Candy, Man

Way back in 2009 I posted about the 1951 Baseball Candy set and, as part of what is now a mostly obsolete series of observations, examined how this multi-faceted set might have been assembled and distributed by Topps.  To refresh your collective memories, Baseball Candy was an overarching marketing name and its constituent parts were comprised of what is now considered by the hobby at large to be five separate sets: Red Backs, Blue Backs, Connie Mack All Stars, Major League All Stars and Teams. The latter three were exactly twice the size of the first two, so they all fit neatly together for packaging and printing purposes when the two card panels of the Red and Blue Backs rode along. You can click around on the labels at the right for more details if you like but this is how Topps decided to take on Bowman in the start of what some (not me) have dubbed the Bubble Gum Wars.

There is evidence that the Connie Mack All Stars and Teams were printed together (note the sliver of brownish-orange along the right side of the Mack card)...

That's a color match for sure:

It also seems the Red Backs could have included in at least one, if not two, of the Connie Mack/Teams press runs, thanks to this oddity -a favorite - that resides in my collection: 

It's possible all three red reverse sets could have been arrayed on the same press sheet but it's not a given, even with that with that Senators reverse as they may have run a waste sheet or two. But it sure seems possible. I've not yet seen scans tying the Blue Backs and Major League All Stars together like this; fingers crossed though. 

Topps had issues with distribution of Baseball Candy, and of course there are three Major League All Star cards that are true hobby rarities. I won't get into why and how today (which I have refined since my 2009 post) but I believe combinations of those three rarities (Roberts, Konstanty, Stanky) and the Teams cards could have brought the entire Baseball Candy set down.  Ignoring those Teams cards, which are somewhat scarce in their own right, the blue-themed sets are relatively tougher than their red-themed counterparts and seem to have had only a sole press run, vs. at least two for the Red Backs and Connie Mack All Stars.

This raft of problems left Topps with a bunch of undistributed Red Backs (and Connie Macks), plus a smaller amount of Blue Backs (and possibly MLAS cards) and they had to find ways to dump their excess inventory.  Topps was relatively new at this but had already come up with several solutions for reselling some earlier sets that involved primordial Fun Packs and, for the Red Backs, (and a scant amount of Blue Backs) they blew them out in 1952 in packs of Doubles:

These were marketed a hailing from T.C.G. and had no caramel or other confection in the packs:

But there was also something called the Trading Card Guild, which I believe was created by Topps to:

a) funnel cards to non-confectionery markets, but also

b) dump excess inventory, and

c) possibly allow for third party selling of "dead" sets by sellers like Sam Rosen.

Back in my 2009 Baseball Candy post, (what the heck here it is, take some of it with some salt) I did mention panels of Red Backs had been seen in Trading Card Guild packs that were elongated and made of red cello but until recently I had never seen one.  Well, thanks to a recent Lelands auction, we now have eleven of these sighted, with ten entering the hobby via said auction.  I managed to snag some scans of the packs before they were overwrapped following verification.  As you might imagine, it's a veritable sea of red:

Wowsers!  Flipping them over, one held a surprise:

Yup, that is a Connie Mack All Star (featuring Mickey Cochrane) at bottom right!  What you can't really see is the indicia on these packs but thankfully I have a couple of the wrappers in my collection and it reads like so:

These could have been used for any of the sets Topps issued in two card panel format from 1950-51 (there were eight counting Baseball Candy as one big release) and you can see the 1951 copyright at right.  The oddity here is really the Topps For Toys reference, a division they had originally created around 1948 to market a game. I believe these red cello packs were the last gasp for their toy division.

As mentioned, eleven packs were found but only ten made it to the auction block.  Well it looks like the Luke Easter/Yogi Berra combo was withheld, and I think it could have been consigned by a big time Yankees collector who simply held on to a killer pack:

So here's the thing-could some cello packs of Red Backs potentially have a Connie Mack All Star sandwiched within? If a similar Trading Card Guild pack of Blue Backs ever came up, could it also have a Major League All Star card hidden within?  Questions, questions...

English Language Barrier

I used to frequently travel to London on business and would often marvel at the differences in phrases and words used to describe things when compared to comparable US jargon. In England, you don't have a backyard, you have a garden.  The Underground (aka the tube) is a subway in the U.S. and a subway there is a passage here. Crisps are chips and chips are fries, etc.  So it's no surprise that the English licensee and trade partner of Topps, A&BC Chewing Gum, sometimes used different nomenclature than their U.S. counterpart for similar products.

Take, for example, this 1965-ish A&BC Picture Card Album scanned by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins, which housed a youngster's Man from U.N.C.L.E.  card collection:

Props to the kid, as he properly put the periods after each letter!  A&BC (or, speaking of periods: A.& B.C.) was on board as well! Note how the album doesn't  have a glossy cover, just a cheap pulp one like the rest of the kit. That album-mounting lad is a somewhat, albeit not exactly, familiar image, seen here around 1956 in the U.S.:

And again a half-decade later, slightly livened up:

A&BC did issue an album that matches the US one above, slick cover and all (every A&BC album scan is from Lonnie going forward):

So what was a "Picture Card" album in the U.K. was a "Hobby Card" in the U.S. of A.  

The inside front cover was pretty informative.  Footballers and Cricketers would be pretty much foreign phrases to most American kids in 1965! Heck, even soccer was not all that well known at the time.

Here is a Cricketer example from 1959; A&BC issued another set in 1961 as well but for sheer poetry on a card, 1959 is the most Larkin-esque for sure:

The counterpart to cricketer in the US is "baseball player" which seems easy enough but take a look at the back of this card as it's illustrative of just how different things can be across the pond:

OK...England & Middlesex means he played for the National English team plus his "regular" club. And "over" is the delivery of six consecutive balls by the bowler.  "Bowler" is kind of like a Pitcher, except everything they deliver would be a balk on a baseball diamond, sort of . A "maiden" is a positive measurement but can mean a couple of different things and "Baseball Annie" is NOT equivalent! A "Wicket"...oh forget it, just take a look here, not that it will help much! 

Did I mention the 1961 issue was to commemorate a "test series" and that they can run up to five days? Well, it's nice enough anyway:

A&BC also offered "bespoke" albums for some sets, including one of their very earliest in 1954:

Flags Of The World also saw one, I believe from 1959, when the set debuted in the United Kingdom, although I note it was reissued, with smaller dimensions, in 1963 so either year is possible:

I suppose I shouldn't post this one but when you can get 7 cards for 6d (that's six pence, which we would call a penny in the states) it seems like a steal!

Plus there was a cool looking album!

Well all this typing has made me hungry.  I'm off to rustle up some biscuits, err.....cookies!

America's Volume Dealer

As it often happens, I was searching the WWW for some obscure information about a certain Topps set and stumbled across some equally obscure information concerning an entirely different offering.  

In August of 2021, Robert Edward Auctions closed a lot of over 800 panels from the 1974 Topps Baseball Stamps set. Troves of these stamps have been found over the years, so this was no surprise but what caught my eye was the way these had been packaged, namely inside a vending box.  Here is the central image from the auction:

Those tight left end cuts are a hallmark of these panels, so that matches up perfectly with the zillions of known panels offered in the hobby press and online lo these past thirty years.  The panels, folded twice, matche how they were found in the test packs that also contained one of 24 team albums. That is also 100% on point.

The auction description mentioned the generic vending box was, in the opinion of REA, original to the panels. There is no mention of it being a Topps vending box and indeed, I haven't seen a similar one in many years of keeping track.  It does remind me a little of the circa 1949 vending boxes used by Topps to sell their tiny little cards like X-Ray Roundup but really since the early 1950's Topps had either used a semi-generic Trading Card Guild box - which came in two basic designs over about a dozen years, namely either black and red, or red, white & blue.  Topps switched to the much more familiar mostly-blue venders sometime in the 1960's. 

To refresh your collective memories, here is the generic 1949 vender:

Compare that to the graphics on this 1953 Trading Card Guild box, the first or second of a line that held cello packs of the larger Giant Size cards like Baseball and Wings. As readers here know, the Guild was just Topps rebranded when they sold early cello's without gum:

This is a slightly reconfigured version, apparently used for horizontally-oriented cards as it was said to contain 1955 All American Football cellos.

I'm not entirely sure how Topps sold their larger sized cards in a vending configuration.  They very well could have been in generic gray sleeves with no graphics evident, perhaps with just an end stamp indicating the product inside. But based upon later designs identifying the Trading Card Guild in the graphics, I would think Topps employed this color scheme in the early Fifties.  It's also possible any Guild boxes held loose Giant Size cards for vending, as Topps did this on occasion in the Seventies with their taller cards, but I cannot verify either point at this time.

UPDATE 9/25/23-Lonnie Cummins had sent me a scan of a gray box that likely held some configuration of 1955 Rails & Sails. It's stamped "TRAINS AND SHIPS":

A more familiar version of the vending box seems to have debuted around 1956, when Topps switched to the now standard size of 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" for the majority of their cards and even began indicating they were the company behind the Guild on some 500 count boxes. This one held Elvis Presley cards in a more traditional vending format.

Here's one that held 1957 Baseball, and we can tell from the stamped code using the Cummins Method that it was packed on May 9, 1957 by the third shift in Brooklyn:

At the same time, these started popping up, used when Topps was selling cello packs:

So as things got more colorful, a divergence occurred where Topps took responsibility for unwrapped vending boxes while the Trading Card Guild was shown as manufacturer of anything in cello form:

The red, white & blue boxes were used through at least 1966 as Monster Laffs packs from that year have been seen in them and I suspect the mostly blue boxes that replaced this version came came a bit after Topps moved production from Brooklyn to Duryea in 1966. Both styles probably overlapped as Topps transitioned their packaging when they killed off the Guild.

Somewhat of a case in point is this 1966 Baseball cello box:  

:

Note the new (at the time) curved Topps logo and a distinct lack of any displayable Trading Card Guild graphics, although the box bottom tells a different tale:

(Courtesy Dan McKee)

By 1968 the blues were certainly in use as this high number vending box shows:

(courtesy RR Auctions)

There is a Brooklyn address on the bottom but note it says "trading cards' which is still a Guild carryover.  At some point in 1975-76 this switched to "picture cards" as the 1975 Baseball vending was found in the older style while the 1976's came in this 500 count bad boy:

So anyway, I was talking about the 1974 Baseball Stamps, right? Well here is a parting tidbit from the August 20, 1974 issue of Sports Collectors Digest, some detail on where the set was tested:

Belmont is just a couple of miles west of Boston, a tried-and-true metro area for Topps testing purposes, along with Brooklyn and Duryea PA (plus a couple of other locales). I'm trying to ID a second test store in Brooklyn (one is already known) near 76th St and 20th Ave in Bensonhurst that was possibly called Pecker's and identified by Gary Gerani in his new and highly entertaining book The Card King Chronicles.

The one that is known is this store, which is long gone:

Another rumored one was on or just off Cortelyou Rd in Brooklyn (Flatbush to be exact) but I haven't been able to zero in any further.

Vend For Yourself

We've got a bit of a conundrum to work through today kids.  A couple of  months ago Heritage Auctions offered a 1959 vending box of Topps Football cards:

Exciting news, right?  Well, there was a definite twist:

Yup, those are bindles of cards, seven per batch and I really don't think that they came that way from Topps. The Trading Card Guild box is 100% correct as that's how Topps branded their cards not sold with gum at the time (and through about 1966) but this was likely the work of a third party repackager. I'm not sure these were bindled for vending machines as it seems superfluous since those devices were designed to dispense cards in pre-measured quantities.  The other thing against them to my mind is Topps would not put in a lot of extra work on resale items.

Two bindles were exposed for the auction and the centering is pretty typical of late 50's Topps cards:

A Topps vending box should have the cards packed neatly, and in a zebra stripe pattern, like this one from 1987:

So color me skeptical that 1959 box left the factory that way.  Anything's possible I guess but I'd need a lot more evidence to be convinced. As part of the web surfing research I did for this post, I found that Topps still makes vending boxes of a sort, although I guarantee these will never see the inside of any kind of dispensing machinery. I think these were only resurrected in 2022:

A breaker on the Jabs Family You Tube channel broke a 2022 vending box and I tried to grab some stills.  The advertised inserts rest on top of the regular issue cards:

There's no real zebra stripe pattern but things are done a lot differently these days.  Topps stopped making the traditional vending boxes in the mid-1990's from what I can tell but I'm not sure of the exact year that happened.

You can watch the whole break here if you like:  

BBQ Smasharoo

With a three day weekend upon us, and for no other reason than good ol' laziness, I figured a nice, easy hodgepodge post was in order as I tend to my grill and related activities. UPDATE-it's pouring out!

1950's Hopalong Cassidy was the second licensed character release from Topps and it did boffo business in the wake of William Boyd's televison repackaging of his old Hoppy movies.  The first eight episodes (subsets to you, pardner) also had an associated foil insert "title card" for each. As you can imagine, these shiny, fragile extras are super collectible and realtively scarce. None have ever graded higher than a PSA 6.  I can't find the two-card panel data but this example, in a PSA 5 slab, would be considered high end:

I like how Topps darkened the star to AND underlined the episode title:

Much like the diecut tank cards in the same era's Freedom's War set, these foil cards were printed separately and pushed into the packs.  Two-foil panels were inserted in the elongated nickel wax (actually glassine) packs of the time, so sized to allow for the two card panels, and possibly the ten cent Trading Card Guild packs that didn't have any gum included. Foil panels are rare quite rare and the singles (from penny apcks or separated) aren't too easy to find either.

Speaking of the Trading Card Guild, some of the 1957 cello packs issued by Topps had associated "TCG" graphics. At least one (second series) pack has been graded as by PSA, almost certainly the one I detailed here almost a decade ago. As always, there could be more in slabs but whether or not PSA identified the wrapper as being branded or not is an open question.  Well, here's a second series cello pack without the graphics, just to bring things full circle:

Finally, a rejection by Bazooka Joe (LOL) of a premium fulfillment request gives us some insight into how things were run in the (very much) pre-digtial age.  I'm not sure the comic goes with the envelope actually, it seems to have merely been included in a larger eBay lot.

The Magic Circle Club "comic", as above, may not be what came along with this letter:

This certificate for 250 comcis though, seems to have been the subject of the letter.  The mimeograph lines indicate it was cut from a larger sheet, so this type of premium hiccup would have been common enough to warrant a pile or two of hand-completed certificates being kept at the ready, I'm sure:

I think this is the proper catalog for the mailing though (1966):

I never actually sent in any comics to Bazooka Joe back in the day, I always ended up tossing them.  Oh, the irony!