Heritage Auctions recently concluded an auction that featured the holdings of an ex-Topps executive, which is something that happens once or twice a year now it seems. These consignments often yield rare, sometimes almost impossible, items and this latest batch contained several jaw-dropping pieces. The executive is unnamed but Heritage theorizes he may have held the entirety of the prototypes that eventually resulted in the test release of 3-D Baseball in 1968. That's incorrect as some, but not all, of the issued Baseball 3-D's are here and two of the known Football subjects are missing but the array is certainly impressive and appears to feature a good bit o'fresh to the hobby goodness.
The consignment also has football (US and soccer-style) prototypes and a surprise non-sports subject. Today I want to focus on baseball, given the wonderfully exciting World Series that will conclude tonight, capping the first MLB season to begin and end outside of the United States no less. Let's kick off with the semi-unicorn Brooks Robinson prototype-yowsa!
I last examined the 3-D Brooksies in detail way back in 2014 and found four extant copies were known, all of which have distinguishing features. Among those features were varying degrees of damage and/or dirt on each each. It appears a fifth was hammered by Heritage in 2023 as well.
The front of the Heritage example is almost pristine, as is the back:
Next up is our old friend M. Clough, who usually goes by the moniker Yaz. At least one of these was known already and you can see it here, along with some other goodies we'll get to next time out. As with the Robinson card, the Clough/Yaz is also very, very clean:
That little white dot on the bill of his cap seems to be on the original source image. $34,160 brought this one home, no doubt impinged by the lack of Yaz's name appearing. It was pretty common to use fake names on such creations back then. The reverse looks even brighter than Brooksie's:
However, look at this image and the Robinson, you will note the absence of the Xograph back stamps on these, which identified the firm and also indicated they were samples to be returned to them. The previously known "Clough" and one of the B. Robby's has a stamp (and another Robinson has remnants of one showing), so these were apparently meant for Topps to retain after that part of the process played out.
There were also ten 3-D Baseball cards in the batch, the three of which make up the known proofs that never made it to the test packs. I'll pass on copying all of them out here, just click over to Heritage to see.
The Robinson and Clough garnered AUT grades, whereas the three prototypes that come close to resembling the final product received two 4's and 5 from PSA. The remaining seven issued 3-D cards range from PSA 4 to 8, although the backs all look pretty clean as well, save for some light foxing on a couple. So I'm not sure all of these were Xograph samples but it really doesn't matter, given the ongoing popularity of the 3-D Baseball set.
Football from all sorts of places next time out, plus the surprise!
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