Showing posts with label 1960 Topps Venezuelan baseball Tattoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1960 Topps Venezuelan baseball Tattoo. Show all posts

Saturday, February 25, 2023

The Edge Of Nineteen

Another month, another batch of 1960 Topps Venezuelan Baseball Tattoos!

Eight new subjects have come to light and, as a bonus, we now have a scan of Early Wynn. Here's the skinny:


Tony Gonzalez (Topps made an s out of the z) was Cuban and had played two seasons for Havana in the minors (quite ironically a farm club of the Reds at the time) and was a 23 year old rookie with Cincinnati in 1960.  He is a Venezuelan only subject and quite a curious one at that.


Dick was firmly established as a major leaguer by 1960 and would win the MVP that season.  He was also in the U.S. issue.


Frank Lary was a heckuva pitcher for the Tigers until he hurt his arm in 1962.  Known as the "Yankee Killer," he was also in the U.S. issue.


Juan Pizarro (with one z and two r's) was Puerto Rican and is a Venezuelan only subject. He bounced up and down between the majors and the minors for the Braves for three seasons before sticking for good in 1960.  He did play for Caguas in the Puerto Rican Winter League in 1957-58 and 1958-59 and pitched very well for them.

Two more recently came over my transom and are quite shot, UV light was needed to bring out the images:


That's Gene Woodling if you can't tell.  There's others of known subjects that are even worse than that but some are just little abstract works of art at this point.  Here's a bigger name though:


Stan the diffuse man! We do have one more to show of course:

Early shows up late!  There's two more are out there though.

Pedro Ramos has shown up in an SGC pop report, although there's no scan available.  It's yet another subject that's only in the Venezuelan set and he is also another Cuban player.  SGC being SGC, I would like to see a scan someday to confirm. (UPDATE Noon 2/25/23: Just in, Mr. Ramos):

He's in nice shape too! The big news however, is the nineteenth subject:

 

Trashed, but it's a Clemente!  Venezuelan only, Puerto Rican national.

Bob Allison
Ruben Amaro (Venezuelan only)
Luis Arroyo (Venezuelan only)
Bob Clemente (Venezuelan only)
Rocky Colavito
Don Drysdale
Nellie Fox
Tony Gonzales (Venezuelan only)
Dick Groat
Harmon Killebrew
Frank Lary
Juan Marichal  (Venezuelan only)
Ed Mathews
Stan Musial
Juan Pizzaro (Venezuelan only)
Vic Power (Venezuelan only)
Pedro Ramos (Venezuelan only)
Gene Woodling
Early Wynn

In terms of Venezuelan-only, Venezuelan-born subjects (none have appeared so far, although it was a slim field back then) I can't believe Luis Aparicio isn't in the set (he is not in the U.S. issue).  At a guess, I would think at least 20 or 24 subjects were produced and Aparicio really should be in the set given his nationality and stellar play but until any more bubble up that's just speculation.  It sure seems like there should be some more star power as well.

As to the year of issue, the 1961-62 winter season sure seems like the best bet at this point. The Caribbean-centric non-US players are very intriguing and may hold some clues as to how these were marketed but I'm hearing the pipeline of these has closed, who knows when (or if) more information will come out.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Wintry Mix

There's a bit of an update to last year's NYE post regarding the 1960 Venezuelan Baseball Tattoo issue, thanks to Josh Alpert, who is the foremost collector and chronicler of the 1959-68 efforts Topps made in that country.  He's offered his take on the set, as it's comprised so far at least, and his comments are illuminating. He's also provided scans of the other eight known  players, which I will show below his comments.

As to the roster of US players, Josh says: "I would imagine they originally produced all the stars - Mantle, Mays, Koufax, but my guess is they are all long gone.

The timing of the issue is probably 1960, with this as part of his reasoning: "Colavito was traded to Detroit April 17, 1960. If they were a 1961 issue, I would think he’d have been drawn in Detroit colors, not Cleveland’s."

Josh also had a very interesting observation as to the scarcity and packaging: "In the US, the tattoos were sold as a stand alone product with a piece of gum. The Venezuelans almost certainly didn't have the machinery to mechanically package the tattoo around a piece of gum. I think this explains the smaller size of the tattoo, it corresponded with the size of a piece of gum, and they were packaged with a piece of gum (as they advertise), probably wrapped in cello and sold individually. This seems more plausible to me and helps explain the extreme scarcity. Almost no one would have kept them if they came with a piece of gum. Someone buying a single piece of gum would have likely opened the gum on the spot and either thrown away the wrapper and tattoo, applied the tattoo, or used the tattoo for the spent gum. They don't have nearly the collectability as the cards, it's likely no one even gave it a thought to collect them- except at least one person, clearly, who collected them intentionally and saved a small handful that we know of."

And now, the new/old scans:


Bob Allison won the 1959 American League Rookie of the Year voting as a member of the old Washington Senators.  He's not thought of as a big star today but he certainly was during the first half of his career. Note there is no production rip in the tattoo, unlike the American versions.


Amaro presents a bit of a conundrum.  The Tatoo set was produced in Venezuela but he was Mexican and played in that county during his winter ball days.  Mexico wasn't even a participant in the CWS until 1970 but as it turns out, from 1961 to 1969 there was no Caribbean World Series after Castro dissolved all the professional Cuban leagues in 1961.  Amaro is one of the three known players to only appear in the Venezuelan Tatoo set. His inclusion is curious if the set was only marketed in Venezuela but there's no evidence of any other country being involved in the distribution.


Another big name at the time, Colavito's Cleveland colors prevailed, per Mr, Alpert, despite his trade to Detroit at the start of the 1960 MLB season. Topps being Topps, even if the set was issued after the 1960 Major League season ended, the colors may have been left alone. But going with the year of U.S. issue seems apt as well.

Drysdale made his first MLB All star team in 1959, so was a solid choice. The staining and unique paper loss along the bottom right edge match up almost exactly to the Allison example above.

Fox was  another well known player who had a fabulous 1959 season that led to the AL MVP award. Total no brainer.


Killebrew finally put things together in 1959, so the set ended up with two Senators players!


His nickname was the "Dominican Dandy" so it's pretty clear where Juan Marichal pitched in winter ball. As pointed out in the original post, Luis Arroyo, the third non-U.S. checklisted player in the set, pitched for Puerto Rico.  I would expect some Venezuelan League subjects were included in the set but so far none have surfaced.


Another no brainer for inclusion to my mind, Mathews was destroying MLB pitching season-after-season by the time 1960 rolled around.

Hopefully an Early Wynn scan will pop up soon.  Josh Alpert has just advised a Vic Power has now shown up, so he's a second Puerto Rican born player that was not in the U.S. set and some other subjects have just been identified as well, too late for this post (watch this space). 

Here is the latest checklist then, 11 in number and I have been advised they generally measure 1 3/16" x 2 1/4", which is smaller than the U.S. version's dimensions of 1 9/16" x 3 1/2", with some variance in the size possible:

Bob Allison
Ruben Amaro (Venezuelan only)
Luis Arroyo (Venezuelan only)
Rocky Colavito
Don Drysdale
Nellie Fox
Harmon Killebrew
Juan Marichal  (Venezuelan only)
Ed Mathews
Vic Power (Venezuelan only)
Early Wynn (photo seen, not the tatoo)

You can take this link with a heaping amount of salt as it's from Wikipedia, but it details MLB players who have appeared in the Caribbean World Series, although far more played in the various Winter Leagues. There's a lot more to be uncovered regarding the Venezuelan Tattoo sets but it's just part of a larger history that's still revealing itself.

I'll keep updating as more information comes in.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

A Winter's Tale Or Two

Good stuff here today kids, as a smattering of 1960 Topps Venezuelan Baseball Tattoos surfaced recently, which is a akin to a Brigadoon sighting I'm sure. Previously, I was aware of a Don Drysdale example and I think two others were out there but that's not confirmed. Obviously, they are scarce as hell.

Luis Arroyo was one of the subjects in this batch but here's the thing, he doesn't appear in the US checklist:


Here's the outside, which is a much batter scan than the roached out Drysdale I posted in 2013:


So the obvious questions are:

1) How many subjects are in the Venezuelan set? (the US set has 96 subjects)

2) How many subjects from the major Caribbean, Central and South American Winter Leagues did Topps create for the Venezuelan release?

At a guess the Venezuelan Tattoo set contains less than 96 subjects (of which only 55 are actual ball players in the US release).  My reasoning is that, since Topps did not replicate their entire 572 card 1960 Baseball set for release in the country, issuing only 198 cards (essentially the first two series), why would they issue a full tattoo set AND add players?  As to who was added locally, well who knows at this point? Much more information is needed and they would add a couple players to replace checklists in the card sets, but now I see there is another question:

3) What year saw the release of the Venezuelan Baseball Tattoos?

If you look at Arroyo, he was essentially a journeyman in the U.S. until 1961, when he plied his screwball into a monster year for the Yankees and finished 6th in the MVP voting as a relief pitcher! However, a native Puerto Rican, he had played locally since 1946 and appeared in 19 seasons overall in his native country, beginning with Ponce in the Puerto Rican Winter League.  He later appeared numerous times with the ostensible Puerto Rican National teams in the Caribbean World Series. In 1948 he began his U.S. Baseball odyssey and despite a 1955 call-up to the Cardinals that led to an All-Star nod and, of course, his 1961 breakout year, Arroyo mostly bounced up and down until 1963 and also in-and-out as he sometimes pitched summer ball in Puerto Rico instead of playing in the minors. 

He was a big deal in the Caribbean and quite well known in the Winter Leagues and their associated World Series tournament but did Topps make up a tattoo because of that or because of his big 1961 season with the Yankees?  If the latter, it points to this being a 1961 or even a 1962 release, which seems quite possible given the straddling of calendar years for their Venezuelan issues.  A full checklist might help answer all three questions but I'm not too optimistic we'll ever see or develop one fully. What we do have is the following:

Ed Mathews, Nellie Fox, Rocky Colavito were in this latest batch, photo ID-only Early Wynn and Juan Marichal are also not in the US checklist but alas, without a scan right now. Marichal and Mathews are said to have have two known examples, per Joe Morris, who tipped me off to all to this. So this is the ur-checklist, all of seven (ten) subjects in length at present (Update Jan. 2, 2023-Friend o'the Archive and advanced collector Larry Serota advised of two additions to the checklist, Bob Allison and Ruben Amaro and thinks the set was issued after 1960 as a standalone, with a cello overwrap). (Update Jan. 5, 2023-HArmon Killebrew is now a confirmed subject):

Bob Allison
Ruben Amaro (Venezuelan only)
Luis Arroyo (Venezuelan only)
Rocky Colavito
Don Drysdale
Nellie Fox
Harmon Killebrew
Juan Marichal  (Venezuelan only)
Ed Mathews
Early Wynn

I'd love to see some uncut sheets from the U.S. release but cannot find any presently.  That might help narrow down how many subjects were produced in Venezuela.  Or not!

Happy New Year all!

Friday, May 3, 2013

Tatuaje Tu

Well, they are tattered and torn and the scans are poor but I am super excited about an unknown to the hobby 1960 Baseball Tattoo from Venezuela that just sold on eBay (for $360).  Here is what all the fuss was about:


Compare to this US wrapper (Venezuelan wrappers often had different color schemes than the US ones):



An OPC pack shows the international flavor of this issue:






The indicia is hard to read but indicates the pack was made in Venezuela:


The purchaser got a tattoo of Don Drysdale for their troubles:


I'm pretty sure I know who won the auction and hope to have some hi-resolution scans at some point.  Now, can you imagine what a nicer wrapper or pack like the US and Canadian examples shown above would bring?!