Cloth Makes The Man

Topps spent a fair bit of time getting their cloth baseball stickers down in the 1970's.  Finally seeing the official light of day in 1977, there were materials tests undertaken in 1970, 1972, and 1976, plus a series of 1973--74 Cloth Emblems that spanned a few sports, not to mention the 1968 Football Paches and some non-sports issues. I'm not sure why it proved to be so difficult for Topps to work up proper specifications for the national pastime, those '68 Football Patches have held up remarkably well, although most of the press ended up being rescued from a Pennsylvania dump along with the black and white Football Team cards test issue they were packaged with. And let's not forget their 1949 Flags Of All Nations/Soldiers Of The World issue which used a similar cloth-like material.

I've covered the 1970 and 1976 cloth stickers previously and the former are famous hobby rarities, while the latter are not.  The 1977 set needs no commentary today, it's still found in abundance and is, to my mind, quite nice. I may do a post on it shortly as the checklist/puzzle cards that came with it are harder to find and kinda neat as well.

I remember seeing a few of the 1972 Cloth Stickers at shows in the 80's in uncut form, which is how all of these have entered the hobby. I'm sure they came via a Topps back door somewhere, possibly in the outflow of Card Collectors inventory following Woody Gelman's death in 1978, and which took some time to disseminate as the earliest mention of these I can trace so far is from 1981. The sheets were fairly reasonably priced back then, not so today due to the Roberto Clemente In Action being included in the array and a lot of times you find them with the plain sticker backing gone or discorporated.  Some are missing a slice across the top of the sticker as well. Still, they are pretty cool.

Unlike 1970, which came from a specific half sheet section and 1976, which was Frankensteined by Topps using only Duffy Dyer and Bob Apodaca, the 33 sticker run spanned two Topps half sheets from the 3rd series in 1972.  It also includes partials on either edge, echoing the 1970 version in this regard:

I don't know why Topps took things to test from across two sheets like this but it's quite common in their history.  Here's a  look at some real estate from a normal 3rd series sheet:

You can see how the imaged cloth sheet was just the bottom three rows of this section - Topps printed 66 cards from each 1972 series on one half sheet and 66 cards on the other, with the DP checklist for the next series on all but the high number sheet (132*6=792-5 DP's=787 card series) in '72. The top row is interesting as well as the stickers I have seen with the slice taken off the top seem to come from that row, which is indeed short on this regular issue sheet as well. This could truly be coincidental as I'm not sure why a card board version missing real estate would be replicated in cloth.

Here is the checklist:

AARON	HANK
APARICIO	LUIS	IN ACTION
BROWN	IKE
CALLISON	JOHNNY
CHECKLIST	3
CLEMENTE	ROBERTO	IN ACTION
CONCEPCION	DAVE
COOK	RON
DAVIS	WILLIE
FITZMORRIS	AL
FLOYD	BOBBY
FOSTER	RAY
FREGOSI	JIM	BOYHOOD PHOTO
FRISELLA	DANNY	IN ACTION
FRYMAN	WOODY
HARMON	TERRY
HOWARD	FRANK
KLIMKOWSKI	RON
LAHOUD	JOE
LEFEBVRE	JIM
MADDOX	ELLIOTT
MARTINEZ	MARTY
McCOVEY	WILLIE
McRAE	HAL
O'BRIEN	SYD
BOSTON RED SOX	TEAM
RODRIGUEZ	AURELIO
SEVERINSEN	AL
SHAMSKY	ART
STONE	STEVE
SWANSON	STAN
WATSON	BOB
WHITE	ROY

Four Hall of Famers and Willie Stargell In Action and Sparky Anderson are partials on the uncut sheet....what could have been!

Depression's Got A Hold On Me

Well, you learn something new every other day or so I guess.  I was poking around newspapers.com a while back and spotted a very interesting article from the Brooklyn Times-Union October 30, 1933 edition concerning the long-time HQ of the American Leaf Tobacco Company (ALTC) at 7 Debevoise St., which my intrepid readers know as the primordial Shorin family company's second location:

I do believe the ALTC survived as an ongoing entity until 1938 so this foreclosure notice is a very intriguing find. It appears the Shorins partnered with a couple of members of the Rabkin Family and together they owned the four story building that had housed the ALTC since around the time of World War 1. I have not seen any associations between the Shorin and Rabkin families before, so this bears some further investigation. The connection with a paper company is intriguing as well.

The building, as you can see, was auctioned on October 14, 1933 so it seems possible the ALTC continued to maintain a presence within as renters but again more research is needed on my end.  The Shorin's were starting to heavily invest in gas station properties around Brooklyn at this time, so there may have a been a plan in place for dumping losses into 7 Debevoise St., or they just got over-extended. Either way, this further supports some reports I have seen from this era concerning the family's real estate investments. The family and ALTC primarily did business with Manufacturer's Trust, so the Williamsburgh Saving Bank may have been brought to the table by the Rabkin's.

Anaglyph You A Headache

One of the more forgettable fads in the 1950's was 3-D.  A craze developed around this gimmick that went from movies, to comic books to trading cards in short order following the release of a movie in Late 1952 called Bwana Devil.

B Movie fare for sure but it was off to the races in Hollywood and 1953 saw several major motion pictures premiere using one of two different processes, both of which required the viewer to don a pair of cheap cardboard glasses to experience the 3-D effects promised in the posters and adverts of the day.

Topps issued two 3-D sets, both featuring Tarzan, who was featured on the silver screen in Tarzan And The She Devil, released on June 15, 1953, albeit in standard black and white.

Topps took this movie and had a 60 card set made up in 3-D.  A proof panel surfaced recently and the dating is interesting as you can see it's stamped September 15, 1953. So it took Topps three months to bring the set to fruition.

The set sold well and it was followed by Tarzan's Savage Fury, which used scenes from a 1952 movie and given the dating of the proof above, looks to have been issued in 1954.

View some of the cards below, just make sure you have the red and blue version of the glasses!

Wrappers Delight

I'll spare you all the historic details of the Star Wars movie franchise and lengthy history of the Topps sets issued in the wake of the world's most popular Space Opera saga (40 plus years strong and counting) but do want to focus on an esoteric issue from 1978 today.  Commonly referred to as Star Wars Movie Photo Pin-Ups, Topps printed 56 different images on the backs of sugar free gum wrappers in 1978 as the frenzy around the first Star Wars movie (now known as "A New Hope") continued unabated.

These interior wrapper images are nothing special and were clearly just pumped out with very little editorial effort:

These measure about 2 7/8" x 3 5/16" once opened and flattened but the real money shots are the four exterior wrapper varieties:

Also of particular interest to me, is the little production rip along the blank edge of these wrappers (which images come from, I believe the Twitter feed of one "Mr. Non-Sports"), although where R2-D2 has gotten to, I'll never know.  I've covered this rip in depth previously here and keep progressing the end date for same as I examine newer sets.  The rip is not from opening the packs but rather a result of the packaging process at the factory.  I'll leave it to you all to determine if this should hugely impact the grading of such affected items but it's interesting that the original equipment used to produce the first Topps confections in 1938 was still in use forty years later.  It was described as "ancient" by Topps in 1938 so its exact age is far older.

The box is pretty nice too:

I grabbed that from www.chrismonin.com and you should head over there if you want more details on this set as he has an exhaustive page on it with the full set illustrated along with plenty of ancillary material.

As noted by Mr. Monin, the set didn't sell well and it's not all that easy to find these days.  The real standout though, is a bit of a Topps anomaly, namely a full box wrapper:

The trumpeting of the lack of saccharin was a direct result of of the Saccharine Study and Labeling Act of 1977, which required warning labels for products using this artificial sweetener. I'm not sure if this extra wrap was to maintain the freshness of the gum, draw attention to the lack of saccharin or some kind of attention grabber for the retailer but it's pretty neat no matter what its purpose.

Nice Pull

So I managed to glom another 1968 3D card in the latest REA extravaganza and it's got two characteristics that intrigue me, although since I collect 60's and 70's Mets cards, it's really three characteristics.  I'll leave it at the first two for this post though for you non-Mets fans.

Here is one of the heroes of Game 4 of the 1969 World Series, pre-Miracle:

We will come back to the front momentarily. The back is reason No. 1 I wanted this specific card.

We've seen those stamps here previously and they also come in black.  The auction in question featured one back with a black stamp (Fairly "No Dugout" variation) and a whopping eleven with the red version, including the "Dugout" version of Fairly.  The Clemente was lacking the stamp, otherwise there would have been a complete set of reds, which is the most I have ever seen in one place.

By the way, a master set, per Keith Olbermann, includes five variations (Fairly, Maloney, Flood, Powell and Staub), all of which can come with either a red or black stamp to boot, although only blank backs would have been included in the Topps test packs.

Take a look at that lower left corner of the card front.  You can clearly see two "pull" marks:

Those are similar to those found on my Maloney "No Dugout" card:

The two marks on Maloney are spaced farther apart so I don't think they represent damage from a "grabber" used after the cards were cut apart.

They likely do however, represent a problem related to the cutting process, where portions of the ribbed lenticular coating used to create the 3D effect would pull away from the surface during production.  I suspect problems like this (and expense) contributed to the demise of this set, rather than just a poor test response.  Just look at the long run of Kellogg's 3D cards from 1970-83 and aftermarket interest in this set to gauge what the interest level could have been.

Bunning Stunts

Holey moley kids,a longstanding question has been answered by the recently concluded Robert Edward Auctions summer extravaganza!  A "second series" press sheet finally reveals who replaced No. 145 Ed Bouchee in the set.  Bouchee, you will recall, was arrested and convicted for exposing himself after the 1957 season ended.  He ended up in a psychiatric hospital for a spell, was sentenced to probation and rejoined the Phillies mid-season.  Topps pulled his card, eradicated him from the checklist and double printed another in his place.

Thanks to this amazing press sheet we now know who replaced Bouchee! Scope it out for yourself:

I believe this is the series 2 "A" sheet as the left side looks pretty good, whereas the right side looks like a three year old cut it.  The pattern is A/B/A, with each letter representing an iteration of four 11 card rows.  These are usually identical in their composition as the "B" sheet would use a B/A/B pattern to make up a full 88 card press run.  Thanks to this pattern we can see that #115 Jim Bunning was double printed to replace Bouchee in the "B" block.  Here is a closeup:

One of those Bunning cards replaced Bouchee's!

This sheet also confirms the Theory of Checklist Relativity, where Topps would run off 110 different cards on the first series sheets but only show #1-88 on the first series checklist (and all the succeeding Checklists), saving a full press run in the process over the course of the season.  1958 resolves in Series 5 because I believe the original intent was to issue 440 cards but Topps signed Stan Musial that summer and rushed a series of All Stars, nobodies and has-beens, so it was the semi-high series thereafter. Here is how it worked in 1958:

SERIES	PRESS          RUN			LIST SAYS	DIFF.
1	1	-	110	1-88	22
2	111	-	198	89-176	22
3	199	-	286	177-264	22
4	287	-	374	265-352	22
5	375	-	440	352-440	0
6	441	-	495	441-495	0

They used this lagging gimmick into 1966, nice little sales stimulator there Topps!

UPDATE 9/2/19-Reader Eric Loy pointed out in the comments there is  projection difference in the two Bunnings.  The one in row 2 has more of the "t" in "Detroit" showing while the one in row 4 has less and is shifted slightly leftward. 

Here they are, first Row 2's version:

Then Row 4's:

Thanks Eric!

Litoven's First

I am back from a very enjoyable three days at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago (my 8th overall and 4th in the City of Big Shoulders).  I ate quite well, drank a little bit of cheer and hung out with many of my friends in what has become a biennial ritual.  I wish I could say the selection of esoteric vintage Topps cards and ephemera was arrayed in spades but alas, I cannot.  Most of the good stuff is routed to auctions these days and the trend is definitely toward more modern cards at the moment, which was amply evident at the Natty.  I found a few oddball items but nothing of note.  My friend Ryan Christoff, on the other hand, made a purchase that still boggles my mind. I am talking of none other than a 1968 Venezuelan Baseball album!

Check this bad boy out:

The Rookie Award trophy indicates to me this was likely a legit album, much like the one issued in 1966, although that one replicated the full Topps packaging design.  There are also Venezeulan albums from 1964 and '67. I'm not sure of the legitimacy of either but they do exist (even though I don't have a scan of the '64 edition).

The '68 Venezuelan's (370 across four series) were manufactured in Caracas by C.A. Litoven, as shown on the back of this card:

Here's the easier to read indicia: 

The back of the album is interesting as it appears to advertise a competitor's product I make it as Gonzalez y Cia), namely an orange gum:

I only managed a couple of interior shots:

It took some effort to create the album; these were not just blank pages.

This was it for Topps in Venezuela; bootlegs would be created in the 70's that were passed off as or assumed to be officially licensed Topps product but it's all BS after 1968.

Josh Alpert, who along with John Rumierz is the king of Venezuelans, also posted some shots and commentary over at Net54.  We took these pictures around the same time at the National (Hi Josh!) but his came out better than mine!