Mystery Dating

Every once in a while, as I'm looking through my supply of older hobby publications and various saved scans, I find something that makes me scratch my head, either in wonder and/or dismay that I'd never stumbled across a specific piece before. The two I'm focusing on today all pertain to 1952 Topps Baseball, with each falling into the "wonder" category.

Kicking off, we have this partial from an uncut sheet offered by Robert Edward Auctions in the Fall of 2017, which does not seem to have been addressed in any kind of detail anywhere since it popped up eight years ago. Everybody collecting or following this set knows that the first 80 cards that year can be found with wither red or black backs, then series two, which ran from numbers 81-130, made the switch to red permanent. The thought has always been that those first 80 cards were a discrete printing, which I'd imagine is due to the black/red flip-flop. What then to make of this bad boy:

If you have not fully memorized the checklist, the fuzzed out reverse will reveal why I'm showing this particular piece:

The top row (bottom row on the flipped front) has cards running from 81-85 above a second row with numbers 76-80; those sneaky so-and-so's at Topps were subbing in rows from series two at some point! Hopefully additional partials are out there that might show how far they took this.

Next, an old 1998 auction from Ron Oser was posted by the user "postwarcards" over on Net54 a little while back:

Those are the graphics from the 1951 Baseball Candy set:

Then, if you click through to the link to Net54 above then click on another link in that thread, you come to this:

Several of the listed players were not in the 1951 sets but all of them were in the landmark 1952 release.  Couple that with the fact the 1951 cellos held 16 cards...

 ...these examples sure seem like 1952 Trading Card Guild Baseball cello boxes with 15 cards offered for a dime, sans bubble gum, which is how the Guild rolled.

It's pretty cool that, despite the mountains of information in the hobby concerning the 1952 Baseball set, there's still some surprises to be found.

What In The Wide World Of Sports Is Going On Here?

There I was, surfing the web, when I saw her, a red tinged beauty; she looked disorderly, wild.  I knew she was trouble but couldn't turn away....OK, I'm no Raymond Chandler but we do have a Marlowe sized mystery on our hands today folks.

I was recently pulling images of uncut 1952 Topps panels together for my April Fools Day post about salesman samples when I came across one that blew up my basic understanding of how the landmark 1952 set was issued.  It's been assumed by everybody and anybody that the six series were issued like this, with one appearing every month or so beginning in late February or early March:

1st 1-80
2nd 81-130
3rd 131-190
4th 191-250
5th 251-310
6th 311-407

Nice and orderly, planned in ordinal progression, with iterations of ten prevailing, excepting the last series, known by hobbyists as the high numbers and referred to by Topps at the time of issue as the second or "new" series.  Easy, peasey, right?

Well, maybe things weren't so orderly after all.

These are the main production facts for each series that I can actually verify:

• The first 80 cards can be found with black or red backs. (thanks, Capt. Obvious!)
• Panels of 25 or fewer cards have been seen.
• A mostly complete proof sheet exists of the 2nd series, showing 50 different subjects.
• The 3rd series can be found, rarely, with gray backs in addition to the far more common white.
• The 6th series has three double prints.

Here's some panels from the 1st series, the first is from REA of course and has some great detail on printing dates:

That is the top left corner of one of the slits, all nice and neat:

1-5

11-15

21-25

31-35

Here's another, from the Spring 1982 issue of Baseball Cards magazine: 

Two quads, which look to have been cleaved from the same slit (hard to see here but the cuts line up) and also suggest the sheet was designed in 5 x 5 sections as the right side does not really line up the neatlines (the black line around each image) when compared to the left.  And we wonder why there's so many miscut cards!  Anyway, these run:

51-60

41-50 (with the Sain/Page pair that led to flipped backs in at least one press run, but hold that thought)

51-60 again

61-70

71-80

So this represents the last forty cards of the first series (hold that thought too), with one double printed row. We know Topps used two 100 card slits for 1952, so the double printed row makes sense as a total of four rows would need to be double printed to have the half sheets work out, seemingly two per slit (yup, hold that thought).

Friend o'the Archive John Moran sent along the next three panels.  The first is the most complete:

That reads:  

66-70

56-60

66-70 again

76-80

36-40

This could be to be the right side quad from from the same slit as the one above it. Next up is this bad boy:

This one sure looks like it's from the bottom two rows of a slit.

31-35

21-25

Now we get to one that's hard on the eyes, it looks like printer's scrap of what would I think would be from a proof sheet (more on this below) but the order of two passes can be discerned:

Of the cards where you can see more of the subject than not:

37-39 (Snider, Westlake, Trout)

27-29 (Jethroe, Priddy, Kluszewski)

                    ---Gutter---

57-59 (Lopat, Mahoney, Roberts)

47-49 (Jones, Page, Sain)

These are overlaid with portions of the second series run, so clearly the first series cards were on a waste sheet, likely just to run off some ink before printing the actual proofs:

117-119 (Lollar, Raffensberger, McDermott)

127-129 (Minner, Bollweg, Mize)

                    ---Gutter---

87-89 (Coogan, Feller, Lipon)

97-99 (Torgeson, Pierce, Woodling)

It looks like a third impression, a very misaligned part of a name, is also visible on Page/Pierce proof.

Here's that second series partial proof sheet.  It's low res but you can definitely tell who's who:

It's a little incomplete on both the left and right sections but if you cobble the rows together across both "slits" you get the entire 50 card 2nd series layout:

81-90

91-100

101-110

111-120

121-130

Each side extrapolates to a five row repeat.  This all makes perfect sense.  However, in 2017, REA auctioned this little sucker off, and it defies all logic:

If you're still with me, that's:

76-80

81-85

WTF?

The logic has always been that since the black backs run from nos. 1-80, with the Page and Sain errors was corrected, the black run continuing then with those two having their intended backs, then a third run, solely red backed, finished off the series. Based on this, it should stand to reason those first eighty cards were printed together and formed all of series 1. Another bit of logic has been that the cards run in sequence from x1-x0 in each row.  That's definitely not what we're seeing here. And they are most certainly red backs:

You would really need to see the full, two slit press sheets for each series to be sure of what's what (maybe, this kind of upends that idea) but man, I have questions...Did Topps start mixing in second series cards with the first series?  Why are the sequences seemingly mismatched on this panel? Did they only do it once they started printing the red back series 1 cards? Did they do this through all of the first five series?   Were these intended for a different use than wax packs? 

And still more questions.  There's been a video circulating of a Canadian TV show looking at the "Sportscard Phenomenon of the 90's" that has a number of interesting segments (and a bewildering John Candy cameo):

If you go to the 20:00 mark, you will see an unopened box of 1952 Topps Baseball nickel packs was uncovered at the OPC plant in London, Ontario.  The box was later described by Mastro Auctions in their April 22, 2004 auction catalog as being from both the fifth and sixth series, the latter being the high numbers of course.

Well, OK-I'm not sure there's any way to prove both series were sold together even by looking at some of the slabbed packs and even then there's no guarantee as to how that box was put together. Did Topps just mix fifth and sixth series packs for Canadian distribution? Maybe US distribution too (remember the Mr. Mint find had semi-highs and highs possibly from the same shipping carton)? Did someone at OPC assemble a box from whatever was on hand and just leave it behind? 

Plus, you know, can you even believe Mastro?

I've got some further thoughts on all of this but I'd like to hear from the readers here if any more hybrid panels, packs and boxes are known in 1952.

Keep On Semi Truckin'

Ah, the 1952 Topps Baseball set. Topps allegedly planned to stop their semi-inaugural issue after the 5th series, resting at 310 cards. Due to Bowman exclusives, a handful of players probably had to be dropped from what was an admittedly rushed production schedule. Topps sure seems like they had a just-deep-enough pool of viable players to carry them through the end of the fourth series (nos. 191-250) but then, in the fifth series they dropped in three manager cards (Tommy Holmes, Red Rolfe and Paul Richards), in what may have been a filling of holes to finish things off.

Let's look at Holmes first.  Known as a card with a variation in the description of his 1951 Red Back card, due to an early season call-up from Hartford, where he was a player-manager, to helm the big league squad and he began 1952 with the Braves.  He also played sporadically after his 1951 promotion, with a handful of outfield appearances but primarily as a pinch hitter. Holmes was released as a player in 1952 before the start of Spring Training but he stayed on as manager.  A poor start cost him that job too and he was fired on May 31st. Topps had an image of him in managerial mode (dig the clipboard) and used it for card no. 289:

Being a semi-high, that image was no doubt composed before his May 31st firing.  The reverse is confirming and revealing:

There's more to it though.  Note the hometown: good ol' Brooklyn, headquarters of Topps Chewing Gum.   He was signed by the Dodgers on June 17th and ended the season with them; he was on the 1952 World Series roster as well, and this was a nice, local story Topps could lean on. I think we can say that, given the notation he was "still in the Braves organization" the text was finalized sometime between May 31 and that date. My thought is the semi-high fifth series was released sometime in early June, not a huge leap given this detail.

So Topps knew he was fired (Ex-Manager, gotta love it!) and was able to note in the text as well but were stuck with the clipboard pose, almost certainly since the art was already locked in and possibly even "shot" by Lord Baltimore Press at the time the Braves let Holmes go.  However, they were able to change the planned text, whatever that was to have been, and the result is what's seen above. 

As an aside, I think it's a great shot! The semi-highs may have the best images in the entire set and Sy Berger always said they learned on the job, series-by-series. with the set.

Now what about Red Rolfe?

Well, he was long retired as a player (we'll get to that in a New York minute) and had been managing in Detroit since 1949.  As with Holmes, Topps had a nice shot they were able to use.  Also, just like Holmes, he was fired mid-season, on July 6th in his case. He is still assumed to be the Tigers manager on the back of card no. 296

The answer as to why Topps used him seems to lie with his playing career, as he spent it all with the Yankees, and was a key member of six World Series teams for them, as they brought home World Championships in five of those tilts. He ended up coaching at Yale and did several overseas "athletic troop" visits during World War 2. Rolfe left Yale following their 1946 season and ended up as a professional basketball coach, with the Toronto Huskies of the NBA-precursor Basketball Association of America. He returned to the Yankees and was thought to be in line to become their manager but ended up as a coach in 1947 when Bucky Harris got the nod instead.  He then left to become head scout for the Tigers before the season ended.  There was a definite New York connection with Rolfe.

The timing of these two managers getting fired is revealing.  The semi-highs were done and dusted by the time Rolfe got canned and were probably out in the marketplace, or very close to it, by then. No real surprise but it's nice to have some clues. 

Then there is the curious matter of no. 305, Paul Richards.  

Another great shot!  The reverse doesn't help much, although maybe one small clue is there:

The Dodgers and Giants connections might have been enough for Topps but he last played for an NYC team in 1935 and would have been more well-remembered by a kid's father than the actual small fry consumer in 1952. It may have just come down to a matter of rights and available images with Richards. Still...

When Topps they decided to go ahead with what they dubbed the 'second" or "new" series in their press releases and advertising, three more managers were added plus a whopping eleven coaches! As part of this approach, and while waiting the the expiry of an exclusive deal Jackie Robinson had signed elsewhere to roll around, I think they had a good handle on the pool of star players they were going to include in the final series, since they were also able to corral the likes of Mickey Mantle, Bobby Thomson, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella. They then filled things out with a number of no-names, plus the managers and coaches (an exception might be Eddie Mathews, but he was a rookie in 1952). Each of these could have been signed with the hopes of using the player in the 1953 set, knowing they would again have certain stars in the fold. 

While there were 10 major league cities in 1952 and 97 sixth series subjects, there's a definite New York flavor to the big names and the series in general, with a whopping 35 players included from New York City teams, and 14 from Boston's. That's 20 percent of major league cities with over 50 percent of the cards. Topps then, clearly thought the major market for the second series was metro New York, with Boston not far behind. Given the "rushed" aspect of the high numbers, it sure seems like the big problem was filling in the commons with subjects who didn't play in NYC or Beantown. 

Perhaps some other hoped-for subjects fell through, leading to the inclusion of all those coaches and managers in the last series and of course, the three famous double prints at 311, 312 and 313. It sure seems like they just ran out of subjects, doesn't it?

And now I wonder (how I wonder), did the three managers they used in the semi-highs somehow lead to those three never-filled slots in the highs? Did Topps intend to hold all the managers back for the final series but were then forced to use three as an emergency stopgap in the semi-highs? I welcome any thoughts on this.

I'll take a look at another 1952 mystery next time out.

Color Me Impressed

A really cool 1952 Topps piece popped up recently - an intact salesman sample and a colorful one at that.  Check it out, this thing is a marvel:

That is just a fabulous array of color, surely the results of a combined effort by Ben Solomon and Woody Gelman's art service.

The details are scant but succinct (and turned out to be correct):

While I'm sure there's more than just these out in the wild, I've found the following intact combinations via the some old auction archives, SGC and PSA pop reports:

8 Marsh/9 Hogue/10 Rosen

12 Bagsall/13 Wryostek/14 Elliot (as seen above)

18 Combs/19Bucha/20 Loes

41/Wellman/42 Kretlow/43 Scarborough

42/ Kretlow/43 Scarborough/44 Dempsey

45 Joost/46 Goldberry/47 Jones

58 Mahoney/59 Roberts/60 Hudson

Notice for instance the one number gap between the samples headed by no. 8 Marsh and then no. 12 Bagsall.  If you look a couple of entries down from them, you will see samples headed by no. 41 and then no. 42, so Topps was kind of jigsawing these.  I suspect this was related to the larger panels they would cut up and use as shock absorbers for the shipped cartons, which ended up hung as a display sometimes.  Look here, if you do the math on what's left from 4 column wide partials hug at Woolworth's in the Bronx during the initial rollout of the set, that leaves behind two 3 column strips per row:

True quads in a 5 x 5 array are also known.  Here's one, you can see the where the images for the  Mahoney/Robert/Hudson salesman sample were located:

A cut up of this one seems to be out there too based upon the SGC data:

71 Upton/72 Olson/73 Werle

Here is the Mahoney/Roberts/Hudson panel:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

That has the salesman's sample reverse but by the time of the second series Topps had moved on to a better format:  

You will note the bottom border looks handcut.  It's impossible to know for sure but I'd say that was done by Topps and not the addressee, Mr. Joseph G. Spear. The right two cards (reverse view) look to be pasted over by the mailing label and I would think carry the card backs.:

That's 141 Hartung/142 Perkowski/143 Moss.  There's a lot more to all this and I'm sure other combinations are known (and by all means send me scans if you have any). Since it's April Fools Day, I'll leave off with this.  It's not clear if it's legit or not but Topps did sell the 52's in Canada, although possibly only starting with the second series.

There's some other things going on with these 1952 Topps Baseball that I'll get into next time.

Finigan Begin Again and Again....

Sorry folks, formatting issues (still ongoing, apparently, so forgive the crazy quilt of fonts) kept impacting my post about the 1955 Baseball first series slits and the related 1955 Topps Stamp mockup/test.  The first part is now here and the balance below.
 
Here is the section of interest, from the 2,3,4, and 5 columns of the double Spahn sheet:

Related to all this is the 1955 Topps Baseball Stamps test, which was in-house only. I've previously speculated about these noting they came from a 40 subject section of an uncut sheet.  In addition, from those 40 cards (4 x 10 in array) at least one subject is known in every column and row.  The latest checklist I have for the Stamps (2011 Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards) has two no-prints from the above slits among its listed subjects.  Their list includes 23 subjects, with a 24th, Aaron considered likely by me.  I guess it's possible the stamps came from the other "series" sheet but I kind of doubt it as one of the possible subjects, Wally Moon, is 4x here.  This is why visual checklists are so important, although the Standard Catalog may indeed be correct. 

 

Interesting, no?  Here's the breakdown, noting there are several "One impression" players on it:

1955 TOPPS BASEBALL STAMPS-KNOWN (23)
"CORKY" VELENTINE
"RUBE" WALKER
ALEX GRAMMAS
BILL SKOWRON
BILL TREMEL
BOB SKINNER
BOBBY HOFMAN
CHARLIE WHITE
CHUCK DIERING
DAVE JOLLY 
DON MOSSI
HARVEY HADDIX
HOWIE POLLET
JACK SHEPARD
JIM DAVIS
JIM PENDELTON 
JOE CUNNINGHAM
KARL SPOONER
RAY BOONE
RAY JABLONSKI
RUBEN GOMEZ
STAN HACK
TED KAZANSKI

1955 BASEBALL STAMPS-POSSIBLE (1) HANK AARON

1955 TOPPS POTENTIAL BASEBALL STAMPS-UNKNOWN (16)
ERNIE BANKS - 1
"WINDY" McCALL - 1
DANNY SCHELL - 1
"JAKE" THEIS - 1
BOB BORKOWSKI - 2
DEAN STONE - 1
FRANK HOUSE - 1
BOB MILLER - 
WALLY WESTLAKE -1
JACK HARSHMAN - 1
"DUSTY" RHODES - 1
HANK SAUER - 3
FRED MARSH - 2
CHUCK STOBBS - 2
WALLY MOON - 4
TED WILLIAMS - 3

Numbers = Impressions on slits above.

However, unless a third sheet exists with a different array than the two presently known, it appears the Stamp array was rejiggered from the regular card's sheets by Topps for unknown reasons. I'm working on a full update, which will be posted here as soon as the facts warrant.

Finigan Begin Again

For some bizarre reason, I've never really put together the fact that the two 110 card first series slits are known for 1955 Topps Baseball.  Topps had some interesting things occurring on their press sheets from the inaugural 1952 Baseball set on and things just got weirder each year.  

1952 saw three double-printed high numbers, presumably due to Topps running out of viable players. By the time 1953 rolled around, Topps  had already been in court several times with Bowman (and possibly other companies) and they hedged their bets a little, leaving a five number "punctuated equlibrium" gap as each series went on, backfilling subjects once their contract status was deemed airtight enough, although they got tripped up in the end, with a total of six numbers never being issued.  

1954 saw some interesting gaps and a move to 110 card half sheets (which, forgetting Ferris Bueller's sage advice, I only realized about a month ago, thinking they were 100 card arrays per side for a very long and embarrasing time).  The problem with 1954 is I do not know more than one slit, which had a gap where cards #151-175 did not make the slit.  Although I based that on the idea the known slit was arrayed 10x10 and not 11x 10 I think that gap still holds up. I think Topps did this because the set size went down to 250 cards and, while a plan to keep gaps makes sense, they seemingly had a good enough grip on their players that year it wasn't required.  So the trend was downward on set counts: 407, 274, 250. 

Then we hit the planned 210 card 1955 set, a nadir for sure as Topps went below the Bowman set count for the first time since their direct competition started in '52. Bowman went big of course, issuing 320 cards and going out, on the baseball front at least, in a blaze of glory before their president, John Connelly, decided he wanted nicer things to play with.

As well all know, the 1955 Topps set lost four subjects in the high numbers, possibly printed but either way pulled and never to be identified, landing at a final count of 206 and making me think Mr. Connelly was still contemplating his next moves, which I don't think even he fully knew until the 1955 Bowman Football set got bum rushed by Topps. Here are the two "first series" slits and you will soon realize why I used quotation marks.

Here is the first slit, I think it's the "A" slit but but am not positive as there are no markings:

(courtesy Love of the Game Auctions)

At least one other sheet with this array is known.  The other slit, let's call it "B" but also the "double Spahn" for what will be obvious reasons:

That was posted over at Net54 not too long ago.  It looks so clean I thought it could be a digital recereation (and it very well may be) but this extremely old REA lot shows what I believe is the same sheet, as you can clearly see two Spahns stacked up in the lower right, even with the grainy shot (it was their June 25, 1993 auction).  While it's likely enhanced by whoever shot the original, the Aaron to the right of Spahn and Ted William in the lower right corner of the REA sheet nicely confirms this sheet array is legit:

Also of interest, the backs on the LOTG sheet are misligned!  At a guess, knowing that Topps printed the backs first, the  Love of the Game sheet was likely a test for the obverse colors. Ordinarily, I'd say there's a chance the double Spahn sheet array was altered prior to final printing but a miscut card of ol' Warren, as noted in the Net54 thread, proves otherwise:

The proof is on the reverse, as the miscut stat line is clearly Spahn's:

In the thread on Net54, it's also noted a "double" miscut Hodges exists!  He's #187 in the set as a high number, so Topps was clearly doing it on purpose (more below on this). Now, let's count together, from most to least:

FIVE IMPRESSIONS (1)

70           ROSEN

FOUR IMPRESSIONS (15)
14           FINIGAN             
23           PARKS  
29           WEHMEIER        
31           SPAHN 
58           RIVERA
59           ALLIE    
61           JACOBS
62           KIPPER 
67           MOON 
80           GRIM   
81           CONLEY 
84           PASCUAL            
86           WILSON               

THREE IMPRESSIONS (30)

2             WILLIAMS           
3             FOWLER               
7             HEGAN 
8             SMITH   
10           KEEGAN               
16           SIEVERS 
18           KEMMERER        
19           HERMAN             
24           NEWHOUSER     
26           GROAT 
30           POWER 
32           McGHEE               
33           QUALTERS           
34           TERWILLIGER     
36           KIELY     
39           GLYNN  
45           SAUER  
49           PORTER 
57           O'DELL  
63           COLLINS               
64           TRIANDOS           
66           JACKSON             
72           OLSON  
77           PORTOCARRERO              
78           JONES   
82           HARMON            
83           BREWER               
89           FRAZIER               
100         IRVIN    
106         SULLIVAN           

TWO IMPRESSIONS (15)

5            GILLIAM            
11           FAIN      
13           MARSH 
20           CAREY   
25           PODRES               
40           HOAK    
41           STOBBS 
47           AARON 
50           ROBINSON          
54           LIMMER               
55           REPULSKI             
74           BORKOWSKI       
90           SPOONER            
103         WHITE   
105         DIERING               

ONE IMPRESSION (35)

1             RHODES               
4             KALINE 
6             HACK     
9             MILLER 
12           THEIS     
17           HOFMAN             
21           GRAMMAS         
22           SKOWRON          
27           GRADNER            
28           BANKS  
37           CUNNINGHAM 
38           TURLEY 
42           McCALL 
43           HADDIX 
44           VALENTINE         
46           KAZANSKI           
48           KENENDY             
52           TREMEL                
53           TAYLOR 
56           JABLONSKI          
60           STONE  
65           BOONE 
68           DAVIS   
69           BAILEY  
71           GOMEZ 
73           SHEPARD             
76           POLLET 
79           SCHELL  
85           MOSSI  
87           HOUSE  
88           SKINNER              
102         WESTLAKE           
104         HARSHMAN       
107         ROBERTS              
108         WALKER               

ZERO IMPRESSIONS (14)

15           PENDLETON       

35           JOLLY     
51           HUGHES               
75           AMOROS            
91           BOLLING              
92           ZIMMER               
93           BILKO    
94           BERTOIA              
95           WARD   
96           BISHOP 
97           PAULA  
98           RIDDLE  
99           LEJA       
110         ZERNIAL               

It looks like Topps plugged in both the puncuated equilibrium and consecutive number gap processes at the same time in 1955! Nos. 15, 35, 51, 75 and 110 from the former method and nos. 90-99 using the latter, with 14 "no prints' resulting.  There's a lot of single prints and even a 5x player in Al Rosen, so clearly whatever the next "series" was should have included these, perhaps leaving some gaps they hoped to fill in, until the last series came and they were bereft of any further subjects, leaving 175, 186, 203 and 209 to never see the light of day. Presumably some of the 2x prints were trued up a bit as well but that's not a guarantee. Given the "divide by 5" look to the tranches (and Rosen plus the zeroes add to 15) it looks pretty well planned out to me, even though the arrays are all over the place. Just look how parts of a couple columns repeat elsewhere, the random placements like Spahn and the plethora of single prints.

APOLOGIES: There is some kind of weird formatting problem going on with this post.  Please see the continuation of it here.

Opening Day

I stumbled across something that was both interesting and infuriating a couple of weeks ago concerning a 1952 Topps Baseball pack opening. Yes, certainly an interesting thing to do but it's infuriating to me that it survived 70 years and then got dismantled. Here's a link to the whole video but you will need to watch it on Cardporn's Facebook feed (sorry).

However, there's a silver lining, or at least a white one.  I've known for some time that many of the early penny and nickel packs sold by Topps came with a glassine insert that I thought helped protect the cards from the gum.  However, it seems, after watching the video, it's possible the insert was fashioned in order to allow the gum to be inserted into the pack to allow for a neat final sealing job vs. being a purely protective measure.  

Here, check out these two frame grabs to see what I mean.  This is the arrangement after the pack was opened; you can see how the white insert is partially, but neatly, folded around the five cards within:

Then on the flipside, you can see how the insert is still only providing partial cover.

Now, it's possible the gum rotated sometime during its 70 year nap and was meant to be inserted horizontally and just lightly adhere to the glassine, but it sure seems like the inner wrap was needed to help stabilize the gum and cards for outside wrapping.

Topps would often have in-house advertising or premium offers on the inserts and I'm not sure why they didn't in 1952, at least for the Baseball set (this was a first series pack, with first run black backed cards within) but this video, which essentially documented the destruction of a $80,000 pack in what I have to assume was a quest for a really nice #1 Andy Pafko, at least has given us some good information.

I've seen videos like this before but this is the best view I've seen of such proceedings, disturbing as they may be.

The Numbers Game

Following last week's post, I thought I would take a stab at estimating how many 1952 Baseball high numbers Topps actually produced. It seems impossible but there's some information that can be used to give it a whirl.

Ten million leftover 1958 Basketball cards, as noted in August 7th's post, are one indicator of what could happen when a set didn't sell (we don't know the total amount of those produced though) but Topps had to give testimony and provide sales figures in the Fleer-FTC case in the early 60's and the latter totals were unearthed within by the late Bob Lemke some time back:

https://boblemke.blogspot.com/search?q=FTC

Here's the table:

 

I'm not so sure Topps just combined the gum and non-gum figures.  Topps had good reasons to keep the lines segregated and I'm taking their numbers at face value for purposes of this exercise. 

Here''s a 1952 Baseball high number wrapper, just for the sake of showing it.  The upper's part's blue area was green for the five series that came before the sixth:

Topps wholesaled their product at 60% of list price, 2% net, so it 's going to work out to be slightly less that 60 % but whatever. BB cards without gum (vending & cello), from what I have been able to determine for later years, would have totaled no more than 10% of production at any time and of course far lower than that for 1952. 

If 5% was the "no gum" figure (and remember no one cent or cello packs were issued for the highs and vending is probably non-existent as well, or close to it), they made $840,000 from Baseball card sales in 1952. Even if they did have some vending sales, 5% is a good fudge factor just due to imprecision when a press run was printed, roundig of the figures provided to the FTC, etc. I do think the N/A entries are due to Topps not having the specific breakdowns as they were tracked as part of something that encompassed an entire line, not just baseball.  Anyway...

A penny a pop puts that at 84 Million cards produced and at .60/cent per pop it's 140 Million cards if my math is right.  

Then you have to account for production of each series compared to the whole set and I'd estimate that at roughly:

20%  Series 1
25%  Series 2
20%  Series 3
20%  Series 4
10%  Semi Highs
5%    Highs

There are some comments I've read over the years that the semi's were printed at 50% of the series before, same with the highs, i.e. half the rate of the semi's. We'll never fully know of course but that seems essentially correct based upon the populations seen today, assuming more high's than semi's are submitted "organically" due to their higher valuations. Not all series had 100 cards either so it's going to be imperfect no matter how you try to figure it but the FTC figures are as as good as we'll ever see for Topps sales figures of the era.

5% of 140 Million is 7 Million Highs.  Divide by 100 and it's 70,000 per card, plus another 70,000 for the DP's: Mantle, Thomson and Jackie Robinson. So maybe 140,000 Mantle cards were printed. Put another way, a full 200 card press sheet (i.e.  two 100 card slits) with that amount of Mantle's would have a production run of 35,000 sheets.  That strikes me as being eminently possible for a single day or two's Topps baseball press run of the time.  

If, by some miracle, 40,000 Mantles got dumped by Sy Berger - like I somewhat jokingly estimated last time out - then Topps actually sold a good chunk of the highs, maybe 70% or a little more of them, which doesn't seem too bad and certainly not the disaster Sy Berger asserted. 

Feel free to run your own calculations but please check my math too!  And yes, they would have shipped cards to Venezuela by sea I'm sure. I'm highly doubtful there were tugs and barges going to South America back then, so it was likely break-bulk shipped (i.e. pallets lowered into ship's holds by crane). It's an ocean voyage, not inland to boot (or a few miles out to the Atlantic Bight), and so much more dangerous.  It's also not the way you would want to do it due to many stops being needed to refuel, even if theoretically possible.

And just revisiting last week's commentary, here's the other thing-there was a City of New York Dock a block away from Topps HQ with an internal Bush Terminal Railroad connecting to it.  City of New York Docks were/are used for many purposes, one of them being loading of garbage onto barges for disposal. Why would they have needed to use trucks to get the cards to the barge?  The schematic is here if you want to check it out.

Back to it now-the big question is whether or not the Mick's lived on after the CCC fire on March 30, 1975.  I suspect many did but check out these population totals first:

PSA: 1,771

SGC: 558

THIS IS MOSTLY ALL MAJOR CONJECTURE HEREAFTER: That's 2,329 Mantles and who knows how many "crack and re-subs" are in there, maybe 15%?  More? That brings it down to about 2,000, maybe less but let's say 2,000. If 140,000 Mantles were printed, and assuming more raw ones exist than are slabbed, then only a small fraction survived, no matter what actually happened out at sea, at the landfill or in the blazing Card Collectors Company warehouse on March 30, 1975. More Mantles get graded of course, compared to say Bobby Thomson, and I doubt my usual WAG of 3x for early 50's raw cards applies to Mickey.  It's possible, given the star power of this sucker, more are graded than not but if it's a 50-50 proposition, there's about 4,000 Mantles out there, or about three percent of the number printed.

Imagine what they would be worth if he wasn't a double print?!

Highly Doubtful

So I was interviewed for a recent story in Sports Illustrated, along with about 40 other hobbyists I might add, for a story centered around the mystique of the 1952 Topps Mantle card.  This exercise also took the expected side trip to the story about Sy Berger and the infamous garbage scow that allegedly dumped some undefined amount of high numbers off New Jersey at some indefinite time in the middle of the last century.

I decided to gather and review what I know about the subject in the wake of the article's publication (it was in the June issue) and this effort turned up an interesting result.

Here's what I know or can reasonably guesstimate:

-The set was produced in late July/early August of 1952. Mantle signed his contract on July 14th and production probably took place around three or four weeks thereafter:

-The highs were on sale at some point in August, at least in the New York City area.

-They probably had one press run only, and given that by 1956 Sam Rosen (CCC forerunner) already had the highs at a 2.5x premium vs lower series cards, probably in a press run half the size, or even a little less, of the semi-high series, which was also printed in lesser quantities than the four series of cards preceding it.

-There were no one cent glassine packs of high numbers, nickels only. Cello's of the final series may have been sold but possibly not until the following year as a "rewrap" or the like. There's no indication one way or the other concerning vending boxes.

-Topps certainly shipped highs in to Venezuela, Canada and military PX's. Check out this excerpt, from a Bill Mastro penned article, from the January 17, 1986 Sports Collectors Digest, which is not, by the way, the only source for the Venezuelan market information:

-The highs were still being shipped to the U.S. West Coast in early 1953.

-Canada got a good supply of them, upstate New York seems to have as well.  Some may have been included in 1953 packs but I'm not 100% sure on that.

-Sy Berger was always happy to present the official Topps "view" to the outside world regarding their operations. This was usually a fanciful mix of some truth, total BS, Shorin family hubris and a lot of PR. No stain on Sy though-he was a loyal company man.

-Berger asserted in various interviews he dumped uncut sheets of 1952 Baseball from the infamous scow, or it was hundreds of cases (but never both in one interview). So which one was it?

-Topps probably did get imaginative with selling excess inventory but this applied to all the sets they sold. Some of it could have been 52 highs and some ideas on this front could even have been thought up by Sy, who did their promotions for a few years.

-Topps emptied out at least four or five locations in Brooklyn before moving production and warehousing to Duryea in early 1966: 60 Broadway (their first commercial location from 1938), 134 Broadway, 383 3rd Ave plus Bush Terminal where, at one point they had offices and production in one building and some sort of operation in another, plus anywhere else that's never been mentioned or found after the fact.  They moved down the street from 60 Broadway to 134 in the early 40's, bought another company in 1944 that got them the 3rd Ave location and they moved to Bush Terminal in mid-1946 but each time they retained their leases on the old buildings, seemingly until 1965 or so. He mentions this in the Baseball Card Flipping, Trading & Bubblegum book that we all know and love, which was published in 1973:

-"down here" means Bush Terminal and it appears he was interviewed sometime in early 1973 based upon other details in the book.  Tellingly, there is no mention of the high numbers being buried at sea.

-I doubt Topps had a full understanding of what was in these old buildings by the time 1965 rolled around.

-I've interviewed Richard Gelman several times during the past 18 months and he said Card Collectors Company hoarded the '52 Mantles for years and also quietly bought them up in the secondary market. He estimated CCC had 90% of the known extant Mantles at one point. Hold on to this thought.

-Mantle hype in the hobby wasn't really a thing until 1968 when it was clear he was about done and even then it was quite minimal compared to the standards that would be applied later. The card didn't really transact at a premium until he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974 and even then its value ebbed and flowed into the early 80's.  

-There is no mention of this story in the hobby press prior to the early 70's, even by people like Bill Haber, who worked for Topps for years as their Sports Editor.  I can find nothing at all in The Trader Speaks about the dumping of the 52 highs up until it stopped publishing (essentially 1983) and I have 300-400 other old hobby pubs prior to 1975 that don't say a thing either.  Other collectors with more substantial hobby publication collections find the same lack of a story. Keith Olbermann, as in the know as anyone in the NYC hobby scene back then, advises he never heard the barge story before 1979.

-In a 1967 issue of Ballcard Collector, Haber wrote a letter about CCC: "On their printed form they have a space for alternate choices, so I threw in '1952 Topps' and '#407" as I had done similarly for the past nine years. This was in November of 1965 and at the time I needed this one card to complete this much sought after set. Well, when the order arrived and I opened it up to see the beautiful picture of Eddie Mathews I couldn't believe my eyes!" I'm thinking CCC got more inventory when the Brooklyn  warehouses got cleared out for the Duryea move, which dovetails with Sy's recollections for the Baseball Card Flipping, Trading & Bubblegum book.

-In the Sept. 1970 Ballcard Collector Haber wrote, as a newly hired Topps employee:

 

- The Chattanooga/Tennessee connection is interesting as Topps had acquired Bennett-Hubbard's candy and syrup making operation there during World War 2 and operated their Southern Division out of the Scenic City for a spell.

-A month later Haber wrote this: 

-The first mention I can find of the cards being barged out to sea for disposal is is in the April 22, 1975 issue of the Baltimore Sun, when a big and quite high profile Baseball Card Convention was in town, absolutely awash in advance publicity. Ted Patterson (also name checked by the Sun) had interviewed Berger on his radio show the night before and you will see where Sy told him about the 52 highs ("96 cards"-remember this number) being dumped at sea.  Without a doubt his is the earliest example of the garbage scow story I've seen.

-Shortly thereafter this article popped up in Sport Fan:

-That's a Feature Headline if I ever saw one.  It was news to everybody in the hobby apparently.

-The SI piece also has a short interview with Mrs. Sy Berger, who stated: “The only other card history I know is about him dumping them in the ocean."

-Also on the Sy side of the ledger, Topps employees and consultants sometimes heard him mention the escapade in passing at Bush Terminal, even into the 1990's.

The scow story got legs after the Sun piece and Berger was the one who ran with it. In a New York Times piece dated 9/29/85, with Sy riffing about two million high numbers now with sheets and cases not even mentioned as being dumped. That would equate to 40,000 or so Mantles:

The problems I have with this statement are that the card count is now specific while the configuration is suddenly not and the idea that Topps would use two garbage trucks to bring unsalable inventory to a barge when they already had a carting service to trash this kind of stuff is ludicrous. I doubt they would have spent the extra money once the trucks were loaded up.

My current thought is that when Topps cleared out all their old spaces in late 1965 in anticipation of the February 1966 Duryea move, they sold what found inventory they could in Fun Packs and the like and/or to CCC. The 52's highs were found, and CCC bought a bunch, selling singles and small groups of the cards to folks like Haber and some select few "outsiders".  

It's possible the remainder were lumped in with all their other remaining stale products such as ten million (!) leftover 1957-58 Basketball cards (hat tip to Keith Olbermann for that detail), and for some reason dumped at sea with Sy riding along (mebbe). My thought is CCC pulled all the Mantles at some point and had them stored at Woody's house or somewhere that wasn't their Franklin Square warehouse (big reveal coming, hold on). And don't forget those"96 cards" dumped per Sy in the Sun article.

But wait (here we go!)......three weeks before the Patterson-Berger interview in Baltimore, the Card Collectors Company warehouse on Long Island burned up with a mess of uninsured inventory within:

The dots connected themselves at this point as I simply could not believe the barge story premiering three weeks after the CCC fire could be a coincidence. The only question is "why?"  Perhaps it was a way to explain the loss of supply to the hobby aftermarket. Maybe it was to pump up the value of the card to help Woody and CCC but the whole timing of it just amazes me.  And the end result of all this is still with us today.  Marshall Fogel has been offered $25 Million for his PSA 10 Mantle card (one of three in that grade) - and turned it down!

We are definitely not in Kansas (or the Atlantic Ocean) anymore.....