AC See Ya!

No, not Atlantic City, where I opted out of this year's National Sports Collectors Convention but rather the American Card Catalog. Jefferson Burdick's groundbreaking and indispensable guide to the hobby of collecting trading cards and other similar items, first published in 1939 as The United States Card Collectors Catalog (USCCC) and intended to be updated and reissued every seven years.  Burdick started writing about the guide in 1938 in the Card Collectors Bulletin (CCB), his early hobby publication, in the mid 1930's after using the 'zine as a resource for set checklists, finds and other hobby news since early 1937, after branching out from a couple of years of similar content in a column run by Hobbies magazine. The mid-30's were essentially the start of what we now refer to as the organized hobby, although it would be several decades before it really got going and identifiable dealers came into the fray.

Loose-leafed for 1939, the USCCC was designed to allow the insertion of annual updates, which were issued through 1942 (with a scant one-pager in 1943) until the war precluded any additional leaves being sold in 1944 or 1945. While bareboned and lacking individual checklists, the catalog was still the most relaible (and essentially only) guide available and started the classification system many old time (and some newer) hobbyists still use. In addition, it had rudimentary pricing, another valuable feature. George Vrechek has written an excellent overview of all this, and many other Burdick related subjects over at the Old Baseball site, which I urge you to read if this at all interests you.

Here is the ur-catalog:

Note the punch holes.  The Card Collectors Bulletins could also be inserted into the book as Burdick issued them with holes punched out.

In 1946, renamed and mostly rewritten with letters added to what was strictly a numbering scheme prior, a staple-bound soft cover American Card Catalog was offered by Burdick without an option to add updates directly to the book; you can see bits and pieces of it over at Net54baseball, where David Kathman has written and posted extensively on this volume. The 1939 book and to a slightly lesser degree the 1946 are very collectible and can bring some big prices, the former being printed in edition of only 500 and apparently not selling through until 1945. Here she is, courtesy of REA:

  

I believe those holes were punched "after market" as Burdick had major issues getting the books punched originally. The fasteners must have done a number on things as well.

This was followed by a more robust ACC in in 1953, that featured Woody Gelman as one of its editors then a 1956, hard-to-find reprint, likely created to raise some additional cash and update the buy and sell ads in the back of the book.   This is the 1953 cover:

The '56 reprint had a more orange cover and sold for $2.50, a half-dollar more than the 1953 edition:

(Courtesy REA)

And this the 1960, the final, updated ACC, in hardback:

Burdick had by then turned over the tracking of updates to Buck Barker, who published regular and extensive updates in the CCB after this book came out, as he worked on mounting his massive collection for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Burdick died in 1963 and Gelman was supposed to issue a 1967 guide with updated information but despite Barker's massive efforts at cataloguing the tsunami of issues that had been unleashed since the mid 50's, it didn't come out, for reasons that have never been determined.  

Gelman did put out a soft cover, reprinted 1960 edition though in '67 and with, I think, new ads:

Barker's updates continued until early 1972 and thankfully were collected in a hard-to-find, authorized  pamphlet issued by Chris Benjamin in 1990 (some were assembled in a similar, likely bootleg, fashion by Ed Broder in the early 70's):

 

Barker attempted to revamp the listings for some of the more current issues toward the end of the Sixties but without a full book, this innovative attempt at revision never took within the hobby, but the Catalog was always a metamorphic; some classifications were revised every seven years and a chunk of the ones we know today, especially for Topps and Bowman, were only locked in via the 1960 book.  Reissues of the 1960 guide were put out by Richard Gelman via Woody's old Nostalgia Press imprint in 1988 and again a year later (and/or possibly a year earlier as I can't cipher it right now) as Card Collectors Company used the ad space in back for their current catalog .  Here's my 1988, which I use all the time:

There's a nice Woody Gelman connection here but the classification changes are my real quarry.  I'll be looking at the progression of the Topps and Bowman issues from 1953 and through Buck Barker's updates next time out.

Banners Day

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd auctioned off a couple of old Bazooka Point of Sale banners recently and while I didn't bid, thanks to the overflowing archives here, they were two things of beauty to be sure.

First up, for the Fall 1949 launch of the penny packs of Bazooka ("tabs" in the confectioner's parlance), Topps created a wonderful banner with the original Bazooka Joe shown, as he often was, blowing a bubble containing the pack.  Given the year and the fact there was a contest to win a pocket knife, it was most likely run by Sy Berger, who was in charge of such things back then.  10,000 knives was likely a number they knew would never be reached as 100 comics was a whole lotta gum packs.

Topps used these knives for premiums over many years and they resemble (or more likely, are) the ones used by the U.S. Military during the war and issued for many years after with bespoke nameplates; the Boy Scouts were one such organization that did that..  Berger had connections for surplus goods, so this all ties in nicely with what I know about such things.

The banner is a beauty:

Jumping forward ten years, 1959 brought a really colorful banner detailing the premium pennants Bazooka was pushing at the time (and for another ten years at least).  Five Bazooka wrappers was a much more manageable amount than the 100 required a decade earlier:

That September 15, 1959 deadline makes me think this banner debuted when the 1959 Major League season opened in April.  Why Blony didn't get more than a passing mention in the copy is beyond me,

Mail in offers were useful for Topps as they could do market research based upon the origins of the redemption requests.  With a product launch in 1949 and the two big league west coast team moves very recent in memory - and notions of expansion more than hot rumors in 1959 - these were both marketing and sales tools.

Down Mexico Way

Yonks ago I featured an obscure set of snap-together plastic molded cars marketed by Topps with an even more obscure set of cards. Issued in 1970, Mini Model Cars was a set manufactured elsewhere and, as it turns out, not necessarily for Topps.  

Here is my own Mini Model Car:

And here is one described as a Mexican cereal in-pack premium:

It's clearly from the same mold and the "22" hood stamp matches; mine may be missing one little piece, or not (hard to tell as it looks undisturbed).  Here's another, different model from the world of cereal:

I've seen some in pastel colors but I think they are modern repros.

Well some recent Facebook posts and eBay auctions may have possibly uncovered who produced these - an outfit called Tinykins.  Tinykins was a Marx Toys brand in the 1960's that was the Funko of its day in a way, issuing sets like this one featuring the Flintstones and other Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters, which I found over at the Hanna-Barberawiki site:

Yeah, you want that bad, I know I do!

But I'm not sure it's the same brand used for the cards but some auction listings reference Tinykins Formula One racers and some also mention 1971 as the year of issue.  I'd feel better if I could find a cereal box image advertising them but some cars are offered by sellers in Mexico.  However, it's very much worth noting Quaker Oats bought Marx Toys in 1972. For now, this is where things stand.

No Box Left Behind

After last week's look at the obverse surprise photo some Bazooka boxes carried in the mid 60's (and 1971), I thought it best to close the circle and also show boxes from the years with package design cards of players from various sports but with no secondary photo on the box front (or end flap); I'll tackle non-sports boxes (and some with sports-related content) at some later date but they are really hard to pin down. This installment covers the years 1959 to 1971 not addressed last week in my post on the "extra" images used.  As a reminder, these bonus "front of the box" photos were as follows:

1963 - Babe Ruth

1964 - Sandy Koufax & Mickey Mantle (both on end flap)

1965 - Mickey Mantle

1966 - Sandy Koufax

1967 - Mickey Mantle

1969 - Babe Ruth

1970 - Babe Ruth (reissued box design)

1971 - Johnny Bench

The Koufax and Mantle photos never changed from year to year, while the Ruth did, aging in reverse!

I also included the 1968 box last time out despite no additional photo appearing thereon.  It had a "Special Feature" splash hawking "Tips From Baseball Stars on How to Play Better Baseball" instead. These tips are known as Tipps from the Topps and featured a small, inset photo on each "Tipp" which I have covered previously as well.

When we go back to the aboriginal Bazooka set, it was a one subject affair, with a gorgeous card taking up most of the box back.  These were issued for both baseball and football and might be the nicest things Topps ever produced.  This is the first run 1959 Baseball box, front and back. You can see how the original Bazooka Joe is shown blowing a bubble that turns into a window on the contents, which was protected by see-thru cello, both courtesy of Robert Edward Auctions:

So the splash for the set was actually located below the card! Note how it mentions "9 All-Star Player Cards" as the first release had, yup, 9 subjects. The little illustrations on the splash are generic.

A second wave of cards followed, with 14 players added.  It's possible Hank Aaron was printed with both runs as his name can be found in yellow or white but it's not clear if he was a reissue or if a correction was made to the first run of 9 cards (the name in yellow matches the rest of the set). It's worth noting too that Bazooka usually issued both 20 and 25 count boxes, as you can see above and below. This might explain the white/yellow Aaron variations, or it might not.

For the second batch of 14, Topps changed the box colors and the splash.  This example of Jensen shows the white to yellow switcheroo and a subtle change to the back splash, i.e. "nein on the 9":

Topps then went for a Football set in the fall, with equally stunning results.  The box front is the same as that used for Baseball while the reverse splash is changed to reflect the new sport:

18 subjects were included and Chuck Conerly is shown with either the Colts (an error, he never played for them) or the Giants, indicating at least two press runs, possibly split between the 20 and 25 counts but these are among the rarest boxes imaginable so it may never be determined. More on Conerly can be found over at Post War Cards, which is a really wonderful site, kinda like here but covering a wider range of producers.

Topps killed off the Bazooka Football cards after 1959 and they would not reappear until 1971. Baseball on the other glove, settled into a nice three-players-per-panel groove thereafter.  Here's the 1960 box front, with the cards finally getting some attention:

(courtesy Sports Collectors Daily)

You will note the old bubble blowing Bazooka Joe is gone, as Topps went for the Moms with the Parents Magazine seal, which they used on and off over the years on many products, likely dependent upon their annual advertising budget.

1961 brought white back to the design, which was unchanged otherwise.  It was also used in 1962:

This now brings us to the 1971 Football set. Those all-American kids from the Baseball boxes have  been supplanted by a small but enthusiastic marching band, perhaps meant to conjure up an image of halftime (I'm old enough to remember halftime marching bands at NFL games) since no bonus player was shown on the splash:

(courtesy Sports Collectors Daily)

There was a 1971 O-Pee-Chee Canadian Football release but's ultra-rare and may not have seen the retail light of day.  No box front has been seen but it probably doesn't resemble this only-somewhat-less-difficult OPC Hockey box from '71, courtesy of Bobby Burrell:

Have fun trying to find one of those!

You can still find boxes of Bazooka but it just isn't the same anymore.

Bazooka Bonus Blast

One of the neat little, almost inadvertent things Bazooka did with their party boxes - usually sold in groceries and supermarkets - was include an extra image or two on the splash panels with a small photo of a player included in the set that was being issued on the back of the box (and one one occasion, inside the box).  These were not meant to be cards but merely served as advertisements. Topps picked these subjects well as they chose some real superstars for these little pictures.  While the 1959-62 boxes were issued with a simple splash panel alerting kids to the baseball cards on the reverse, they were of an older style, with a cello covered window allowing a peek at the contents inside, like so (1960 version I believe):

 That changed in 1963 when they issued this bad boy:

In addition to introducing the country to the two tykes seen here, the splash panel for '63 has an image of what was purported to be a sample Babe Ruth card from the All Time Greats set, with five cards included within.  It's amazing what a little competition did to Topps over the years, spawning new products, some quite innovative, in order to pry attention away from their competitors, in this case Fleer.

Collectors of this set will quickly realize that image of the Babe included on the card inserts looked nothing at all like the one shown here.  Rather, we got an aging Ruth, fairly close to the end:

Hoo boy, I'll bet the kiddies were disappointed when they saw that!  Topps probably could not, or would not, license an image of Ruth from his playing days for a secondary set, so they improvised and used an image from his "farewell" at Yankee Stadium that they had deployed in the 1962 "Babe Ruth Special" subset that was issued in the wake of the M&M Boys chase of his home run record.* That subset at least had some period images and at a guess, Topps copyrighted the box before their licensing agreement with Ruth's heirs was up.

Check it out, it's a direct lift:

You can hear the speech here-Babe was clearly dying when he gave it on April 27, 1947 and his voice is absolutely shot from the throat cancer that was killing him.

1964 saw Bazooka include a sheet of 10 Baseball Stamps in the box, along with the three cards on the back.  The splash panel on the front didn't have a player image but one of the end panels advertising the inserts sure did, in spades.  Here's the splash:

And here's the end flap: 

Koufax and Mantle, not bad!  The Mick was back in 1965:

(Courtesy Sports Collectors Daily)

OK, so it's the same image they used the year prior. On that note, here is 1966, from my buddy Spike's Number 5 Type Collection Blog:

Yup, Sandy's a repeat from 1964, as are those darn kids!

In 1967 it's deja vu all over again:

Three times was the charm for that Mantle image.

1968 didn't yield a bonus image as the cards moved to the side flaps for reasons unknown; maybe they were hiding them from Marvin Miller or something.  

I sure hope those kids got residuals! 1969 saw a move to an All Time Greats format that may look familiar, although hard to tell if it's the exact same Ruth image on the box from 1963 due to some shadowing on the former, but it's pretty close if it wasn't:

There's four All Time Greats "plaks" on each box, two per side panel; they obviously aren't cards as there's no definitive border but they recycled the "plak" wording from a failed test set of the year prior and they're not those either! Still, I wonder if the Ruth "card" was meant to be the one they intended to issue in 1963 and Topps, clearly having licensed certain images due to the alleged Baseball Centennial in 1969, finally put it to use? This is the Ruth in question, 1969 version:

To their discredit, they reused the exact same box in 1970! 

I've previously posted about these 1969-70 boxes but it was a long time ago and an update is due.  So here is the full checklist for the 1969-70 boxes (and they are generally collected as full boxes due to their configuration). Apologies for the formatting:

BASEBALL GREATS (BOX BACK-LARGE CARDS)

1 NO HIT DUEL	TONEY*-VAUGHN*		FRED, HIPPO
2 ALEXANDER CONQUERS YANKS	ALEXANDER		GROVER CLEVELAND
3 YANKS' LAZZERI SETS AL RECORD	LAZZERI*		TONY
4 HR ALMOST HIT OUT OF STADIUM	FOXX*		JIMMIE
5 4 CONSECUTIVE HOMERS BY LOU	GEHRIG		LOU
6 NO-HIT GAME BY WALTER JOHNSON	JOHNSON		WALTER
7 TWELVE RBI'S BY BOTTOMLEY	BOTTOMLEY*		JIM
8 TY TIES RECORD	COBB		TY
9 BABE RUTH HITS 3 HR'S IN GAME	RUTH		BABE
10 CALLS SHOT IN SERIES GAME	RUTH		BABE
11 RUTH'S 60TH HR SETS NEW RECORD	RUTH		BABE
12 DOUBLE SHUTOUT BY ED RUELBACH	REULBACH*		ED

*- Player does not appear on an All Time Greats Side Panel.

ALL TIME GREATS (SIDE PANELS)

		BOX
ALEXANDER	GROVER CLEVELAND	3
ANSON	CAP	9
BENDER	CHIEF	3
BROWN	MORDECAI	1
CHANCE	FRANK	5, 11
CHESBRO	JACK	9
COBB	TY	1, 7
COCHRANE	MICKEY	5, 8
COLLINS	EDDIE	7, 8
DUFFY	HUGH	4
EVERS	JOHNNY	6, 7
GEHRIG	LOU	4, 7
HORNSBY	ROGERS	2, 12
JOHNSON	BAN	2
JOHNSON	WALTER	2, 6
KEELER	WILLIE	1
LAJOIE	NAP	10, 11
MACK	CONNIE	10
MARANVILLE	RABBIT	10, 12
MATHEWSON	CHRISTY	3, 12
McGRAW	JOHN	5, 6
OTT	MEL	8, 11
PLANK	EDDIE	1
RUTH	BABE	5
SIMMONS	AL	2, 9
SPEAKER	TRIS	4, 9
TINKER	JOE	4, 11
WAGNER	HONUS	8, 12
WALSH	ED	10
YOUNG	CY	3, 6

There's a bunch of double printed All Time Greats, as you can see, with more than half the subjects appearing on two different boxes, in a mix and match panel scheme that must have made sense to Topps (or not).  The total is 30 different ATG subjects, with 12 single prints and 18 double prints. This is the full look:

And here's an uncut sheet of the full set that Huggins & Scott had some time ago, yowsa!

Topps had one or two more bubbles up their sleeve though, even as 1971 brought an end to this fine line of Bazooka package design cards.  With Koufax and Mantle in retirement, Topps went with a big name in 1971, from the Big Red Machine:

(Courtesy Dave & Adam's Card World)

Johnny Bench may have been the hottest story in baseball in 1970-71, before interest was focused on Vida Blue before the midseason of '71 (no joke), then on Hank Aaron's home run chase.

I can assure you that those kids were still on Bazooka boxes well after the baseball cards were discontinued in 1971 and for all I know, they are still there today!

Bazooka cards are really not widely collected but Topps used some classic shots on them.  Check out this collection of 1966 panels that Robert Edward Auctions had a while back for proof of this:

* (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Swerls

I'm sorry to have to be typing this post but I wanted to to pay tribute to Steve Werley, a part time dealer of oddball cards, who passed away unexpectedly last month at the way-too-young age of 63.

I first ran into Steve at the Philly Show years ago as he was selling all the oddball stuff I love.  I remember buying a 1969 Topps Mickey Mantle Decal from him at the show (the only time I ever attended, many years ago) and would run into him at the Westchester Civic Center shows or the National thereafter.  Always smiling, he was good for a tale or three about the strange world of oddball cards and the people that collected them.  He fueled  my accumulation of a fairly large portion of Topps insert sets over the years, some of which I've since let go as I refine my set collecting to my own pre-teen time.

The last time I saw him was at the Chicago National in 2021, which was bursting at the seams and very hectic.  I was trying to figure out if I could piece together an entire run of Mets-only Tom Seaver cards and Steve had the same conclusion I had come to regarding some of the more esoteric Topps items such as the 1973-ish Pin-Ups and Comics: money aside, they were too rare to even source.  I did pick up some upgraded 1969 Decals from him to finally complete my set (completing the circle I had started with my first ever purchase from him) but that was the extent of things as wave after wave of people thronged his booth.  I regret not being able to speak more with him at the show.

RIP old friend.

Blown To Bits

Something different to chew on today campers! Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins unearthed an  interesting bit o'Bazooka history last month over at eBay.  The item in question is not something I had really seen before and was known as Bazooka Bits:

I would have been all over these as a kid, since I loved little Chiclets style gum!  

The sale of tiny candy coated bits at Topps date back to the very early 1950's, when they introduced a product called Block Busters that was eventually discontinued, with their remaining supply boxed up along with a neat Topps Baseball Button in 1956:

If you look at the pack illustration, you can see the little gum bits are quite colorful:

That is a bit more modern version of Bazooka Joe adorning the pack than was gracing the comics at the time, as Joe's principal artist, Wesley Morse, had passed away several years prior to these being offered.  The commodity code indicates 1970, and while I thought 1980 was also possible when I first saw these scans, they definitely date to '70, for a simple reason I will get into shortly. Before we go there however, I think that version of Joe might have been done by the same artist who created this puzzle for the 1972 Big Bazooka Cards but I'm not 100% convinced:

That awesome piece of uncut goodness can be found, with a  LOT more Bazooka related stuff, over at the Bazooka Joe Comics site.

The bottom indicia is unexciting:

So how do we know it's 1970 and not 1980?  Because Topps was burning off excess stock in their 1972 Hallowe'en offerings:

(courtesy collectingcandy.com)

So did the product just not sell or did the folks over at Warner-Lambert (who had acquired original manufacturer American Chicle in 1962) that sold Chiclets intervene somehow due to their packaging?  Topps had tangled with them before (and resoundingly lost), so it's possible to my mind as this is a rare bit o'bubblegum history!

The Bits persisted for a couple more years, rebranded as Presto and Gumniks:

I never saw any of those either as a kid and I was on the lookout for this stuff! Our local ice cream truck carried a wide line of Topps products but not these.  They still look pretty tasty to me!

(UPDATE 7/18/22 - Friend o'the Archive Mark Newgarden advises these were spotted on Staten Island around the time of the original retail issue.)