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.

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.

Test Pattern-The Mid 60's Black and White TV Cards From Topps (Part 4)

Rounding out the decade kids, with the rest (I think) of the B&W TV show cards produced by Topps in the 60's.

1967 brought a very strange show to TV: Captain Nice, starring William Daniels as a mild mannered superhero with a costume sewn by his mom. It looks to have been a mid season replacement and aired from January to May in '67, lasting 15 episodes. For some bizarre reason, Topps produced a 30 card set of this color show in glorious black and white!

I suspect the set, which was tested as a wrapper is known to exist, either sold next to nothing or was pulled from wider release due to the lackluster ratings of the show. The cards add a splash of color to the front:



That is just an ugly design! Nonetheless, these are very difficult cards, almost as hard to find as Flipper (and with the same card count of 30, no less). The back though, was quite colorful:



Very odd that a B&W card has a color back,no? It resembles the back on The Land Of The Giants cards issued a year later:



As a bonus, note the default Topps block print, back for a final visit! Here is a LOTG front, in color though:



LOTG is not as tough as Captain Nice but it's scarce. A&BC also did a Giants set in the UK a year later that is far easier to find. Many Topps test and limited release issues were repurposed for the UK and to a lesser extent Australia, Holland and Israel starting around 1967. That will be the subject of a lengthy series here someday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:



Yes, Bonanza-the set I consider the rarest ever produced by Topps, although I admit Flipper and a couple of others give it a run for the money. That one little splash of color indicates to me production around the time of Captain Nice, maybe 1967, or within a year either way. Allegedly produced as an almost in house gag by Topps, Bonanza cards never were sold at retail.

Here is a back:



Bonanza was shown in color from its first broadcast in 1959 through its last in 1973 (431 episodes buckaroos!), which was unheard of at the time, so of course we get more B&W, although I can't swear to the print on the back being B&W, I have heard it is brown.

There are rumors of other test or proof sets out there for F Troop, Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie. All but Green Acres had at least one black and white season. Not that it would matter if they were all shown in color to fit in with our grouping but if a card surfaces from any of these three shows, I would not be surprised if it is in black and white.

Test Pattern-The Mid 60's Black and WhiteTV Cards From Topps (Part 3)

We ended with a spy spoof last time out so today will pick up with a serious spy show sort of by way of a cheesy doctors show from '62 before moving on to other realms. As everybody over the age of 40 knows, the 60's were a great time for spy and adventure flicks, primarily due to the tensions of the Cold War. A lot of TV shows tried to cash in on the James Bond phenomenon but The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was the only one aided by Ian Fleming, who penned the Bond novels. Do you know what U.N.C.L.E. stands for? Answer below!

While first season, 1964-65 was shot in black and white, the pilot was produced in color. The card set has a 1965 copyright date but was issued in 1966, after the show had switched to color. Why this was a black and white set is puzzling to me unless it was somehow delayed prior to issue. We will get to scans of these momentarily but first let's hit the wayback machine.

The U.N.C.L.E. cards are readily available and use a stylized front that as far as I can tell originated with the Dr. Casey & Kildare cards in 1962 but was really ramped up with the issuance of the three Black and White Beatles sets that were rushed out in post-invasion 1964. The common thread in these sets is a B&W photo, usually glossier than a normal card (but not always) and adorned with a facsimile autograph in blue.

Here is a fine example of the front style referred to above, which I fondly call Topps Black and Blue":



The reverse is also very typical of these style cards:



My operating theory is that the design used here originally was created to mimic a standard Hollywood portrait or group photo but once the Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan Show it was found to be perfect for pumping out a lot of product very quickly without worrying about any real design other than what was being shown on the wrapper.

Man from U.N.C.L.E. used the same style front as the Casey and Kildare cards:



But the back was decidedly different, albeit a simple puzzle piece:



We also see this front on the Soupy Sales cards issued circa 1965 (there is some confusion on the date, I'll address that momentarily):



Another simple back for ol' Soup:



Now there is a color Soupy Sales set as well, that is quite scarce:



Yes, Soupy is smoking a cigarette on a bubble gum card! The backs of the color cards are blank and indicate they were only early proofs:



Some sources have the color cards being from the end of Soupy's second national run in 1967 (he had a show in the late fifties and early sixties and would even manage to star in yet a third nationally broadcast show in the late 70's) and this date has turned up a couple of times in my research for the B&W issue but I believe the latter to be from 1965. The Soupy Saga will be looked at in detail here sometime as there is a lot more to it than what I want to get into here.

1968 brings us for some bizarre reason, a B&W set commemorating the show Julia, which I remember very well but it still disappeared very quickly after three seasons, much like these cards which are scarce:



Once again, the simple tried and true information block back presents itself:



Why this style of card and why a B&W set was issued in 1968 is curious. However, 1969 brought yet another B& W set!

Room 222 had a solid run on ABC, premiering in 1969 and eventually becoming part of ABC;s powerhouse Friday Night block of programming, which was de rigueur kid viewing in our household in the early 70's. There is a twist though, blue has turned to black in our autograph:



The back is partly puzzling:



Topps did come up with an identical color version though:



And I mean identical:






U.N.C.L.E is an acronym for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement by the way!

Our look at the B&W 60s cards will conclude next time out-see you then!

Test Pattern-The Mid 60's Black and White TV Cards From Topps (Part 2)

Intermission time in a way today kids. A few of the mid 60's B&W TV sets do not fully fit into the somewhat generic template Topps was working from at the time. A couple of these sets share the default Topps block print with the Daniel Boone/Superman/Flash Gordon et al lineage but are not notoriously difficult or test issues. One however, is devilishly difficult. They also serve to show the big dividing line between the old and new Topps that is drawn between 1965 and 1966.

1965 is the year Topps moved its packaging and distribution to Duryea, Pennsylvania from their old Bush Terminal environs. While corporate offices would remain in Brooklyn and printing of virtually all sets was being done by Zabel Brothers of Philadelphia, the move to Duryea brought together farflung confectionery, packaging and shipping operations. Once Topps get settled in to their new digs it also seemed to free up the corporate imagination that led to a huge burst of innovative sets from 1966-71, far removed from the simple black and white TV stylings discussed in my last post. As the broadcast, cinematic and print worlds moved to color wholesale in 1966, so did Topps.

I'll go back in time a little form the end of the last post, to 1965's Gilligan's Island set:



You can see some some of the basic "ready made" B&W TV elements are present: the little logo and the default block print. The style of the set though is very much in the You'll Die Laughing vein, where humorous captions are added to a production still. Gilligan was a full retail set, hard to find it top notch condition today due to the backs and it probably did not sell through its print run, but it was and is readily available.



Designed to be fanned to show flip movies, these cards are often found creased in the middle today. As you can see though, the back is nothing like the ready made issues.

Another sold at retail set that also looks like it did not sell through is 1966's Lost In Space issue:



We have logo, black bar and inverted color default block print. The back is very much like the ready mades but with some really nice detail:



Looks like one of those lurid pulp magazine covers! Lost In Space's first season, 1965-66 was shot and shown in black and white, it went to color thereafter. I am of two minds on this set sometimes but it seems to follow the logical progression of the B&W TV sets.

Fear not, curiosity seekers, there is still an ultra tough test issue out there that falls back on some of the ready made template, the extremely tough 1966 Flipper test set:



Unlike our other entries here, Flipper was always filmed in color, so we have a reverse of the Beverly Hillbillies situation! The reverse though, is more Gilligan-y:



Flipper, a scant 30 cards in number, is an almost impossible set - up there with the rarest Topps cards and I question if it was even tested. It was likely abandoned in the final stages and a product called Flipper's Magic Fish, originally slated as an insert for the Flipper cards as shown by this box proof, was jury-rigged to stand in its place:



The Magic Fish were "wigglies" and should be considered toys as issued; had they been inserts then they would be considered "cards" I imagine. I cannot find any good scans of these elsuive fish and will save an in depth look at them (and indeed any of the sets discussed in this series of posts) at a later date.

1966 also saw a Topps set that perfectly married the old and the new in promoting Get Smart, a very popular show that exploited the James Bond craze. The cards were actually small, almost square and sold as panels of two:



Inverted block print but no logo here. The back gives us more block print and a quiz:



The big surprise with the Get Smart set though, was the inclusion of an insert, still something of a rarity with Topps' non sports cards. Sixteen Secret Agent Kits were issued in the packs as well, all in glorious color:



Topps was starting to face pressure from Fleer, Philadelphia Gum, Donruss and even Leaf in the TV show licensing game during the mid 60's and they turned to the tried and true gimmick of the insert card. Only the pilot episode of the show, which aired on September 18, 1965 was shot in B&W so Topps may have felt they needed a big splash of color on the Secret Agent Kits to compensate.

Some very strange sets remain to be looked before the decade is rounded out-stay tuned!

Test Pattern-The Mid 60's Black and White TV Cards From Topps (Part 1)

It's almost impossible to imagine it these days but prior to 1966 broadcast TV (essentially the only kind of TV back then) was not definitively shown in color. Some non-prime time shows were broadcast in color by CBS as early as 1950 but there were few sets that could decode the signal. NBC made the first national color broadcast in 1954 but black and white TV was the norm until the early 1960's. Then, in 1965 NBC announced their new, fall prime time shows would all be shown in color; by the next fall all three major networks were doing so.

So right on the cusp of the color TV revolution, Topps started production of a series of card sets covering various TV shows (and a couple of old movies) that followed loose, unifying and slowly evolving themes, but oddly using anachronistic black and white photos. Roughly fifteen sets were issued in a five year period that to this day are not fully documented, especially as to their years of issue. Much of the confusion is due to the fact many of these sets were test, or even proof issues and suffered from minimal distribution or worse.

Discounting a few anthology type sets that came close and a bunch of penny tattoo issues, the first dedicated set from Topps devoted to a single TV show was issued in 1963 and saluted the Beverly Hillbillies. It was also issued in color:



Strangely, the fist color episode broadcast of the show was in the fall of 1965, at the start of season four. The DVD releases confirm the first three series were indeed B&W so the color cards are an oddity, especially since it is alleged they feature stills from the show. I wonder if they were instead publicity shots, done in color as they do not look like flexichromes. A real mystery, eh?

The back is actually of more interest (sorry Donna!), for reasons we will encounter later:



1964 also saw a Topps TV release, the colorful Outer Limits set. Again, we have color (and how!):



The back is unique:



It's really the lettering of the caption on the obverse and reverse that I want to focus upon, which was very readable and looks to have refined the Beverly Hillbillies reverse font. I think it led to the adaption of what I call "default Topps block print". Look at this card:



That is a rare Daniel Boone example, which may have been produced for a contest offered by NBC. The font, seemingly a natural progression from the crazy Hillbillies to the terrifying Outer Limits to the stoic Daniel Boone is quite orderly and would become a Topps staple very quickly; the fact it was issued in black and white is the other springboard for today's post.

Here is the reverse:



The caption font is just a hair different than what was on the front. Some backs were blank by the way:



The show aired for six season but only the first, 1964-65, was in black and white. I suspect therefore the set was issued in 1964 as NBC would have run a contest early on to drum up viewership and ratings were strong from the get-go. But why revert to B&W? Production costs or lack of available color photography may well be the answer.

Next we get to Bewtiched, which aired in B&W during both 1964-65 and 1965-66 on ABC (the last of the three majors to get onboard with color).



Boy, that font is a dead ringer for the one on the Daniel Boone cards! The backs are blank, just like some Boone cards but not finished at all so I guess they really are unprinted:



Another proof for sure given the back and one I think was issued in 1965. That some front font returns for King Kong, a set that may be from 1965 or 1966 but was never really issued as the project went to Donruss instead. Here, lookee:



A small logo has been added here but the font remains the same. Thanks to a newfound interest in Japan, where the big gorilla was first paired with Godzilla in 1962 and thereafter the original film was broadcast so often on TV back in the 60's and 70's that is might as well have been a recurring show.Kong was as big a staple on Thanksgiving as cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and the kiddies (and their parents) ate it up, making it a field for mining licensing gold.

The back uses the same font for the caption and adds a line drawing that in this case mirrors the front picture (a happy coincidence for #48):



The 1965 date is an RKO copyright for the licensing purposes but it looks like Topps had right of first refusal on images from the movie and there is a production number on the box (one of the first ever) that gives a 1966 issue date for the cards. Let's look at another, similar and yet at the same time dissimilar issue, 1965's (and possibly 1966's or even a tad later) Superman:



What a great shot! Superman was re-syndicated in 1965 and approximately one zillion kids grew up with the reruns just as Topps was starting to grasp the impact of the boob tube on the boomers. Meanwhile, back in Metropolis the above front design mimics the look of the '63 Beverly Hillbillies cards in the use of an oval to contain the caption while the font is similar to those used in the other B&W sets. The back caption uses the same font as the front:



Note also how the image of the set's subject, a photo in this instance, is offset against a block of text, just like the King Kong issue. The above Superman card was a test issue; the regular issue would pull together another design element from the Beverly Hillbillies on the reverse.

First, a regular issue front, not as clear as the test issue, which was very sharp but otherwise the same:



The back though, adds some familiar color for the "real" set:



The back is a little brighter than the Hillbillies back but that color was a favorite of Topps throughout the Sixties. There is also a back variant:



Despite the 1965 copyright from National Periodical Publications, I wonder if the "Watch Superman on TV" version of the set was actually a very early1966 issue with Topps testing the market in late '65 on the earlier and very scarce test issue.

The addition of the copyright date after the test issue is just a bit odd and maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but it smacks of some legal maneuvering, very possibly to keep the actual creators of Superman from realizing any profits from the syndication of the show. Any legal wrangling could have delayed the nationally released/revised copyright set into 1966.

The font is italicized in the bottom tag line (and replicated also on the reverse of a colorful, non-TV issue called Superman In The Jungle) segueing nicely into the mysterious Flash Gordon set, a super tough issue from Topps that did not see normal distribution:



Re-syndication, this time in 1966, seems to have led to Saturday morning TV glory for Buster Crabbe. I am not sure if the latest Superman issue predates ol' Flash but the italicized font clearly flows smoothly from one issue to the other; just whited-out inside a black bar with a logo (like Kong) at the left for effect on the Flash Gordon cards. The logo refinement and inside out White and Black lettering would be mimicked in later sets but check out the back:



The primary back color is salmon and there can be more orange-ish hues like the Superman reverse but this color scheme was a Topps favorite in the mid-60's. Familiar font, text block and offset drawing too, no?

Flash is very much tied to King Kong but I wanted to show the progression of the common design elements from King Kong through the Superman issue and then to Flash Gordon. I believe this to be a 1966 set due to the re-syndication date and the fact it shares display box design elements with the King Kong issue. It was however, likely reissued in fun packs in 1968.

There is no indication the King Kong cards also made it out of Duryea in similar fashion but it is highly likely to my mind as Topps seemed to be clearing out space in the late 1968 to early 1969 period and some tough football issues were actually found in the town dump around this time! A warehouse sweep and dump into fun packs would have been very much in character at the time before the final ignominy of a set being thrown out by its maker occurred.

Next time out I'll look at more similar B&W issues, so stay tuned! By the way, some of the scans up above were liberated from www.horrorcards.org. Go give 'em some love!