Salad Days

My post last month about the various Topps Baseball Stars Candy and Bubble Gum lid sets elicited a response from Friend o'the Archive Keith Olbermann. He asked what the basis was for dating the first, "green-starred" proof Baseball Stars Bubble Gum set to 1972.  The answer is: nothing!  I've usually put quotes around the year when referring to the set, as the dating seems to stem from early dealer attempts to identify the first run of proofs with the stars in green atop the lid, since the issued set switched the "star's stars" to red. 

Now, keep in mind that I soaked up tons of hobby knowledge from old price guides and reference books, bi-weekly and monthly hobby publications and many old time dealers, especially from 1981 to the early Nineties. In fact, I have several bookcases and cabinets full of them (well, not old dealers, they would collapse my shelves). So when I type "1972" in regard to the green starred set, it occurs to me that many people don't know why I do that. Related to this, when looking through numerous posts and comments in various collecting groups on social media, it's easy to see there's a big knowledge gap between people of an "uncertain" age (say those born after the Millennium, and those of a "certain" age (old coots like me but generally those born before 1975 or so) with a middle group that has some grasp of the old, paper-driven hobby eco-info-system. 

I fell this is not the fault of the younger folks but rather the fallout of the migration from books to screens that is very much still ongoing.  Now I realize not everybody has the space, time or means to accumulate a library of hobby books and publications and that it is, more and more in the digitally driven world, a luxury in a way. I've been accumulating printed hobby material for forty five years, a solid chunk of which was never published in any kind of quantity or widely circulated.  I also saved and organized clippings from old hobby publications and auction catalogs from roughly 1981 to 2007, some of which are outdated, some of which are not. All of that stuff is pretty much entered into my brain at this point and if it isn't, I know where to look.  But that's because it's all on paper (although I've been scanning and digitizing a lot of it as I have time).  How then, does the younger collector of vintage items (vintage being pre-1981 to my mind but let's say pre-Millennium to be fair) today figure things out? We were all green once (that's Shakespeare kids, look it up) but it seems harder and harder to study up these days, at least to my way of thinking, and I'm hardly a luddite.

Well, there's various websites such as Trading Card Database, PSA and Sports Collectors Daily, plus old auction house online archives, eBay, subscription sites like Beckett and Card Ladder plus all the groups on Facebook, Instagram and the like.  And this doesn't even get into things like Tik-Tok, vlogs and podcasts.  Many of these are fine and informative sites or entertainment but it's all getting dispersed to the point there's no way to efficiently corral some of the more esoteric information on non-mainstream sets, which is not something that seems easily solvable. So I'm thinking on all of this and invite this blog's regular readers (and casual looky-loo's) to weigh in.

Meanwhile, I never really looked at the "1972" roster of Baseball Stars Bubble Gum to decode if there was, in fact, any way to date it to 1972, or nor.  Mr. Olbermann has helpfully weighed in, allowing me to avoid any heavy lifting.  And so...

"We all saw it, new, at the first New York card shows (1973) and that proof sheet was a thing of horrific beauty - with hockey team photos and other detritus serving as an impromptu background for the oddly positioned baseball shots.

But most importantly: Willie Mays is on the proof sheet, in a Mets uniform. He wasn't traded to the Mets until May 11, 1972 and nobody turned new Topps photos around in less than months then."

This is the proof sheet in question and it's always been seen as an oddity; here's an ad from the much missed U-Trading Cards in Seattle, circa 1995 (with bonus goodies described):

Everybody calls them Candy Lids by the way, even though they are not, as after 1970 they held bubble gum!

Keith has sent along some illustrative scans (red circles by KO), noting:

"I love the idea that Esposito is in the debris behind Sanguillen"

"Mike Epstein was traded to Texas on November 20, 1972. That sheet was NOT produced in 1972"

"Pretty sure that's a '71 Yankees team card peeking up from under Barry Bonds and Lee May"

I'm not sure anyone has ever figured out why the underlying matte for the candy lid proofs looks like it does, maybe the fumes from mixing up Bazooka that day were too overpowering or something.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of both years, showing Dick Bosman, "1972" first, of course:

That bright ring of color is the big difference of course, but the backs, as noted in the U-Trading ad, reduced the size of the "Baseball Stars Bubble Gum" copy, albeit quite subtly. The smaller green stars without photo insets also remained for the issued version.

The proofs of the issued 1973's are seldom seen, which is too bad as they are kind of glorious:

Christie's auctioned off an uncut proof sheet in 1992, according to quite wonderful Post War Cards website; taste the rainbow:

I'm not sure why there were so many yellow lids!  Here's the color breakdown:

 8  Red

 8  Blue

26 Yellow

 6  Purple/Pink (you decide)

 7  Green

--- 

55 

== 

"Oddball" status aside notwithstanding, the 1973's have never really caught on with collectors, although they have their adherents among HOF and team specialists. I feel like that's the case with any almost any kind of set issued without the additional licensing needed from Major League Baseball Promotions Corp. allowing the use of team names and logos.

Flip Your Lids

I've mentioned an uptick in uncut Topps material hitting the auction circuit of late, much of it of the test variety. Today's treat features the 1970 Topps Baseball Stars Candy set, which marks their initial attempt to market a tub full of small confections with a lid featuring a collectible novelty on the underside. Memory Lane recently offered this piece, which may have been first hammered in 1992 at Christie's, then locked up in a collection since:

I've covered the set in some detail previously (you can click on the label at right to see) and it's nice to see this sheet surface. The idea of filling the little tubs with candy soon morphed into cramming them full of bubble gum, which suggests to me the candy may not have tested all too well. These next-phase products featured various fruit-flavored Rocks o' Gum and Gum Berries which began rolling out the following year, with humorous illustrations adorning the lid bottoms:

Rocks o' Gum may have been based upon an even earlier version of the product but that's something uncovered by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins and he's still on the trail.

From rocks to berries (well, grapes):

And purple (1971) to red (1972):

I believe all these related sets used the same illustrations, so Topps was playing around with the gum format a bit. Here's another: 

This of course, all culminated in the 1973 Baseball Stars Bubble Gum issue, which was apparently redesigned from a proof-only set started a year earlier.  Here's how "1972" (as its often referred to) displayed to the world.  This version seems to be part of a design phase where Topps tweaked some of the colors:

(UPDATE 6/22/25:To clarify, these are generally referred to in the hobby 1972's but they are early phase 1973's). A handful of these have been found in "rounded" form but they mostly come squared off:

This transitioned to the final 1973 release, where some green stars turned red::

It was a long road but they finally got there:

So many twists and turns for sets that never really sold all that well!

Tub Bub

I picked up another cool item a short while ago, the latest in a string of offbeat Topps miscellania that has come my way of late.

The 1970 Baseball Stars Candy set is a farily tough customer these days.  24 candy lid cards, generally described as a test issue, made a brief appearance on the scene that year. It was the first of a small number of similar sets sold by Topps between 1970-74 that featured candy, something that harkened back to their old Topps Candy Division twenty years prior.

The lids are well known. I nicked this from 707Sportscards and cleaned it up a bit but it shows the way the candy touched the lid and how the tab would be bent lifting it off the container:

Here's a proof of the late, great Le Grand Orange that's cleaner and shows the "tri-star" back used in 1970.  The 1973 version of the set only had two stars:

What I managed to score was the tub that held the candy and sat under the lid:

The graphics showed three ghostly blobs.  This one may may be based upon Gary Nolan:

The other two, not sure but on the left is a possible Johnny Bench and on the right Tommy Helms.  I wonder if the artist hailed from Cincinnati?

As with the almost contemporary Gum Berries tubs, it's a No. 23 Dixie Cup!

Unlike the Gum Berries tub, this one sports no commodity code.

The tub appears to be unused.  Another has popped up since I procured mine and a small hoard may have been unearthed.  I know a fairly large hoard of the 1973 tubs was recently auctioned by Lelands:

That's 164 of 'em if you're scoring at home.  Those clear plastic dust caps may or may not be original to these tubs. Note the candy weight has reduced from 1.1 oz. to .95 oz.  Also, the 1973's contained Bubble Gum and not Candy.  I suspect the candy was a dud and the product was rejiggered accordingly. There's certainly a ton more of the lids form 1973 available to collectors than from three years prior, although the 1970 version we see lids from probably were more widely distributed than a standard test issue as they can be found with some diligence. The 1970's may have been just issued regionally with a wider rollout planned before Topps pulled the plug.

Round and Round (and Round)

Right in the middle of various Topps efforts to see if non-team licensed cards and other like items would sell, they managed to release a pretty nice set of 55 baseball players whose mugs served as the underside of lids for a product called Baseball Stars Gum. While the name harkened back somewhat to 1951 and its truncated sets and rancid caramel, the look this time was decidedly modern. It just took four years worth of development to get there.

The first stab at a candy lid set featuring baseball players occurred in 1970. It was a test issue and it must not have done well:



The back was more attractive than the front:



Two hall-of-famers and a popular slugger (ol' Hondo could really rake) is a pretty good array and is what would have greeted purchasers had they stumbled across a box (likely generic white) of these. The green stars are nice too and you will note there are team logos all over the place. The set numbers 24, one for each team at the time.

Too bad Baseball Stars Candy went thud, although it may have been due to the candy as a non-sports set from that year called Rocks O' Gum has lids with pithy cartoons that can be found with much more regularity. There is also a variant called Gum Berries that seems a little tougher than the Rocks, so the gum may have done the trick.

We next encounter baseball player lids in 1972 and Topps learned the lesson of two years prior as well, as we now have Baseball Stars Bubble Gum to contend with, although it was never issued and only exists in various proof forms. In fact, it may just be a transitional design that was modified by Topps:



The Sanguillen example above is one variant, some of the 72's are more finished than others:




The 72 proofs usually have finished backs:



Note the name change and the removal of Frank Howard. Little stars have also been added and the design is a bit more modern than it was two years prior plus a darker blue was used. Like the front, the players have had the team logos removed from their caps. There were 55 different players (possibly 56, there is a discrepancy) proofed. As the 1973 set also had 55 players, the transitional nature of the 72's seems correct to me.

I believe the 1970 lids to be harder to find than the '72 proofs, although the price guides do not necessarily bear this out.

The 1973 set must have been a below average performer. The look though, is decidely above average:



You can see the brightly colored rim makes all the difference. In fact, there were a few different colors, as this peek inside a full box shows (look at the little tabs showing their colors):



Blue, red and green are showing but orange is also a possibility.

The box cover shows the gum was multi-hued as well:



The reverse is similar to 1972's but there is a difference:



I imagine the stars around the players heads turned red as an attention grabbing device. All caps are logo-less, just like the proofs.

Friend o' the Archive Bob Fisk sent along a scan of a proof process sheet awhile back, I can finally use it, huzzah!



That's just a color test as the players are amidst some assorted detritus (click the pic and see for yourself). Full color individual proofs exist though:



The 73's are not common but neither are they scarce. You can find them with a little digging. Don't eat the gum if you find a tub though as I'm sure they have the texture of moon rocks these days. Ouch!