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......

Coin Star

Well, the current Legendary auction is providing some good insight into a few older Topps sets.  A while back I dug into the intricacies of the 1949 Play Coins of the World set and an associated product Play Money Pops. It has been "known" for decades that there is a set of 72 "metal" coins, which was offset by 120 plastic coins, which instead prove out to 144.  The 72 metal coins that came with Play Money Pops should probably be categorized as a 1950 issue based on the scan below; I am not sure what to do with the 24 yellow coins that were seemingly added to the 1949 issue that started with 120 coins. Or all the variations....

Here is the scan from Legendary:

It doesn't really matter I guess how they are categorized since hardly anyone collects these babies but it's nice to have the 72 coin piece of the puzzle confirmed. It's a little hard to see above, so I blew up the copy in the lower right corner to make it more legible: