It's All In The Presentation

After digesting Bowman in early 1956, Topps would ride the cresting age curve of baby boomers by cutting back on ancillary sets such as 1955's Double Header and 56's Baseball Buttons--the latter truncated as a result of said purchase--and concentrating on cranking out their regular baseball and football issues.  Simple card designs were the norm in the years following as the marketplace, devoid of any major competitors for a handful of years, was reset by Topps.

1959 though brought resistance from Fleer, who were able to snag an exclusive contract with Ted Williams and also brought out a big seller with a Three Stooges set. Topps, as usual, responded once it became clear measures had to be taken.  They added some (gorgeous) baseball and football cards to the back of their Bazooka party boxes and rapidly cranked up their PR and marketing apparatus.  The end result of the latter was the "Elect Your Favorite Rookie" campaign and the inaugural Rookie Banquet, held after the end of the baseball season.

Topps would really start bulking up their response to Fleer in 1960 and continue with a growing onslaught of extra sets and bonus inserts through 1963 before they prevailed against their Philly based baseball card issuing competitor in court and downshifted a bit in '65. During this period, yet another campaign was also waged, with Fleer offering ballplayers extra funds if they provided a copy of their Topps contract. Fleer was signing up players at a furious clip, although not under as many exclusives as Topps, at least at the major league level. Topps began firing back with their own campaign, this one primarily at more of an executive level.

The annual Rookie Banquets were one likely part of this campaign; I've written extensively about them and it's worth clicking over via the labels at right if you want to bone up. The other thing I think they did was start sending out Presentation Sets of their baseball cards every year. These went to various team executives, key ball players and other such luminaries.

Sy Berger is on record saying he gave presentation sets to Willie Mays and it would be very interesting to see what players actually got these from Topps.  Was it just superstars?  Of interest in particular in this regard, is Joe Adcock receiving a set in 1963, which was much later consigned to auction. Adcock, no longer a major name in the sport, was famously part of the 1963 Fleer set and is semi-short printed therein (replaced by a checklist, or vice-versa).  He is also in the second series of Topps that year. Coincidence?

Not very well known today, these sets were issued in five boxes annually, each with roughly 114-120 apiece inside and designated a "Limited Edition" by Topps.  Here's the breakdown by year of set lengths and how they divide out:

1959: 572 cards with 114.4 per box average
1960: 572 cards with 114.4 per box average
1961: 587 cards with 117.4 per box average
1962: 598 cards with 119.6 per box average
1963: 576 cards with 117.4 per box average

The boxed sets were all issued at once, like so:

(Mile High Auctions)

It's a little hard to see but each box states "XXXXX Collectors Set 1959" with "XXXXX" being First, Second, Third, Fourth or Fifth as filled.  Here's a better shot, with one example from each year through 1962:

(Robert Edward Auctions)

To state the obvious:

1959 Red

1960 Black

1961 Green

1962 Blue

1963 Brown

Here is the '63, with a couple of side views thrown in:

(Robert Edward Auctions)

These have never been plentiful and a few sets (very few) were auctioned here and there in the 90's but most all have been broken up and only the empty boxes pop up now, and infrequently at that.  The reason these have all been pillaged is that the cards within are super high quality in general, although some pinching of the inner and outer-most cards has been noted by (lucky) prior owners.

Friend o'the Archive Don Johnson, who has seen several cards liberated from the 1962 boxes and owns a '63 presentation set, describes the presentation cards as "stunning, jawdropping......you name the adjective." He goes on to say they are "a little smaller" (more on this in a second) but also "outrageously glossy and colorful".

The smaller dimensions seem to be the result of a different cutting method being used when compared to how the "regular" cards were sliced. Anthony Nex, yet another Friend o'the Archive, describes the cuts as a "bevel" and I have seen a couple of references to this phenomenon over the years.  The end result is some of these get rejected by PSA when submitted for grading as not meeting minimum size requirements.

I have also heard the gloss referred to as being similar to the gloss found on the 1980's Topps insert "All Star" and "Rookie" sets, which would make it very noticeable indeed .

A couple of auctions have featured mailing cartons that give a glimpse as to who might have received these treasures.  Here is a 1963 set with its Topps labeled mailer, slightly blurred address-wise by Heritage Auctions:

Here is a better view of the label:

Hamey, as almost none of us will recall, served as the Yankees General Manager from 1961-63, succeeding George Weiss.

Here's another 1963 set addressed to Clarence Campbell, the President of the National Hockey League from 1946-77:

(All Sports Auctions)

O-Pee-Chee was issuing Hockey cards in Canada at this time, using Topps supplied materials, so maybe this wasn't as big a stretch as it seems. Friends in high places.....have influence in many corners. And to answer an obvious question, I am unaware of presentation sets for any other sports.

Keith Olbermann advises he recalls the son of Irv Kaze bringing Presentation Sets from 1961-63 to work one day in the 80's.  The elder Kaze was the Angels Director of PR in those years and those sets ended up with his son. A lot of these sets probably went directly to the kiddies in the house when dad got home from work.

Some slabs from PSA and SGC identify the entombed card as being from a presentation set. Here's a 1961 Bob Friend.  You can see that despite the many superlatives one could assign to these, at least one derogatory adjective, namely "snowy", can also apply!

There's clearly a lot more to learn about these sets and the ways they were manufactured and distributed. If you know anything, drop me a line.

All The Proof You Need

A treat today folks, a guest column from Keith Olbermann on the three infamous 1960 Baseball "variation proofs":

WOODY GELMAN AND THE 1960 TOPPS BASEBALL SCARCITIES

By Keith Olbermann

          The posting here earlier this year of Woody Gelman’s “The Card Collector” from June 20, 1960, provided an original source document for one of the organized hobby’s greatest and oldest confusions: What the hell are the three incredibly scarce 1960 Topps variation cards of Gino Cimoli, Kent Hadley, and Faye Throneberry? Proofs? Unbelievably rare issued cards? Something else?

          Gelman wrote “Twenty-one cards of the 1960 Topps Baseball set will perhaps be the greatest rarities of modern day baseball gum cards. Three players’ cards (seven of each were issued before the error was caught) bear a different team insignia than the one appearing on the normal card.” Gelman then gives brief details on the Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry cards. And apparently with one dubious verb – “issued” – he set the wheels in motion for what will shortly become six full decades of confusion and debate.

          A couple of baseball facts are required. 1^st Baseman Kent Hadley was dealt by the A’s to the Yankees on December 11^th, 1959 (the trade also included some guy named Maris). The regular version of card 102 shows him in an A’s cap, but the team designation reads “New York Yankees” and a Yankee logo appears. The variation to which Gelman refers is otherwise identical – except that it instead has a vestigial A’s logo. Outfielder Gino Cimoli was traded by the Cardinals to the Pirates on December 21^st, 1959. The regular version of card 58 shows him in a Cards’ uniform, but the team designation reads “Pittsburgh Pirates” and a Pirate logo appears. The variation to which Gelman refers is otherwise identical – except that it has both a vestigial Cards’ logo and team designation.

          To my knowledge an image of the third card, #9 Throneberry, was never publicly illustrated until the late Bob Lemke put it in his blog in 2010. Lemke’s image came from venerable collector John Rumierz who in turn explained he had gotten his copies of all three of these 1960 cards years before from the famed collector and former Topps Sports Editor Bill Haber. Lemke noted that the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards listed a 1960 Topps variation not of #9 Faye Throneberry but of his brother, #436 Marv Throneberry. That only made sense: Faye never played for the Yankees nor was he ever in their farm system or even in their organization during an off-season. Marv, like Hadley, had been part of the Maris trade. A Marv Throneberry Yankees/A’s variation made some sense. A Faye Throneberry Yankees variation made none. Yet there it was on Lemke’s blog: Faye Throneberry, Washington Senators, Outfield – with a Yankee logo.

          These twin mountains of perplexity – are they issued variations or unissued proofs, and what could possibly explain the Faye Throneberry card – have been Everests of sorts for so long that I published my first guess about them in The Trader Speaks when I was 16 years old. I helped perpetuate the Faye/Marv confusion in The Sports Collectors Bible. Without knowing of Gelman’s “issued” claim I declared they were certainly not issued cards in an opus on the history of Topps Proofs I did for Sports Collectors Digest in 2008. There are still publications that list a Marv but not a Faye. There are still some that conclude these are the rarest issued Topps cards of all time. There are others that insist they’re proofs.

          To cut to the chase, in part because of Gelman’s 1960 article, the answer is clear: Cimoli/Cardinals, Hadley/Athletics, and Faye Throneberry/Yankees are proof cards. I don’t have another document like Gelman’s nor anything from the wildly scattered files in the Topps offices on Whitehall Street to be able to state this with 100 percent certainty – but I am 100 percent certain and I’ll explain why shortly. It invokes the Sherlock Holmes plot twist about how the character had solved the mystery based on “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” His astonished foil pleads “The dog did nothing in the nighttime.” Holmes replies “That was the curious incident.”

          The crux: are these proof cards (exotic, expensive, different, amazing – but absolutely irrelevant to the question “do you have a complete set of 1960 Topps Baseball?”) or are they as Gelman forecast, “the greatest rarities of modern day baseball gum cards…seven of each were issued” (meaning if you don’t have them, your set is ultimately incomplete)? Clearly Gelman started this – maybe deliberately in hopes of getting readers to write in to ask if he had any of these 21 cards and then selling them, off the books. The confusion was then amplified by a production change which we now take for granted: since at least 1962 (and maybe as early as the later series of the 1960 cards, and with some exceptions in the late ‘80s) all of the proof cards and sheets that have fallen off the back of the proverbial Topps truck and into the hands of dealers and collectors, have had blank backs.

          The 1960 Cimoli, Hadley and Throneberry cards have fully printed backs.

          I have seen two Cimolis and two Hadleys as individual cards. They appear professionally cut and match the issued cards of the 1960 First Series in gloss and thickness and every other material measure. Topps Proofs began to become a very specialized collecting genre probably between the time Wholesale Cards started selling a stack of 100 1967 Roger Maris cards showing him with the Yankees instead of the Cardinals, and a decade later when the more secretive places of the hobby were flooded by all the 1977 unicorns like the Jerry Grote card and the Reggie Jackson/Orioles masterpiece. In 1985 an unbelievable hoard of 1962 Topps sheets –all sports, all blank-backed – literally fell out of a ceiling being remodeled in Connecticut (I was called in; I was between jobs and was given one baseball sheet for $200 as a thank you). And always the dividing line was clear: not all blank-backed cards were proofs, but all proofs were blank backed.

          But then evidence began to mount that sometime before 1962 everything Topps did to proof or check its cards before distribution was done in some complete fashion. Nearly all of the cards in the final series of 1957 Baseball turned up printed on bright white paper stock – fronts and backs. A 1959 high-numbered sheet appeared complete with the logo of the printer, Lord Baltimore Press. All the backs were printed. Some were without the late trade notations found on the issued cards; some had the notations but in different fonts; the backs were also didn’t have the white backs of the issued cards but the gray stock used on the earlier series.

           Finally about a decade ago I was offered what proved to be the final evidence in the 1960 Topps Cimoli/Hadley/Throneberry conundrum: a proof sheet of half of the 1^st Series, featuring 55 cards printed front and back. There’s no doubt that it’s a proof sheet: it has printer’s stars and bullseyes and the other hieroglyphics of the printers’ trade. And there, on the far right, in rows two and three, are the Throneberry and Hadley cards. The Throneberry confusion immediately vanished. Kent Hadley was traded from the Athletics to the Yankees. Somebody went to change, from Athletics to Yankees, the team name (success) and logo (fail; very big fail). The Yankee logo intended to supplant the A’s job on Hadley, Column Five, Row Three, instead was placed on Throneberry, Column Five, Row Two. This stumble created not one but two cards that will each set you back five figures.

           

        But it’s the rest of the sheet – not the epic Hadley/Throneberry error – that confirms these are proof cards. Four other fronts have minor variations (#2 Mejias, #9 Daley, #64 Fornieles all have the players’ names printed inside light blue boxes whereas they are only known on issued cards with names inside dark blue ones). And 18 of the 55 backs have further variations on the back. 1960 was the year Topps scrapped many player biographies on the backs of many of the cards, and instead went with bullet pointed game details and a big bold “Season Highlights” above them. On the back of the proof sheet, whether what’s below are the game notes or the traditional biography, all of the cards have the “Season Highlights” header. The sharp-eyed or design-oriented collectors were always troubled why the corresponding issued cards that have bios and not highlights had a big empty space on the back. The sheet explains why: the “Season Highlights” headers were simply removed.

          And that’s the proof that they’re all proofs.

          For Gelman’s claim to be true – that seven copies each of Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry made it into card packs and were issued – we have to assume that one of two explanations is also true:

          A) the other variations on the sheet, on 22 different cards, for a total of 154 copies (plus whatever variations might have existed on the separate sheet containing the Cimoli), either never made it into the packs or, while a couple of Cimolis and Hadleys have changed hands in the last 20 years, none of these 154 cards has ever appeared in an auction or an article or on eBay or even in a rumor somewhere or nobody ever noticed them and they’ve been sitting in piles of commons for 58 years. Either that’s true, or:

          B) those other 22 far more subtle errors and only those 22 errors were found on the proof sheet and corrected before the issued cards were printed. But somebody at Topps decided to let Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry proceed with big glaring errors intact to the publication stage and only then after exactly seven sheets rolled off the presses and through the cutting machine and into the packs did somebody yell ‘stop the presses’ and fix them. More over if the cards were “issued” why would John Rumierz have had to have gotten them from Bill Haber when Haber worked at Topps in the ‘70s or ‘80s? Why would there still have been any more copies at Topps?

          In theory, “B” could have happened. But I’d say the odds against are far higher than another wild explanation: that when Woody Gelman wrote “seven of each were issued” he meant “seven of each were issued by me.”

Doubling Up

Welcome to our third in a series of posts covering the first eleven issues of "The Card Collector", Woody Gelman's sorta-catalog-sorta-not newsletter of the late 50's and early 60's. Things were really picking up in the hobby in mid-1960 and TCC was all over it.

Right off the bat, the Card Collectors Co. Checklist Book is discussed.  It was hinted at in previous issues but was by now a reality. 

The Topps album being described was this bad boy, which was state of the art for the times:

Here now, is a very, very interesting Card Chatter. It says that seven copies each of the three famous 1960 "proof" errors made it into circulation.  You might need a salt shaker but given how rare these cards are, I guess it's possible.  It's funny what contemporary accounts can provide. There's also an article on the large cards issued by Post Cereal in 1960 and a blurb on the 1960 Fleer All Time Greats cards.

Bazooka gets a blast as well and also the first series of 1960 Leaf Baseball.  I'm not sure how many adult collectors would have known about such things if not for these puff pieces:

Lionel Carter, represent:

This was the last of the four page issues; it would be eight pages (amid a plea from the editor) going forward:

Gotta hand it to Woody, he would reference competitor's to Topps:

Things get a little reflective with a discussion of the 1960 Metallic Football Emblems inserts but then matter get downright funky with White Sox tickets!

Non-sports and Canadian cards are mentioned. Surprisingly, Parkhurst gets props while Topps partner O-Pee-Chee is frozen out:

Early on Woody promised articles on Exhibits.  He made good:

Programs, get your programs....

If rare regionals or checklists were your thing, TCC was the place for you:

 And now, a bit of a showstopper.  I had no idea Card Collctors Company sold uncut sheets of cards, or in this case panels.  Makes you wonder where those rare variations came from that were discussed in issue 7......

OK, I have to stop now, I'm giving myself the vapors!

Woody Tells A Whopper Or Two

Picking up from our last post, the fourth issue of The Card Collector was a more varied affair then the previous number. A prominently featured reader's letter pointed out that issue #3's 1959 Baseball checklist had two errors.  The checklist had #482 as Art Houtteman, a hard luck player who had last pitched in the majors with Cleveland in 1957 and was washed up by age 27.  To be fair, he debuted with the Tigers at the age of 17 in 1945 but in 1959 was pitching in the PCL. The actual card issued at #482, as pointed out, was of Russ Meyer (sic).

And #489 John Powers, who while nondescript, would be appearing in the middle of a personal three Topps card run. But he wasn't Jake Striker, who was listed by Woody. Striker appeared in a single, late September game with the Indians in 1959 (a win!) before his more extensive two game outing with  the White Sox in 1960 and his only Topps card would come when he was with the Pale Hose.  At 10.1 career innings pitched, he must be at or near the top of the heap for a MLB win with fewest innings pitched.  Two pitchers have managed to appear in 80 games without a win, but Striker did the opposite the easy way.

Here is Mr. Striker, who it must be admitted, had an awesome name for a flamethrower:

The observations on Basketball are, frankly, hysterical given the resounding failure of the sole Topps issue at the time for that sport (in 1957-58).  Nice to see Jack Davis get some props though, even though they came from Woody Gelman's teen protege -- and Topps employee at the time -- Len (Lenny) Brown:

Obscurity seems to be the theme in issue #5.  Interesting comment about the bulk of Bowman's 1949 PCL cards being destroyed.  Topps would have had access to Bowman's records, so it's possible, although as we shall soon see, TCC was not always truthful in explaining why some cards or sets were scarce:

OK, nobody "forgot" about pictures for four semi-high's in 1958.  Instead, they pulled them to make room for the overprinted Stan Musial and Mickey Mantle All Star cards that year, after signing Stan the Man following a period of Rawlings exclusivity.  My guess is that one half sheet of 132 on the semi high press sheet had the triple printed AS cards while the other had the four "missing" numbers.

Armour coins get a nice write up by hobby legend Buck Barker, as Woody started featuring more guest columnists.  1959 Bazooka Football also gets its due, as does the regular issue set as the promotional tie-ins with Topps continue unabated. Nice detail on the Canadian only status of 1960 Hockey cards as well and some competitor's products also get a nod:

All in all, the best issue yet.

Issue #5 led off with a pitch for The American Card Catalog and notice about an office move for Card Collectors Company. This presumably was when Woody moved all the old inventory from his late father in law's office in Manhattan to his storage or warehouse facility in Franklin Square, which I suspect was a couple of rooms in a friend or relative's house or space in a garage (Woody lived one town over in Malverne):

1952 Topps high number scarcity has been covered ad nauseum over the years, here and elsewhere, but it's worth pointing out that by 1959 Card Collectors Co. had run out of them but would restock at some point in 1960, right around the time of the alleged dumping at sea of two truckload's worth.  Hmmmmm....

I'll skip page three, which is all '52 Topps checklist and get right to the good stuff on page four, namely the 14 cards in the second series of Bazooka Baseball, seemingly issued after the Football Bazooka's!

Lionel Carter joined the newsletter for 1960 as Woody's somewhat erratic publishing schedule  indicates he must have been very busy at Topps (production of all sets at Topps probably peaked in 1959-60) but kudos for going back to pre-war issues:

Regional issues look like they are hitting the radar:

A full page of letters from early hobbyists covered a lot of different sets:

While page four gave yet another checklist, albeit one mentioned on the main letters page:

It appears this issue also came with an insert offering the 1960 Baseball cards and a bonus.

1960 would bring a few changes to The Card Collector, which we will get into next time.

Leaf Me Alone

Turning the WABAC machine to 1960 today kids, a year when Topps faced competition from a number of competitors in the baseball card market.  Topps of course, used a split-screen look in 1960:

I've often wondered why 1960 brought no less than three major competitors to the field and I think the answer actually can be traced to 1959 when Fleer introduced an 80 card set featuring Ted Williams. Perhaps thinking baseball's imminent expansions were going to provide a truly national marketing opportunity, Leaf Candy of Chicago came out with a set of 144 current major leaguers in 1960; the first national retail competition to Topps since 1955. In addition a company called Nu-card issued a 72 card set of Baseball Hi-Lites and Fleer followed up their Splendid Splinter set with a 79 card issue featuring old time players called Baseball Greats.

Leaf's set was the most ambitious. The company had provided some competition to Bowman in 1948 and '49 with a small handful of sets but opted out of the confectionery-paired card business for the 50's instead issuing boxed decks of cards known as Card-o's.  The manufacturer in 1960 was listed as Sports Novelties Inc. of Chicago (Leaf's hometown) and the set was advertised not as cards but as Baseball Photos.

Instead of a sweet confection, Leaf included two small marbles in the pack, which was quite lumpy.  Here is an opened pack, showing the marbles:

They issued two 72 card series, each with their own box design.  Here is Series 1:

You can see the team logos were not yet in evidence, nor were any player's names.  Series two would change that slightly:

It looks like Leaf took proper legal precautions as I cannot find any references to lawsuits involving them and Topps over the 1960 sets. The biggest obstacle looks to have been lack of consumer interest.as the cards had excellent photography. A lack of color photography and superstars (Snider and Aparicio were the biggest names) was not conducive to sales. The second series sold poorly by most accounts and a large find in the 1990's served to add a heft supply of these to the hobby, bringing down prices a bit.

The Fleer Baseball Greats issue featured Ted Williams, still under contract, but the rest of the players were old timers.  Card #80 was not issued in packs, or if it was saw extremely limited distribution as some seem to have been cancelled (see Collins card below) by unknown sources.  No less than three players can be found on this card today but it seems to have been meant to portray Pepper Martin, whose stats and bio are on all the backs known of this card. Pepper never made it to the front though and Eddie Collins, Lefty Grove or Joe Tinker are shown instead:

There is a lot of mystery surrounding #80!

These cards were pretty popular in 1960 and Fleer was trying to create brand awareness as they geared up for a full blown set of current major leaguers in 1963, the march toward which will be looked at next time out.  Today though I want to conclude with the Nu Card Baseball Hi-Lites set, which were oversized at 3 1/4" x 5 3/8" and featured imitation front pages of newspapers depicting famous plays, much like the 1948 Sports Thrills:

There are some variations in this set too but I am not really conversant in them.  All in all, the competition for Topps in 1960 was a bit lackluster. However, as we'll see next time out, things started picking up in 1961 as Topps fought back a bit.

We'll continue with Fleer's 1961-63 issues and take a look at Post and Jello next time as well.  I'm not sure if I can squeeze another post in before leaving for The National and we have a highly anticipated family vacation immediately following, so hang tight for a few weeks folks, I'll post as I can over that span!