Mid Century Mindfreak

It's been a wild month for auctions, with a half dozen major ones concluding recently.  A surfeit of goodies for sure and I wonder if so many auctions happening at once depresses prices but I digress. Big auctions usually mean new stuff coming out of the floorboards and such, especially old boxes and uncut sheets.  This season's offerings do not disappoint.

First up, an uncut sheet with a full set of Flags Of All Nations/Soldiers of the World, a 1949 Topps penny tab insert offered by Heritage:

Such a colorful piece!  I'm fairly certain it was done by Solomon & Gelman. That's a whole dollar's worth of product there! The flags side has a nice look as well:

More uncut goodness from this auction, a 1949 X-Ray Roundup set on two 100 card halves.  I think this sheet was cut as I've seen one with all 200 cards.

Dig the patterns on the reverse, they are downright mesmerizing:

Here's a closeup of two of the quadrants:

Neat, huh? You can see the blue images of the "X-Ray"pictures underneath.

It's not all uncut sheet though, they even had this baby, devoid of lollipops but wondrous nonetheless (and mine!):

Dig that two tone Topps logo! The reverse confirms only the larger, "metal" denominations came with this configuration:

Hakes had a penny tab box of World Coins in their latest:

There's even another iteration of packaging for this set, which probably had a two year shelf life from 1949-51 and is one of the more confusing issues ever put out by Topps. Click through here if you want to see it.

So many treasures......

Tremendous Topps Tatoo Trio

Fantastical News Fellow Archivists!  Thanks to a recent eBay auction, we now have a date for the Bubbles Inc. Davy Crockett Tatoo set.  Don't forget,Topps used the Bubbles Inc, nom de gomme on occasion. In these circumstances, I suspect it was due to the fact they were pumping out a quickie, public domain type tatoo issue to capitalize on the Crockett crze while at the same time issuing officially licensed cards under the Topps name.

An empty retail box of this issue is a rare bird and even rarer still are any known sightings of same.

It's a little rough but still quite presentable. As nice as it is, the good stuff is underneath:

Yes, it's a 1955 issue and not a '56, as previously believed.  I did think, due to the Summer of '55 explosion of Crockett-mania, that such a dating was possible when I compiled the Modern Hobby Guide and had it as circa 1956 but now it's officially dated.

That's not all on the early Topps tatoo front though.  The retail boxes for the 1949 Flags of All Nations/Soldiers of the World and its younger but but bigger reissue, 1950's Flags of the World Parade can now be classified by year thanks to a Memory Lane auction.  Here, take a gander:

It's a Canadian version as the stamp indicates but no matter (a lot of nice empty boxes and even old packs come from Canada; I suspect a trove was found at an old O-Pee-Chee warehouse years ago and is being rationed out to collectors via various auction houses). Now let's look at the bottoms:

Not much on the square one but the elongated version has a 1950 copyright and must have held the bigger 1950 reissue.  The square box for 1949 makes a lot of sense as the cards came with penny gum tabs, which Topps sold in round tubs, which obviously would fit in such a configuration. I would love to see if the tub is branded and not generic; it must be different than the  tubs used to sell Topps gum as that original brand was quite prominently shown for point of sale. 

Another configuration exists, although its not from this auction:

This held the panelized version's five cent packs in 1950 but there is a twist:

That looks a lot like the box bottom up above but it has a 1949 copyright!  The only thing I can think of is that Topps issued the panelized nickel version just after they pulled the penny tab version, which could explain the very basic graphics and lack of color on the cover.  Then the penny pack shown above was issued. That is my current theory at least; think about it while you ponder the all important front and back views:

Quire colorful, eh?  The back view on the 1950 box tries to sell some Bazooka as Topps abandoned their traditional gum tab market:

From what I have seen, when they first issued the five cent multi-panel packs, of which either this or License Plates was the first iteration, Topps did not do as well on them as compared to the penny versions.  This situation would change very rapidly as Topps had a much better margin on five cent product and changed the ir methods of distribution and advertising once they transitioned from the penny tabs but for a period of time as 1949 turned into 1950 and even into early 1951, they were still grappling with reconfiguring their bread and butter one cent products into bigger and more expensive packs.  Topps essentially halted production of all penny tabs, except for (non-insert card) Bazooka right about then end of 1949 and then went through a two year period of issuing larger and larger cards as they kept trying to outsell Bowman. I'm not sure that explains the above box but it's possible to my mind.

Thankfully Topps started dating a lot of their retail boxes starting in early 1950.  It's hard sometimes to cipher what they were doing but this type of dating makes it a little bit easier.

Merry Christmas to all!

49 50 Or Fight?

On our last adventure, I discussed how Topps transitioned their gum tab size 1949 Flags of all Nations set into the larger, maybe-not-as-nice 1950 Flags of the Word-Parade as they abandoned their ultra small cards for something a little more sizeable.

This transition happened so quickly that the gum brand used for the first issue, Parade Gum, was recycled for use in the larger set. This was not always how Topps did things but they were just slinging out product as 1949 rolled into 1950.  Here, in a scan from Chris Benjamin's Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non Sports Cards 1930-1960, is how the smaller, tab sized cards were sold, 120 to a box:

I've already shown the gum tab here, so won't repeat myself. In 1950 you could get the cards for a penny, or for a nickel.  I don't think Topps had quite introduced the ten cent Trading Card Guild cello packs yet, so those were your two price points.  Here is the penny pack:

Basically, nothing changed in terms of what the cards and gum were called. The 1950 box, which still had a 1949 copyright, was a bit lackluster; the really colorful Topps packaging was still about a year away, as this scan of the nickel box from an old Legendary Auctions catalog shows:

The nickel packs and wrappers are very, very scarce.  Here, in another scan from Benjamin's indispendable guide, is a sample that also has a 1949 date (even though these are definitely from 1950):

As we have seen, there was a tie in with the Play Coins of the World set and Flags of the World-Parade, the former also a 1949-50 transition issue.  A look at the final transition issue packaging for License Plates, will be forthcoming.

Flying The Flag

In early 1950, hot on the heels of one of their very last gum tab issues ('49 Flags of all Nations), Topps issued Flags of the World, other wise known as Parade. Abandoning the tiny tab cards which measured 7/8" x 1 7/16" for a new, albeit temporarily sized cards that came in at a relatively whopping 1 3/4" x 2 7/8" Topps was better able to compete with Bowman Gum, their primary competitor.

Here is a '49:

The front was referred to in trade advertising as "silk" by Topps.  You can see the texture but it's not silk.  The reverse (or was it the front) featured everbody's second favorite General:

The condition is typical-those penny gum tabs were brutal on the cards! Topps reused the artwork for the larger reissue and added a very blah-looking gray background:

The backs are even more blah:

That last scan is cribbed from the Network 54 Vintage Non Sports Forum Gallery, the rest are nabbed from eBay as my scanner is inaccessible tonight.  You can see how the artwork on the reverse was taken from the earlier version as well.  Topps then added a couple of facts and some text and had themselves a new set!

The only other set Topps did this with was their License Plate issues of 1949 and '50, although World Coins also saw reissue (but not resizing). After these two sets, Topps went to yet another card size as their race with Bowman to see whose was bigger continued its frenetic pace.

I'll be back next time with a look at some of the five cent packaging for the 1950 set.

Six Flags

I have written here a couple of times now on the incomplete checklist for the smallest of the Hocus Focus issues but there are at least two other early Topps sets where the checklists are not entirely confirmed. One of them I have written about extensively here, the 1949-ish Play Coins of the World, where the issue is not of identifying subjects but colors. That little enigma is about to get even thornier (stay tuned) but today I want to look at the 1949 Flags of All Nations/Soldiers of the World set and its six missing cards.

There should be 100 cards in this set, which resembles the other 1949 small Topps cards in size and execution, measuring 7/8" x 1 7/16". These two sided, unnumbered cards feature a flag and attendant pole, mostly of various countries but also featuring flags of the US Marine Corps, the Confederacy and the like printed on a very strange, textured silver surface. The flip side is color painting of a representative citizen of that country or organization.

Here's my only example, a pinholed Viking flag and, uh, Viking:



The small paintings looks like they were executed by the same artists or firm that did the X-Ray Round-Up paintings of the same year's vintage:



I used to think Topps had licensed the "human" artwork for both sets but the more I delve into their early history the more I think they were done by an ad agency. The 1949 Flags of All Nations cards came in penny packs of Parade Gum and possibly in a very limited test of a Fruit Flavored Topps gum tab:



Like the other harder to find small card issues such as Varsity and License Plates, those issued only in penny packs and not via the additional avenues of vending and mail-in offers are difficult to find today. The Parade wrapper would have been primarily yellow with accent colors but I have no idea what color the Fruit gum wrapper was (I would guess pinkish or yellow though) and the above example from the 2nd Edition of the Sport Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards, 1930-1960 by Chris Benjamin is the only one I have ever seen.

Now we know the set should have had 100 cards because a year later Topps issued a 100 card set of cards that were larger at 1 3/4" x 2 7/8", a somewhat transitional size for Topps after the abandoned the penny gum tab inserts but have a matched checklist with the 94 known 1949 cards. We'll get to the checklists in a minute but let's look at a 1950 card first:



The backs are not nearly as nice as the Soldiers from a year earlier but you can see why these cards are often referred to as Parade (and confusingly the 49's are called that too sometimes). The subsets break down as follows:

Africa - 7
The Americas - 31
Asia - 18
Europe - 41
Pacific - 3

The 1950 cards came in these packs, one cent and five cent varieties were sold, with two card panels (presumably three of them) within in the latter:



There would be three other significant Topps Flags issue over the next twenty or so years but those will be touched on at a later date. The 1950 Flags cards were also used as a tie in to the bagged dime packs of Play Coins if the World, shown here previously:



Here is the checklist for the 1950 set, with an asterisk showing the missing cards from 1949. There are rumors of short prints but I suspect it's just a matter of the smaller cards being harder to find and catalog generally. The numbers are from the 1950 issue but I have done the checklist up alphabetically to make it easier to deal with:

20	1ST AMERICAN FLAG
59	ABYSSINIA
61	ADMIRAL-GREAT BRITAIN
57	ADMIRAL-ITALY
60	ADMIRAL-JAPAN
87	ADMIRAL-NETHERLANDS
83	ADMIRAL-NORWAY
85	ADMIRAL-SPAIN
43	ADMIRAL-US *
10	AFGHANISTAN
82	ALAMO *
76	ALBANIA
8	ARGENTINA
62	ARMENIA
6	AUSTRALIA
79	AUSTRIA
4	BELGIUM
2	BOLIVIA
31	BRAZIL
94	BULGARIA
30	BURMA
28	BYELO RUSSIAN SSR
25	CANADA
24	CHILE
52	CHINA
50	COLOMBIA
78	COLUMBUS' FLAG
23	COMMODORE PERRY'S FLAG
26	CONFEDERATE STATES
47	CONFEDERATE STATES 1861
49	COSTA RICA
46	CUBA
44	CZECHOSLOVAKIA
72	DENMARK
70	DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
68	ECUADOR
67	EGYPT
65	EL SALVADOR
9	ESTONIA
93	ETHIOPIA
100	FINLAND
91	FRANCE
64	GENERAL STAFF-FRANCE
1	GERMANY
5	GOLD COAST *
90	GREECE
86	GUATEMALA
84	HAITI
19	HONDURAS
55	HUNGARY
16	ICELAND
15	INDIA
13	IRAN
11	IRAQ
96	IRISH FREE STATE
98	ISRAEL
80	ITALY
99	JAPAN
58	LATVIA
37	LEBANON
35	LIBERIA
34	LUXEMBOURG
32	MEXICO
7	MOROCCO
29	NETHERLANDS
56	NEW ZEALAND
54	NICARAGUA *
53	NORWAY
51	PAKISTAN
48	PANAMA
77	PARAGUAY
75	PERU *
71	POLAND
63	PORTUGAL
27	PRE-REVOLUTIONARY JACK
41	RED CROSS
45	ROYAL AIR FORCE
73	RUMANIA
69	SAUDI ARABIA
97	SIAM
33	SPAIN
95	SWEDEN
36	SWITZERLAND
92	SYRIA
74	THE PHILIPPINES
81	TIBET
3	TRANS JORDAN
89	TURKEY
88	UKRANIAN SSR
21	UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA
17	UNITED KINGDOM
14	UNITED STATES
12	URUGUAY
38	US MARINE CORPS
18	USSR (RUSSIA)
66	USSR AIR FORCE
42	VENEZUELA
22	VIKING FLAG
40	YEMEN *
39	YUGOSLAVIA

The six countries yet to be found from 1949, in case you are asterisk-challenged, are: Admiral's Flag from the US, The Alamo and flags from Gold Coast, Nicaragua, Peru and Yemen. I'll bet they exist and will post scans if and when I find 'em.