Sharman Gets Squeezed

The first Topps Basketball set was issued to commemorate the 1957-58 NBA season. Its eighty subjects offered a gaggle of rookie cards and was the first nationally issued set to solely feature pro hoops stars since Bowman's 1948 effort.  The Topps Vault offered some of the player contracts over the years and they contain some intriguing details. Here, take a look at Bob Cousy's:

Frank somebody was the Topps agent but I can't make out the last name (anyone know?). As per paragraph three, Topps clearly contemplated issuing Basketball cards in the following years but they ended up with 10 Million leftovers at the end of the season, or enough to make 125,000 sets! So that killed any thought of that and Fleer would be the next NBA partner in 1961-62 (and also failed to issue any follow-ups for more then two decades). The mention of Blony along with the expected Bazooka in the wording is not something I've seen before, but Topps was working hard to promote the bubble gum brand they had acquired in the Bowman buyout. They even highlighted it on the back of the wax packs:

Question time: which player is featured on the front of the pack?

There's only three players who used that number in 1957-58: Dick Atha, Ernie Beck and Larry Friend, all of whom are in the set and none of whom are posed like that.  It could just be generic but drop me a line if you have any thoughts.

The vault (I was unaware they slabbed some of their stuff when it was active) also had the check as cashed by Cousy:

Bob Cousy still walks this planet at the age of 97.  Did you now that after he retired from the Celtics following the 1962-63 season, he came back and played a handful of games with the Cincinnati Royals in 1969-70? You could look it up.

Here's a closer look at that back side.  The endorsement:

And the clearance stamps:

Not all contracts were created equally though.  Here's Bill Sharman's:

He only got half of what Cousy did! Clearly Topps never got this message:

Tom Heinsohn got squeezed as well:

Sy Berger snagged those two. Cousy was probably the biggest star in the league but Bob Pettit also got $100.  The other two contracts I've seen, for Dolph Schayes and Rod Hundley both show $50 payments.

Hundley, in fact, was signed in October 1956, while all the others here were from September and October 1957, so Topps was contemplating the set for some time:

Note, however that Sy signed the contract over a year later.  The Topps check was also issued in 1957, a couple of weeks before it was formally executed.

More offical Blony action! I'm sure there's more to this set's story but for now, the boilerplate is all we have.