Double Dipper

A truly rare piece of Topps history was recently hammered down at Heritage Auctions and it was a real doozy.  Yup, an uncut sheet of the 1968 Basketball set popped up out of nowhere and went for just over an eye-popping $128,000, or a cool $2,900 per subject!

The sheet has the set printed twice:

Nuts, right?  I believe it's a final production piece as the only markings are centering lines that appear smackdab in the middle of the sheet, top and bottom:

On the back, we get two complete puzzle images of the Big Dipper himself, Wilt Chamberlain:

It too has centering lines:

The set has been covered here before, including an in-depth look at dating by guest blogger Keith Olbermann that pins the set as a 1967-68 release. Click here for all the deets.

The 44 card array is intriguing but certainly within the "11 X arrays Topps used at the time for their standard sized sets. I'm trying to match with some other B&W sets of the era to see if it may have been printed along with another test but I don't think that was the case as nothing else really matches up. I think then this is just how Topps printed them up for the test.

This is a really great piece of Topps history and while it's partially wrecked, I'm hoping the winner doesn't decide to chop it up but it certainly could happen.

The Dating Game

The slow train-a-rollin' dating of the 1968 Topps Basketball test set continues.  You may recall Keith Olbermann's article here about 3.5 years ago, pointing toward a 1967-68 date vs the more commonly accepted 1968-69. The later dating is likely the result of the 1969-70 regular issue being thought to come on the heels of the test cards.  Well, a recent Heritage auction has given even more credence to the earlier dating (which is not in doubt).

Witness the test card of one John Joseph Havlicek:

 Here is the photo used to make the card up, according to the description Heritage wrote:

I didn't scan the whole things as the photo is annoyingly off kilter in the holder but the PSA label sort of purports this as well:

Now, all of that verbiage could mean a couple of different things and I'd like some back story on the actual production photo, which is likely undated and unwritten upon according to Mr. O, but take a look at the back:

Two things stand out to me:

1) the date of October 6, 1966 which is likely the date the photo was snapped; and

2) the "2 3/4 in" notation.

I have a card from this set-Jerry Sloan, and the top to bottom measurement of the photo on his card is 2 7/8 inches:

So, close but not an exact match.  Still, Topps was experimenting and anything is possible but it also seems that the photos vary in height from card to card.  From the original Olbermann post here, we saw this pair:

 

Hard to tell for sure but it looks like the Beatty picture is a hair shorter than that of Bridges.

So this doesn't really change anything but it does give us a neat collectible!

Better And Better

Well campers, there was some big time stuff on display at this year's National but by my estimation one item sat atop the heap. Many of you have undoubtedly seen the article on Sports Collectors Daily about a large stash of vintage unopened packs from Topps and Bowman unearthed by Mile High Card Co. Among this array of goodies was an unopened 1968 Basketball pack, a heretofore unseen objet d'hobby!

(Courtesy Sports Collectors Daily)

The pack, which is being auctioned in September and will undoubtedly go for major bucks, was the one thing I truly made a point to check out in Chicago as I was curious about the never-before-seen insert described on the wrapper (opened packs, which are really envelopes, have been seen previously) and to see if it fit my theory of it being derived from a 1963 Hood Dairy booklet. After gawking like a little kid at the candy counter, I asked one of the guys at Mile High about the pack contents, to which he replied "we also have one that was opened, would you like to see it?". Yes, please!

I then was led to this sight:

And just like that, two mysteries were solved.  If you haven't clicked through above to some of the Hood Dairy booklet scans I will end the suspense and confirm that above "How To Shoot" instructional is descended one of them and it was indeed folded to fit within.  The interior is set up like a small comic book by the way, very typical of the early 1960's. As for the rest of the pack, three cards (all HOF'ers in this case) were what you got. I recall the back of the booklet was blank.

Those B&W cards are similar to other produced by Topps in the mid 60's but the envelope style pack is a rarity, with only a couple of other sets having been associated with them over the years.  The card style was an easy one for Topps to produce but I suspect they were created for multiple purposes. The envelope is a little trickier but I think it ties in and will describe how momentarily.

First, here's Friend o'the Archive Keith Olbermann on some specifics about this pack (and find), after inquiring further with Mile High:

"These packs came from a family that operated a confectionary company that distributed non-sports trading cards. Apparently, the companies exchanged information with one another and the packs were likely acquired directly from a Topps executive in order to get feedback, since they were not a competitor in the sports card market. On much of the unopened material that they acquired, they made notations showing the date of acquisition. The unopened pack has the notation “3/6/68,” which would support you claim that they were produced and distributed to select people during the 1967-68 season."

My previous thoughts on the envelopes and B&W cards is that they were used in a lab test setting, i.e.a controlled environment.  Topps routinely had at least a three phase process when testing cards in the 60's:

1) Lab Test (observing kids in a research facility play with the cards).
2) Field Test (executives handed out cards at local schools near the Topps plant in Sunset Park, Brooklyn)
3) Retail Test (a select few stores in select few regions or areas--again mostly in Brooklyn--would get a box or two) 

We now have a fourth option, namely an industry oriented informal review.  Mile High thought the cards were made up to show NBA executives how such a product would work, which is also a possible avenue of limited distribution.  So really, except for the retail test, which more closely resembled the standard retail counter display model, the envelopes and B&W cards could have been used for any or all of the other four options.

The Mile High comments also reiterate Olbermann's position that the set was issued during the 1967-68 season.  All-in-all this little bit of the larger find has filled in and confirmed some key points.

Next question: what will the unopened pack go for?!

Update 9/16/17 - The pack went for $16,693.20.  It also seems likely the paper envelope test packs were used because the inserts, even folded, were too big and/or too floppy for a standard sized pack.

A Wrinkle In Time

Another guest post from Keith Olbermann , wherein two crazy scarce test baseball and basketball sets are re-dated. The baseball dating is due to common sense but it took some sleuthing on the basketball side. Mr. O is referring back to his 1967 test USA hockey post here at the beginning but I've already run a post in the interim, so you'll have to stitch them together yourselves! 

The release dating of 1950-70's Topps issues for Basketball and Hockey, especially the latter, continues.

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Yeah, so the years on the “1968-69 Topps Basketball Test” and “1967 Topps Giant Stand-ups Test” sets are also wrong. 

       Sorry.

       These postulations doesn’t require nearly as much explanation as why that’s actually the 1967-68 Topps Hockey Test set, not the 1966-67. They both pivot not on a seldom-noticed pattern of player transactions, but the simple fact that cards in each set reference a team that didn’t exist in the supposed year of issuance.

       The Giant Stand-ups set is fantastic and imposing. The cards are the size of the ’64 Giant Baseball set, but about six times as thick. They feel like you could break some skin if you threw one at somebody. The color head shots against the shiny black background is just fantastic. And the set contains number 23, Jim Hunter, of the Oakland Athletics.

       The A’s didn’t move to Oakland until 1968. The cards could not have been made in 1967, unless Topps was guessing that the rumors were true and Charlie Finley really was moving the team at season’s end. By 1967 there had been stories — all circulated by Finley — that he was moving to Oakland. Or Dallas. Or Louisville. Or Seattle. Or staying in Kansas City.

       These cards were made in 1968.

       And by the way I have seen several supposed experts in the field declare that these were “uncirculated.” Nonsense. I can’t testify first or second hand that they were actually sold to store customers (as I can about ’68 Topps 3-D), but I have seen a bunch of these beauties which were evidently used as stand-ups and are missing the part of the card around the player’s head. I don’t think that’s an accident or something a modern collector did. Besides, the perforations required to create the stand-up required specialized production equipment. If Topps made these cards only for internal review they wouldn’t have wasted the money. The claim that they never left the shop probably results from the discovery a decade ago of a bunch of full-thickness proofs which do not have the die-cut impressions.

        Meanwhile, the basketball set, always listed as dating to 1968-69, is certainly not from that year. It’s possible — even probable — that the cards were printed and distributed (and again, too many roughed-up cards exist to suggest these never hit the streets) in the late winter or early spring of 1968, but the cards absolutely pertain to 1967-68, not 1968-69.

        There are only 22 cards in the set, and three of them show players (Zelmo Beaty, Bill Bridges, and the misspelled “Len Wilkins”) from the St. Louis Hawks. On May 3, 1968, the Hawks’ franchise was sold to Georgia interests who announced they were moving it to Atlanta for the 1968-69 season. The NBA approved the shift a week later.

                      

        If that’s not enough evidence for you, two months later Wilt Chamberlain was traded to the Lakers. Yet he appears in this set with the Philadelphia 76ers, and the image that the puzzle backs of this set forms also shows him in a Philly uniform. As illustrated on the back of Hal Greer’s cards, the socks on Chamberlain’s puzzle image have already been re-touched — the uniform could have easily been altered, too.

 If you’re testing to see if basketball would sell to the gum smackers of the late ‘60s, you’re not going to put out an outdated card of the sport’s biggest name, nor three cards from a team that had just changed cities.

        There’s also another bit of evidence that dates the set as 1967-68. Card #12 features the rookie of the year for that season, Earl Monroe of Baltimore. That fact is often used to support the 1968-69 dating. But look at it. The card shows Monroe in the uniform not of the Bullets, but in the generic garb of his college team, Winston-Salem State. 

        The other evidence used to backstop the 1968-69 date is the inclusion of Bill Bradley in a Knicks’ uniform. Hard to conceive this now, but Bradley’s arrival in the NBA was probably as ballyhooed as Wilt Chamberlain’s nearly a decade earlier. But after traveling to England to continue his education at Oxford for two years after the Knicks drafted him, Bradley’s debut was further delayed until December, 1967, because of military service. This would seemingly be conclusive — why would Topps scramble to get a shot of Bradley for a silly test card when any one of a dozen other stars could’ve filled the space in the set? — except that a quick perusal of the old basketball books and guides of the era shows pretty quickly that all 22 of the photos in the Topps set were publicity shots released by the teams. Monroe’s college shot was probably distributed by the Bullets as soon as he officially made the club in October, 1967 (or maybe even the day he was drafted), and I recently discovered that Bradley did a photo shoot for the Knicks in the spring of 1967, before going into the Air Force Reserves.

        When I first heard of this set some time in the ‘70s, it was always referred to as “1968 Topps Test Basketball.” I think that’s where the presumption came from that it was from 1968-69 — you hear “1968” and you don’t think “1967-68.” The decision to include two rookies like Bradley and Monroe suggests the season had already begun by the time the cards were put together, so it’s likely that they really were put out in calendar 1968.

        But, during the 1967-68 NBA season. Not the 1968-69 one.

Hoop-De-Do

As longtime reader of this blog know, I've been trying to track down one of the most elusive inserts Topps ever slipped into their packs for quite a while now.  I am talking of course about the 1968 test Basketball issue, a 22 card black and white rarity issued in minute quantities almost fifty years ago.

The cards are well known in vintage basketball collecting circles but not so much to the casual hobbyist:

Just under 170 cards have been graded by PSA and the highest amount for any single player is 13 for Wilt Chamberlain. Pop reports can be tricky things, what with crackouts and resubs and the more common players seem to average about a half dozen examples each.  In my experience and opinion test issues from the 1965-72 era, sort of the golden age for such things, are available in direct proportion to how they were tested.

The test cycle went roughly as follows: 1) Controlled opinion and market testing in a lab, 2) field testing where Topps executives would actually hand out cards at schoolyards near HQ in Brooklyn ("here little boy, would you like some gum?"), and 3) retail testing where a couple of boxes would be put out in stores near Topps HQ (Cortelyou Road is a rumored location for such things). Later on, regional issues such as the 1975 Mini Baseball would occur and give us products with production runs well beyond anything that should be considered a test. Normally, the farther along in the test cycle a set went, the more cards there are out there to collect. Under ten wax boxes would be a typical run of test cards that made it to the retail level from what I can gather.

There is also another phase, that of the failed test where cards (or internal proofs never market tested) were dumped via Fun Packs (like Flash Gordon), or the Card Collectors Company (1970 Cloth Baseball) or by other means. My own opinion is that most black and white cards, like the one above and also quite a few other sets in the mid to late 60's, did not make it to a full retail test and were only handed out in the lab setting or never actually made it out of the executive offices.

So the 1968 Basketball issue possibly made it to the schoolyard phase but not the retail test to my mind.  Unlike almost all other test issues though, they came in an envelope and not a pack:

Ignore the writing, it's likely added after the fact.

Three things:  1) The gum may have been individually wrapped given that this was not a traditional wax pack; 2) the envelope measures about 3" x 4 1/2" -thanks to Friend o'the Archive Don Huse for the measurements- and; 3) nobody has ever seen the insert.

Well, as is my wont, I was trolling around the internet recently and found this:

That is from this site:  http://www.vintagebasketball.com/home/category/booklets-food-and-drink/hood-cousy-how-play-better-basketball/ and it has scans of 11 other booklets. The site is semi-defunct but if you look you will see the webmaster attributes these booklets to a Hood Dairy issue in 1963. I have sent a message to the webmaster looking for details, especially measurements (remember the oversized envelope wrapper).  I have no idea if there is Hood indicia on the booklet but I could see Topps somehow getting a small supply of these and using them for the insert.  I'm guessing but it's the closest thing I have ever seen to what the wrapper advertises.

Further Update 8/12/17 - Folded Booklets were indeed found in the test packs. More here.

Update 1/25/16-See the Comments for a measurement of the booklet.  It appears that even if folded it would be to big for the pack on even its shortest side.  There is Hood indicia on the back cover to boot. Back to square one it seems, or square zero (no insert exists).

The Envelope Please

I've been mulling some pieces of paper of late, namely some very rare Topps wrappers.  Last time out I showed a 1968 test basketball wrapper, which was really a paper envelope. This type of "wrapper" made the little light bulb go off above my head as I knew there was also a paper wrapper associated with the 1970 Topps Flags of the World issue. Actually, it turns out there were two.

We have seen in previous posts that Flags of the World were a recurring theme at Topps; indeed at many other confectionery and tobacco companies as well, since they were tried and true sellers back in the vintage days. 1949, 1950 and 1956 saw Flags issues from Topps, then a break occurred until 1970 when another issue came out, possibly in the wake of a general, societal push to make U.S. school kids more aware of the United Nations in the late 1960's.  I'll get into the numerous permutations and inserts of the 1970 issue someday but want to focus on its paper wrapper.

Jeff and Bob Marks, writing in The Wrapper #92, cite a five cent wrapper comprised of a test sticker affixed to tan envelope. I only have scan from the article to demonstrate:

The 61-75 handwritten notation at the top is in line with other Topps test pieces I have seen. The 61 is the project number; the 75 is a bit more mysterious.  Most Topps production codes from 1966 onward use the last digit to signify the year of production but only for retail products, where the full code resembles something like a Social Security number.  Test codes often seem to end in 5, just like what is shown above and are usually in the shorter format we see here.  

Compare this to the 1968 test Basketball wrapper:

I actually found a back scan of the basketball wrapper since last episode:

You can see the flaps of the envelope quite clearly.  I would ignore the handwritten date at the top, I suspect it was added by a collector, not Topps.

So why envelopes?  Well, Topps was already using them for certain mid 60's issues, mostly of the "novelty" variety as opposed to cards.  Wise Ties is one example but there are quite a few others from this time frame so they were on the mind of Topps brass at the time.  Usually though, they were for products that came without gum.

Two scenarios seem likely to my mind: Firstly, Topps may have been testing wrappers; I am assuming it was cheaper to use an envelope vs. a wax wrapper. The envelopes could also have been used in a scenario where the cards were being tested and it was easier than cranking up the ol' wrapping machinery just to use some already available envelopes.  It is also possible both actions were occurring at the same time. 

The way Topps tested products at the time was interesting.  Internal pitches were made by Woody Gelman's creative team, using mockups often times grafted together from some new artwork and pre-existing product. Topps executives would then be asked to approve a project based upon such presentaions. This was a highly competitive process and only about 1 in 10 projects would get the go ahead. At this point full design of a proof version would occur and sample run of very small size would be run off by the printer; often this would only be 22 or 28 cards of the planned total. Sometimes these would be complete cards, other times only fronts were produced. Short runs such as this were likely responsible for all the black & white mid 60's test issues; these short runs could have been for both internal and external use, I can't quite tell and both scenarios are possible.

Once they had some cards to hand out, Topps would form a focus group, where kids would be gathered at a test site, sometimes run by a third party.  Cards would be distributed and observations made as to how the children reacted to cards and how they would play with them.  Other times they would go to a local elementary or junior high school yard in Brooklyn, near Topps HQ in Sunset Park and hand out test packs (hard to imagine that going well today but it was a different time) to gauge the reactions.  Both methods could have been used for a single product, either in tandem or one after the other.  These are the points where I believe the envelopes would have come into play.

Once this stage was finished, the product either got killed off, dramatically reconfigured or advanced to a retail test. Sometimes tweaks were made before the test boxes hit the shelves, sometimes not.  In Brooklyn, this was where the mythical "Cortelyou Avenue Candy Store" would enter the picture.  In Pennsylvania, following the move of the confectionery production line and warehousing to Duryea in 1966, retail tests were made in a similar fashion in Scranton and environs, near the plant.  Packs would generally be made of white waxed paper, with a sticker affixed to the front and sometimes a smaller one, listing ingredients if the pack held gum, slapped across the back and acting to help seal the pack. Tested products would have to pass this trial before full retail production commenced.  Even after the final test, some refinements would often be made to the cards; usually (but not always) these were minor in nature.

The method was not foolproof as some sets would test well but vanish without a trace at the retail level.  Still, Topps apparently did a test for every issue they wanted to retail; although this would seemingly exclude recurring annual sports issues such as baseball and football.  Any baseball or football supplemental sports sets would have gone through this process however.  These envelopes would have been a quick way for Topps to test product; so much so I wonder if they were produced for other sets.  Their rarity would make this a difficult proposition to research. The stickers affixed to the envelopes would have been reused for the wax tests packs I think.

The five cent price points on both the above wrappers would point to 1968 or early 1969 tests as Topps went to ten cents on their retail wax packs in mid 1969. The box that the Flags test packs came in is also known and carries a Brooklyn address with a zip code.  Topps changed to a  Duryea address in mid 1969 so that further locks the date in. I mentioned another paper wrapper for Flags of the World and I'll get into that next time.

Dribble, Dribble

Well I snagged a real sweet test card off eBay just before Turkey Day.  I have a goal of collecting one card from every set Topps released at retail from 1948-80; this conveniently leaves off some of the real tough proof issues such as the 1966 Punch Boards but with some sets it's really hard to tell if they were released to the public. There are still some doozie's in there though.

One set that falls into this category (and others) is the 1968 Test Basketball release.  The cards are extremely rare but they are printed in black and white, which has always made me suspicious of their non-proofiness, for lack of a better term.

It looks like he's practicing in a high school gym-the NBA was not always the glamour league that it is now.  You might also note the card displays Default Topps Block Print, a hallmark of many mid 60's test and proof sets.  There are 22 cards in the set and the backs make up a puzzle of Wilt Chamberlain, looking very vertical:

I think the two bottom right corner cards are just black while the two above them just show a little knee.  The cards came in a paper envelope style of pack:

It looks like a typical Topps test pack sticker but the word is that it's on an envelope. The cards are rare, the insert would be rarer still; I have never seen one.  I have a theory on these cards (both test basketball and other black & white issues of the era) and this type of envelope wrapper and wll get into that next time out.