I like to show as much detail as possible, here is the underbelly:

With some recent focus here on the 1960 Baseball Tattoo set, this box and sleeve combo seems appropriate to highlight:

Here's the bottoms, with the order reversed from the above image:

Was that sleeve designed to allow for Canadian sales? I lament that a lot of the current certification of boxes can hide good information like this beneath the COA. Also, get of my lawn!

Finally, some Rocks O' Gum for your viewing pleasure.  Here's how the little tub looked back in 1971:

The Caveman theme is pretty sweet and quite expressive but that guy is no Fred Flintstone as he seems pretty happy to be cracking rocks:

As seen previously with their other similar confections sold in tubs, Topps actually used Dixie Cups:

Inside, the gum was exactly as described:

Hopefully they did not live up to their name when chewed!  I love the attention to detail, it almost looks like you could break a tooth on those rocks.

Orange Sunshine Days

A neat little sell sheet popped up in my feed last month for 1962 Topps Stamp Gum or, as some guides and hobbyists like to call it, Famous Americans.  This 80 stamp set has always been a bit of a headscratcher to me.  After issuing large sets of Baseball Stamps in 1961 and 1962, both of which were pack inserts with the regular issue Baseball cards each season and then paired with standalone albums that sold for a dime, no album was ever created for Famous Americans. This has always seemed very strange to me but maybe those standalone albums didn't sell too well and Topps decided to take a different tack.

Here is the sell sheet, which is pretty detailed:

Maybe the hobby nomenclature should be Great Americans but I digress. Note the text indicates an album was never contemplated but also the weird numerical code running up from the bottom on the right edge:

That's either C46ZM10  or C462M10 and I'm not sure I've seen anything like that on sell sheets of this era.  It predates any commodity code system I'm aware of by about four years but it could just be a reference to the print order for the sheet. However, a smaller and more stamp-themed sheet exists and also has the exact same code:

So I'm really wondering that really is  some kind of primordial commodity code.

My additional interest in the set today has less to do with the subjects therein, which I admit can be interesting...

...but rather has more to do with the gum itself, which was orange flavored. Topps seems to have been experimenting in earnest with different artificial fruit flavors around this time:

Topps would use fruit flavors increasingly often as the Sixties wore on but usually as a standalone confectionery product. While Bazooka and (especially) Bozo offered orange bubble gum over the years, the next time they offered a sports-themed ride along was in packs of  "Sports Gum"  in 1981, with Thirst Break:

Each of those soft pieces had its own comic wrap:

As you can see, 56 of those Sports Facts comics were included in a set that was tested and then apparently discontinued due to lack of sales.  Gatorade had an orange sports gum product at this point that was readily available (and quite tasty) so I assume Topps was trying to copy their success.

The Thirst Break box bottom offers an object lesson in Topps commodity codes.  You can see on the comic the code ends in -0, which signifies 1980 in this case.  But the box, which also has a -0 code, is copyright 1981:

Here, 1980 is the year of product conception and that code means Topps started tracking specific costs associated with it in that calendar year.  With that 1981 copyright, this is a great example of how a product's year of issue can fall after the commodity code date. The code on the overwrap is in a format I've not seen previously, so some further cracking seems to be in order.

Sports Facts are not that easy to find and often found in rough shape, with product staining almost a given. I doubt they will ever be widely collected but it's a set loaded with Hall-of-Famers from various sports and a bit of an under the radar Topps collectible.

Yellow, It's Me

An update post today kids, as some bits o'info have flowed in on 1974 Baseball team card markings covered here a month ago.

Here's a copy of the Red Sox "dot" team card from '74, as forwarded by Keith Olbermann. The offending blip is left of the team name:

Two points: that missing patch of sky looks like a spot of the card was lost; this is not indicative of how the dot variations look.  Also, something else is amiss, namely the left edge of that photo, which looks that way on many of the examples of the card I've seen, dot or no dot:

The problem seems to be a leftward shift in the yellow ink pass, this closeup reveals a yellow halo around the heads of the players and you can see the yellow bar has been pushed outside the outer black neatline:

1974 is not a year known for sharp, well-defined images but that's pretty bad.  Some Red Sox team cards came through ok though, although that gnarly strip of fuzz hard left in the image remains, so that seems to be a prep or proofing problem:

I do find it interesting that the three cards that have markings on their front all have yellow frame lines or team names (Pittsburgh has both, Oakland just one-the frame line). If I did this right, these team cards also all have yellow present:

Yellow Team Name: New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros

Yellow Frame Line: Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres

I don't know if any of this is significant or not but it may help narrow down the potential pool of marked team cards in 1974.