Loafing Around

Well campers, I have finally added an old piece, long sought, to the permanent collection here at the Main Topps Archives Research Complex.  Those of you whose memories are less permeable than mine will certainly recall a post last year discussing a stamp version of 1949 Topps X-Ray Roundup cards.  Aunt Hannah's was a subsidiary of Baur's Bread that had a history of premium offers in what must have been an ultra-competitive marketplace for enriched white bread after World War 2. Time frame-wise, they issued the stamp premiums replicating the Topps card set of 200 subjects around 1950 I would estimate.

The stamps are found pretty easily but the album pages they were to be affixed to are a more difficult quarry. I had previously assumed these pages were made of paper but they are actually thin cardboard, about the same thickness as a 1980's Topps card.  This one has the stamps affixed and you can see they were designed to display 25 at a time:

Some of the stamps are still connected to each other; sheets are known with all 25 stamps still "unburst".  I have seen the 25 stamp quadrants (they came from either a 100 or 200 stamp sheet) but don't have one of my own to show.  They look really cool as one piece though and I want to picture one so here is an example that (I think) came from Todd Riley:

Looks like a bite was taken out of the bottom to allow a full sheet of 25 to be held in place without sticking them.  Here is the back of the page and you can see where the little half moon could be pushed out at the bottom (under "Loaf"):

With all due respect to Aunt Hannah, "meh".  I want to focus though, on a small feature, namely two punchholes, best seen on the front in the detail:

You can see two little unpunched holes t left of rows 1 and 4, which clearly relate to an album.  I have not, as of today, been able to spy an album anywhere but intend to keep looking.  Robert Edward Auctions had a sheet of 100 stamps up for bid not too long ago:

REA also had a proof block of ten, possibly cards and not stamps but still a neat item:

Aunt Hannah certainly had a nice "in" with Topps, didn't they?

Contractual Obligations

1953 Topps Baseball original paintings continue to turn up.  The latest example is an unissued portrait of Jim Suchecki in a White Sox uniform rediscovered by Friend o'the Archive Phil Erwin:

Suchecki was a fringe player who never posted a MLB win in parts of three seasons in the bigs.  He never actually pitched for the Pale Hose but they did claim him off waivers from the Pirates in May of 1952.  He was just the type of player Bowman would ignore and Topps would sign.  The above cards shows evidence of staining from glue, which seems to indicate it was actually turned into artwork for production.  This is intriguing and a nice jumping off point for some contract law analysis.

Now my understanding of how the Topps contracts worked at this time is that a player had to survive the spring training cutdown and be on the major league roster for 31 consecutive days at the commencement of the regular season in order to be paid in full.  This is one reason why the first series of cards issued in any given year had well-known players and virtually no first year subjects, since they were produced before the season started. There were a couple of exceptions to this, especially involving Yankees players (Topps had a different deal with the team and its players in the mid 50's) but a guy like Suchecki would not have been eligible in 1953 for payment if he didn't begin the year with a big league team.  Interestingly, a player who started the season in the minors but came up and was active for game 2 or later of the season and who met the 31 day rule could have a card in the set but not be compensated.

I can't turn up a key bit of information though-which is that a player had to actually be on an active major league roster to have a card.  It seems like this should have been in the terms but I am relying upon an FTC document that describes certain portions of the contracts but does not indicate their full wording. 

I also cannot determine if the special terms with the Yankees were still in effect in the 60's and 70's. In 1956 for example, players who did not meet the eligibility requirements under the standard contract but who were Yankees would still be compensated if they made it to a card. I think this is why certain players like Hank Aaron, who you would think should have had a 1977 card like Mickey Mantle did in 1969 showing his full career stats, never got the "career tribute" card-they simply retired too early!  Mantle retired during Spring Training in 1969 and there was an expectation he would play until he made his announcement on March 1st. Did you know Mickey Mantle was exposed to the 1968 AL expansion draft by the Yankees (relevant article linked here)?!

Bowman had similar contractual wording, although like Topps their compensation scheme varied a bit from year to year.  The whole system was rigged to the advantage of the card companies, much like the reserve clause at the time was rigged to the benefit of the MLB teams.  I don't plan to get into the ins and outs of Topps contractual language as it's as dry as a well-done steak but certain aspects of card production directly relate to such wording.  Things were different with the NFL as the contracts were initially with the league and not the players; a situation which later reversed and resulted in numerous Topps sets not showing proper NFL team logos and uniforms.

And what of our protagonist today? Poor Jim Suchecki never made it onto a nationally issued baseball card. He came about as close as you could though, without actually being included in a set.

Say U.N.C.L.E.

As revealed in our November 6th episode, in 1965 Topps briefly flirted with a magazine series for kids under the rubric of Topps Fan Magazines. The first of these featured Soupy Sales and if you click back on the link in the first sentence and scroll a bit you will see a copy of his issue, which is #1 in the run.  I wasn't able to secure a mag of ol' Soup but I did purchase a copy of the second (and last) issue featuring that hit TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

U.N.C.L.E. was a kludgy acronym for United Nations Command for Law and Enforcement in case you were wondering and the show premiered in the fall of 1964 in the explosive wake of the James Bond action thrillers. The first inside page is where all the action is as far as I'm concerned though:

The content is clearly written for boys about 10-12 years old, which is no surprise.  But take a look at that indicia:

Len Brown was Woody Gelman's Creative Editor at Topps in the 1960's and his name on this thing is no surprise but Robert Shorin and Barbara Gelman also appeared as the writers for the Soupy Sales Wonder Book also discussed here in the November 6th post (same click back as before in the first sentence above. The Wonder Book was put out by Grosset & Dunlap whereas this this magazine clearly has Topps provenance, although the "Topps C.G." moniker is clever at hiding their true name.

It would seem Topps and/or possibly Solomon & Gelman's art agency put together the Wonder Book for Grosset and Dunlap as we have previously disclosed Robert Shorin was the son of Topps co-founder Abram Shorin and Barbara Gelman was Woody Gelman's daughter. Woody appears of course, as does Topps Art director Ben Solomon.


The interior of the magazine has at least one shot that also appeared on a card (and likely more but I do not have a set handy to examine in detail):

That's a match to card # 7 in the 55 card series:

Len Brown revealed in an interview some years back that the Topps Fan Magazines made a profit but not enough of one to warrant continuation of the series.  The two extant issues are a true curiosity in the world of Topps in the mid-60's.

Tatoo Times Two

One of the tougher Topps issues to track down are the 1955 Davy Crockett Tatoos.  The first of the themed, penny tatoo issues from Topps (whose previous releases were under the generic rubric of Tatoo), Davy is thought to include at least 16 and possibly even 24 subjects but there does not seem to be a complete checklist available anywhere that I can see. That's because these little buggers are tough to find and then some.  Well, thanks to Friend o'the Archive Marty Krim, I have finally procured an example of this primeval issue:

This was a Bubbles, Inc issue, likely because it was not a licensed Davy Crockett product and Topps had previously produced two Crockett card sets with images licensed from Disney.  That revolver is said to be an anachronism, first manufactured after Davy's death either at at the hands of Santa Ana or inside The Alamo.  I like the interior tatoo image on this one: 

Prior to my purchasing this example, I had never seen another one except in a Sport-American Guide. The typical Topps production rip at the top is present and this manufacturing artifact has been discussed at length previously. The size is the same as the 1953 Topps Tatoo issue at 1 9/16" x 3 1/2".    

Marty's store of arcane tatoo issues also yielded another prize, namely this O-Pee-Chee Gipsy Bubble Gum exemplar, which is likely a salesman's sample (retail versions have the same production rip exhibited on Topps tattoos):

Bobby Burrell, who is my go-to-guy on all things O-Pee-Chee, seems to agree with my dating of this as late 1930's but I may have to contradict myself now that I have measurements.  At 1 7/16" x 2 13/16" the Gipsy is smaller than a 1953 Topps Tatoo but larger than the 1949 issue of same. This is relevant because all of the Gipsy images I have seen replicate those from the Tatoo issues. This ballplayer is known in Tatoo:

Since Topps did not establish itself in Canada until 1947, if Gipsy came first then it could mean O-Pee-Chee provided Topps with the images for their first novelty set.  As O-Pee-Chee was a far more established company, this makes some sense.  The 1948-49 Topps Magic Photo issue also used images from a photographic art agency or two and were not original creations.

Canadian sets, amazingly, are not fully catalogued and there was a lot of great stuff issued up North well into the 1970's that nobody down here below the border really knows about. The Tatoo/Gipsy connection is intriguing and I hope to ferret out more about it.

Pretty Crumby

It's not necessarily unknown in the hobby but the fact that Robert Crumb did some artwork for Topps in the mid 1960's is certainly a something a little more well kept than you would think.  Crumb did the majority of the artwork for the 1965 Monster Greeting Cards set, a series of fifty standard sized cards as Woody Gelman started hiring artists, some presumably starving, that were a bit offbeat.  Crumb had not yet started his underground comix work when he moved to New York City in 1965 to work at Help! magazine, a humorous and groundbreaking rag founded by Harvey Kurtzman.

Long story short the magazine folded and issued its last gasp in September of 1965. Whether or not Crumb did his Topps artwork before or after Help! went under is not something I have put too much time into figuring out but he clearly needed the extra income either way.  Crumb illustrated the majority of the cards but some featured photography so not all of the possible 100 sides are his. In the recently concluded Fall 2013 REA auction two original Crumb artworks were auctioned.

While there are two separate artworks, somewhere along the way they ended up attached to each other but no matter:

The art is on boards and is, unfortunately, not signed.  Various notes and markings also are present but make no mistake, this is pretty amazing stuff.  Here's an actual, albeit well-loved card I snagged a scan of off eBay that matches the art on the left:

The back is somewhat in the vein of material appearing in Help!, so that is interesting as well. 

Crumb also self-produced at least two sets of music related trading cards, Heroes of the Blues and Early Jazz Greats.  Here's some artwork from the former, on a serigraph:

There are 36 cards in the set and they are a little larger and squarer than standard cards are. There are some other Crumb sets out there like this but I think only the blues and jazz sets are still in print. They have both been available for over 30 years and can be purchased to this day off the R. Crumb website.

Woody Gelman was hip to the jive as Jay Lynch once said; he was certainly hip to up-and-coming artistic talent!

It's Just A Jump To The Left

I'm starting to organize a bit of my post 1956 Topps scans now that my book project is behind me and came across a bit of a headscratcher.  I have no idea where these scans are from but somewhere along the line a 1957 Topps Basketball uncut sheet was auctioned. It's not a his-res scan so I can't blow it up with much detail but here is the front:

The first thing that jumps out at you is that the game action shots all appear to be in their own 44 card section and the more solid color backgrounds are segregated.  It's not quite true though as some action shots are mixed among the colors if you look closely.  It's also worth pointing out that this is an 80 card set and not an 88 card one, which would normally be how Topps would number things with this press sheet setup.  However, I believe that each of the eight NBA teams back in 1957 could only sport a ten man roster, hence 80 cards in the set (if they had added the coaches it would have worked out!). 

So eight cards on this half sheet had to be double printed. If you look at the top two of the action rows you can see that six of the rightmost cards in them are double printed on this sheet, one version atop the other. Then go along the bottom row, third card in and you will see the other DP, again top and bottom (the pair is replicated up top as well, just harder to describe the location). So that is a quadruple Print (QP). 

Six DP's exist then (12 slots) as well as one quadruple printed player (4 slots). The rest of the game action cards are Single Prints (SP) using that logic, leaving 32 SP's to make up the rest of the 44 card midsection. For these seven "overprinted" subjects 12+4+32=48 Slots. That leaves 84 slots, which works out perfectly (remember four slots of what would normally be 88 are taken up by the QP card) to 42 DP's among the two color sections. Since each color card other than the QP appears twice you can work the math a different way that yields 42 DP color subjects +6 DP game action subjects +1 QP subject +32 SP slots. (42x2)+(6x2)+(4x1)+32=132 cards.

Now this being Topps, there should be another half sheet where the action cards each have a 44 card section sandwiching the color cards but it seems that did not happen and each half sheet was the same. There is also a wealth of reference material on this set that has between 30 and 40 cards described as SP's and given the array of this sheet, the 32 SP's fall right in that range, all in the game action middle layer.

Now, for the other oddity. Take a look at this Carl Braun card I snagged from some eBay scans.  I cropped out the PSA holder but this is how the card was shown front and back:

The back is upside down compared to the front!  Luckily the reverse side of the sheet is also on my hard drive:

The color cards are on the top four and bottom four rows and you can see enough detail to know they are printed upside down while the action cards in the middle had properly oriented backs.  I have never seen Topps do this on standard sized cards, it's very strange for them not to align solid blocks of color on the whole of the sheet. 1957 was their first year of standard sized cards and 12 x 11 sheets so I guess they were working the kinks out.

This Soupy's Nuts!

For as long as I have been aware of the cards, there has been a persistent bit of conventional hobby wisdom that states the circa 1965 Topps Soupy Sales cards also came in a thin paper version that were wallet inserts. I've always thought that was a bit of an odd thing for Topps to do but recently an eBay auction appeared that gave me pause.

There is indeed a vinyl Soupy Sales wallet from the 1960's:

In its own right that is one awesome piece of 60's kiddie memorabilia but it gets better.  Check this out:

That is a colorized reverse of a Soupy card sans numbering and the T.C.G. indicia is easily seen to the bottom right! Here is a normal Soupy reverse:

There are 66 cards in the set but I have no idea how many Soupy Sez phrases made it to the wallets. The "card" on the wallet is smaller by a quarter inch in each dimension than a standard Topps card at 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" and the entire wallet measures 8 1/2" x 3 1/2" when opened. Here's the front of a regular card in case you are curious:

Even though the current pricing of them does not support it, Soupy Sales cards have always seemed to me to be a bit harder to find than your average card of the mid 60's.  I suspect they sold poorly and were subject to heavy returns from the jobbers.

There are also some very scarce color Topps Soupy cards that are believed to be from 1967 (I think they are a little earlier) but all known versions of those come with blank backs.  I wonder if Topps prepared color backs for those and then when production was abandoned, was able to repurpose them for the wallets.  Stranger things have happened at Topps but I admit it's a bit of a farfetched theory.

Here is the inside of the wallet:

There is no manufacturing information on or in the wallet other than on the "card".  Apparently a gray version is also known and I suspect there could be a couple of other colors as well.But wait, there is another Topps-Soupy connection:

A 1965 book of short, Soupy themed Children's stories, part of a series from a series called Wonder Books has a pretty neat Topps connection as well:

This particular book...

 ...was written by these two people:

Barbara Gelman was Topps Creative Director Woody Gelman's daughter and Robert Shorin the son of Topps co-founder Abram Shorin.  So far as I can determine, other Soupy-themed Wonder Books were not the product of these two author's pens.

But wait, there's more.  From January 1965 comes this little gem:

The comic is dated January 1965 (which just reinforces to my mind the 1965 date for the Topps Soupy Sales cards) and there is a connection between Topps and Archie, namely a series of Blony gum comics a few years prior.  

And still, there is more...check out this #1 issue of the Topps Fan Magazine featuring ol' Soup. I confess I had never heard of this until a posting on the Net54 Vintage Non Sports board alerted me to it:

That scan was posted by David Davis over at the forum. I don't know what lurks within but am told there are replicas of some of the Topps Soupy Sales cards shown.  I'm not sure what to make of all this love for Soupy by Topps but it's pretty neat stuff.

There was even a second issue of this little known rag, which is enroute to me as I type:

I'll post the insides when my copy comes in the post; hopefully I can find a No. 1 somewhere or get scans.