Contract High

I don't know if his estate is moving items after his death on June 18th of this year but I expect a bunch of Willie Mays' personal memorabilia to hit the market in the coming years.  One such item is already upon us, although it could have come from a different source-his 1954 contract with Topps, which popped up recently at Mile High Auctions:

Mays started out with Bowman in 1951, was with both them and Topps in '52, then Topps only in 1953 before appearing in both company's 1954 and 1955 sets. He was in the military for most of the 1952 season and all of 1953, so Bowman probably didn't have him locked up on auto-renew like Topps did.  Mays was also buddy-buddy with Sy Berger, and, I believe while unrelated to the events being described here, he holds the record for appearances in the most Topps sets (including inserts and supplemental issues) covering his playing days from 1951-73.

He's card no. 90 in 1954 and you can see he signed his contract on March 8th.  Topps did something weird with the distribution of the set after the first series, so it's not clear if he's a second, third, or fourth series card (or possibly fifth but I'm not positive it went that far in '54) but given how late the date is, he probably wasn't locked up until the third array of cards was being composed. As a reminder, his 1954 card is one of the best ever issued of him:

The back notes his time with Uncle Sam:

The contract itself has enormous historical value of course, but I like how simple the language was. That would change, as would the methods used by Topps to retain players over the years but the other thing I like about it is the signature of Turk Karam, who was employed by Topps as a talent scout and all-around Sports Dept. guy before they had an official Sports Dept. 

Mays would earn his only World Series ring with the Giants in 1954 and was the National League MVP to boot-Say hey!

Very Nice

All sorts of wondrous non-sports items have been popping up of late, including some really tough Topps test cards. Today's entry is Captain Nice, a failed 30-card test set from 1967 TV show that featured the exploits of a mild-mannered chemist named Carter Nash. Trying to exploit the camp-superhero craze that began with Batman, with a good helping of Marvel-esque angst, the show bombed, despite it being the product of Buck Henry's crazed mind; the success he had with Get Smart clearly could not carry this unfortunate turkey. Launched as a mid-season replacement show on NBC in January 1967, it lasted fifteen episodes and bit the dust by the end of August.

Given its lackluster network showing, Topps created a test set that was bound to fail. Despite the show being aired in color, the cards, which were rendered in black-and-white - albeit with a colorful cartoon on the back of each one - were kind of a letdown. It's a bit odd but Topps hadn't really yet got around to using full color for their TV show related tests in 1967, which I'm guessing was due to the higher costs for color printing. Anyhoo, a proof sheet that provides a look at all 30 cartoons recently had its debut on eBay; check it out:

 

I'll provide a closer look in a sec, but first check this out-the front only used two colors and this proof didn't use the photos, while the back was a full-on four-color test.  Doesn't this look odd?

Here's the card backs, in four groupings:

These are very reminiscent of the cartoon used on the backs of most Land of the Giants cards.

Super colorful, right?

Assuming the show had seen more success than it did, I wonder if the test would have done better featuring the cartoons on the fronts.

Topps repeated the top row of the sheet at the bottom, hence the count of 30 subjects vs an array of 33 cards. Kinda weird but not unheard of with licensed characters.  Here's the row-by-row breakdown:

1 2 3

29 19 14

10 26 10 (more on this shortly)

29 13 23

18 21 11

5 15 25 

12 20 7

22 9 24

4 17 27

8 6 30

1 2 3 (repeat of first row)

You will note there is no number 16 and thanks to the images over at Trading Card Database (click on over, it's a great site) we can see what the two number 10's look like (Topps must have glitched on the second digit):

Combo #1:

And combo B:

Yup, a real yukfest!

Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins sent over some wrapper scans that are also very interesting.  Note how the packs were sealed with the stickers that usually appeared only on the fronts of the packs; Topps used a small ingredients label with these (from a recent find) to seal the white test packs normally because of the bubble gum sold with the cards, so I wonder if this set even hit a retail test or if it got pulled just prior.

Wowsers!

Here's the intro to the show for those of you that are interested, it's pretty ghastly:

Winner's Circle

A long, long time ago, I took a look at the Milton Bradley Win-A-Card Game that focused on the cards included with this esoteric bit of Topps history. I won't rehash all of that here but to note the special sheet of 132 cards Topps printed up for the game have caused much confusion in the 55-plus years since it was available on store shelves.

Some better scans of the game board and box have since popped up and I figured they were worth sharing.  We've seen most of the game board before but this is a decidedly better look at it:

It's quite colorful and you can see the attraction of the concept to Milton Bradley, all they had to do was print up some cardboard and affix a plastic spinner then adding a gaggle of cards from Topps.  

What I didn't have available last time out was the inside of the box cover, which had the rules:

I'll embiggen each column and diagram for clarity:

Said Diagram #1 can be seen here:

If you're having a TL;DR moment right now, it's OK.  For the rest of you, let's soldier on:

And Diagram #2 for your viewing pleasure:

I'm getting to TL;DR-land myself-yikes!  Now for the concluding prose:

It's pretty obvious to me (and I'll bet to my readers too) why the game didn't take off-if you were a kid you would just get together with some friends and flip cards with out the rigmarole!

Might as well conclude with the indicia present at the end of the rules:

This product was all the result of a bit of overthinking by Topps and Milton Bradley I'd say, but they did leave behind a really cool collectible!

Nutty Goodness

As their stable of Mad Magazine associated artists grew during the Sixties, Topps became fond of using certain words - we would probably call them memes today - to describe their more smart-alecky products.  Stan Hart, who, among many other accomplishments in his long life, wrote for Mad for decades and was a Shorin family in-law, began working at Topps in the early Fifties and was  responsible for a lot of the "freshest" set descriptors to spring from the devious minds of their New Product Development Department. One theme/meme that saw favor in the mid-Sixties was "Nutty" and Topps issued three sets using that adjective: 1964's Nutty Awards, then two types of Nutty Tickets in 1967-68 and finished up with Nutty Initial Stickers in 1967 (and again in 1977). A fourth, called Nutty Ads may have been intended to precede them all, but one of the subjects was JFK and it's likely the set was halted before any kind of test was made after he was assassinated. So there's a lot of nuttiness to cover and today's quarry consists of the two Nutty Tickets releases. 

Nutty Tickets began life as a test set, and are exactly as described, offering "admission" to a series of snark-themed events.  These were issued as single tickets, measuring 1 5/8" x 5 3/16" likely two to a pack, and tested in 1967. The test does not seem to have gone well and they were tested once again in a two-ticket panelized format, where each individual ticket measures 1 1/4" x 4 11/16", if divided evenly by the perforation line that bisects them (don't hold your breath on that being laid down accurately). The panels were carried over and included as inserts that also served as stiffeners for the 32 Mini Stickers issue of 1968. The larger cards are, quite understandably, harder to find than the smaller ones by a pretty large margin. The smaller cards, also pretty tough in their own right, are usually found as singles but the panels are out there. 

Here's a size comparison of the two sizes of Nutty Tickets, note the smaller ones have far wider left and right side waste areas (sorry about the miscut large one, I'm lucky to even have it):

Nice job dragging the Mets and Senators!  The Mets were the butt of many similar jokes until they shocked the world in 1969 so it's not a real surprise to see the dis here. Not content with some light-hearted ribbing of two doormat baseball teams, Topps decided to trash Native Americans as well!

It would have been obvious that the fine print disclaimer found on a real ticket's reverse would not really fly here, so they went with some illustrations that drove home the theme of the "event" detailed on the front:

Those horizontal lines make for a muddy look and I'm not sure why it appealed to Topps. A number of original art pieces are known-check out this one of #17 that was sent to me by Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins. It really shows off just how nice these looked before Topps obfuscated things:

The Andy Yanchus collection recently offered by Bruneau & Co. had nice selection of the panels but no big boys. What it did have were test wrappers:

You have to assume that wrapper held the panels but that sticker was used for both sizes, which must have had different pack dimensions. There's been some photos seen of what I believe was intended to be the retail box and there is also a proof of it known:

The large cards are made up of 24 subjects as are the small, but the latter were issued in three counts over 36 panels encompassing 72 ducats, meaning each appeared thrice.  As mentioned above, the panelized Nutty Tickets were used to stiffen packs of 32 Mini Stickers in 1968.  That meant an elongated pack was required and non-sportwax.com has the goods:

Snark city, right? The back is kind of busy too:

"Horror Show" is peeking through but I'm not 100% sure of the subject above it, which could be "Brain Surgery" based upon the proof sheet I'll show below. That's a whole lotta Bazooka comics if you wanted that sweatshirt! There were sixteen little stickers arrayed on a larger, standard-sized sticker, so I'd imagine that's why the pack contents were spelled out in such detail.  

Here's the proof sheet with all 24 subjects showing and it has to be from the larger sized set as there's narrow white borders on the left and right edges. 

The Mini Stickers looked like this (with different geometric shapes used for effect):

Here's the back, for kicks:

A box flat is known:

There are also white-backed stickers from a reissue in 1977:

An insert card also came with them as the stiffener and thanks to Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins, we have a great image of it:

So if you do the math, it results in 44 distinct stickers with 16 subjects per sticker. Here's the test pack from that year:

The T-90-5a code intrigues me as it seems to indicate a "b'" pack should exist. Based upon the purple text on the reverse seal, I'd expect the "b" pack to have black text:

The 1968 version of 32 Mini Stickers seem harder to find than the two card panels of Nutty Tickets but easier than the larger ones. The 1977 white backs are very, very tough, as is often the case with the self-destructing test issues from Topps.

Goofing Off

More on the incredible Andy Yanchus collection today kids!

Goofy Goggles, a gumless novelty imported by Topps from Japan, remains one of their most elusive issues.  I have never seen an example of one in person and until this auction, had only seen the black-and-white image offered by Chris Benjamin in his Sport-Americana guides from three decades ago. Yanchus, who was obviously good at ferreting out these kind of things, had only two examples from the twelve subjects advertised by Topps.  So right now it's a universe of three images available!

The Yanchus items were sold indie their envelope-style packaging.  The envelopes proper have since been resold I believe, but the goggles may not have moved on from the winners of this lot over at Bruneau & Co.  Here's both goggles, in glorious color. Peek-a boo!

These were made of Styrofoam with an elastic band attached.  I am thinking that band is why these are so hard to track down as Topps may have feared a safety issue and pulled the test (if things even got that far.)  Too bad, they are really neat but it would explain the extreme scarcity of extant examples.  Here' an oblique look:

Nice and colorful! Here's the other one:

More fun with color-it's a nice look:

I guess there are three known wrapper scans as well, as Benjamin shows one.  Dig that smilin' sun:

Topps, thankfully, printed up a checklist on the back, so we can see what all twelve looked like:

Kiss Me is the black-and-white image I mentioned above.  Here's the full checklist:

• Come Fly With Me
• Get Lost
• Guess Who?
• Here's My Heart
• I'm Cool
• I've Got My Eyes On You
• Kiss Me
• Let's Have A Ball
• Please Ignore Me
• Stop Stop
• Stop Wasting My Time
• What's Cooking

Topps applied for the Goofy Goggles trademark on September, 7 1967 (which is the date most guides assign to these) and it was published for opposition on June 25, 1968. 

Goofy Goggles very much remind me of another elastic-band issue, 1968's Wise Ties, which may have suffered the same, safety-related fate, albeit after some brief time in the marketplace. I could  see a possible scenario where Wise Ties, which had its first use in commerce on September 4, 1968, was yanked over choking concerns and Goofy Goggles then got the kibosh before any real testing occurred. However, if that was the case, why wouldn't Topps just sell them without the elastic band?

I may have to do a post on all the classic Topps sets where all supposed examples have not yet been sighted in the wild, or via pictures and scans.

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

I 'll be spending a little time here at summer's end to look at some of the more esoteric items to emerge from the Andy Yanchus collection, the bulk of which was recently sold off over the course of five auctions by Bruneau & Co. of Rhode Island. Yanchus was product designer for Aurora Plastics for a decade (covering roughly 1965-75) before working as a colorist for Marvel Comics and then moving on to other projects in the mid-Nineties.  

He lived in a three-level home in Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill neighborhood that featured a garage (a rare thing in such parts, I can assure you) and filled it all with Baby Boomer-era toys, models, comics, cards and much much more. Yanchus passed in 2021 and the auctioning of his collection was truly a once-in-a lifetime event. Among his myriad treasures were large tranches of non-sports issues, many of them from Topps, with some extreme test issue rarities represented. Today I want to dissect a strange 1970 release called Magic Rub-Offs as his collection's dispersal prose has answered some long-lingering questions of mine.

The retail set is said the consist of a dozen rub-off stickers and an envelope that opened to a colorful scene where the stickers could be applied. The set was called Mini-Toons and imported from the United Kingdom in packaging already being used overseas at the retail level.  Mini-Toons were issued by a company called Letraset that produced the stickers (and presumably the play sheets) and Topps simply imported the whole, made-ready shebang and put their own overwraps on them. Letraset also produced the 1969 Baseball Decal inserts for Topps, which clearly indicate U.K. production on them. Letraset also made the press on lettering used by many a paste up artist and young kids for school projects, which was their core product for years.  The fab Action Transfers site has all the details you will ever need, click on over HERE.  

This is an example what the imported Letraset products looked like: 

The one thing I couldn't figure out until the Yanchus collection hit the block was whether or not Topps had merely taken the imported Mini-Toons "as is" or if they somehow altered the graphics. As it turned out, it was a straight up repackaging, which, as we know, was titled Magic Rub-Offs. What's neat about the Yanchus pieces is that they show how Topps tested the concept before the full retail release and I'm wondering if they used all of the alleged twelve titles that ended up in the retail version or just a smattering.  They incurred virtually no production costs to speak of other than the design and printing of the wrappers by doing so but, as we will see below, the array offered in the test may have been more limited.  Topps tested it, as they often did with oversized items (the Letraset pieces measure about 3 1/8" x 5 1/4"), in an envelope:

So it was an envelope inside an envelope!  Note too the "Made in England' indicia. Here's the plain reverse:

Yanchus had multiples of some titles but this was his "mostest" at thirteen:

I'm trying to cipher if that repetition has something to do with the test issue or if it's just a random happening. There's not many of these out there that can be readily tied to Topps so it's probably something that can't ever be answered. I note Yanchus did not have a retail wrapper in his collection, but www.actiontransfers.com shows one, which was nice as the only image I had on hand previously was a proof of same.  As you can see, they graphics and color were dramatically upgraded, giving it a very Seventies look:

Topps was merely listed as distributor and then stuck a piece of gum in there. Yanchus had four test envelopes but there's no way to tell if the rest of his collection came from the retail release or was sourced elsewhere.  I am guessing with his connections from Aurora and Marvel, not to mention the breadth his collection had, that he knew someone at Topps or had access to one of their back door dealer conduits, but I can't find anything definitive.

I think a partial checklist of what Topps imported can now be determined, but there is a catch; the full set released by Letraset had 24 subjects that came out over two series, with subjects from both issued by Topps.  The scenes are numbered but pick up in the mid-30's and appear to use the original numbering from Letraset. It seems quite possible Topps could have released all 24 Letraset subjects but that is not confirmed, of course. Right now, this is what I believe we can attribute to Topps, thanks to Andy's stash:

• Caveman Capers
• Colonel Custard
• Fishy Fun
• Haunted House (identified by Chris Benjamin in his Sport-America guides and not a Yanchus piece)
• The Knights of Olde
• Mad Motor Race
• Mountaineering Madness
• Opening Time
• Two-Gun Pete

I'll part with a shot of Yanchus, which I nicked from Hake's (they sold some of his comic books plus his original art and color proof holdings): 

What's Weird?

Some Topps paperwork, that's what!  I've been somewhat focused on paper items used or issued by Topps of late and a couple of fairly strange items have randomly popped up.

Leading off is an award bestowed by Topps on Mike Sadek for First Team honors in his NCAA Collegiate District in 1967:

Yes, it's all fancified with ribbons and retaining bands, making it look kind of elegant.  However, the portfolio that contained it was just made of cheap cardboard:

There were eight NCAA Divisions for 1967 and the whole thing ended, of course, at the College World Series.  Assuming they gave ten awards per district (which would match the major league All Star Rookies count as they considered both LHP and RHP) there would have been 80 first teamers in '67.

Sadek was, as noted, a Catcher and had a nondescript eight year career with the Giants covering 1973 and then 1975-81.  He had very little power (five dingers in 813 big league AB's) except when it came to his arm, which was a rocket. The Giants took him in the twelfth round of the 1966 amateur draft but he didn't sign.  The Twins took him a year later (fifth round of the secondary draft) then ended up with Giants after all in a Rule 5 claim in 1969; I guess they really wanted him. 

He was sent down for the entire 1974 season after debuting in 1973, and that year in the minors was the only year he started more than 100 games in his career as the Giants were trying to increase his workload. His competition  after he was recalled was not stiff, with Dave Rader, Marc Hill and Milt May starting over him. 

Speaking of catchers, here's a (fuzzy) document related to the 1975 Bubble Gum Blowing Contest that Topps used as a promotional vehicle for Bazooka. They took this thing seriously, with Joe Garagiola as the host for the televised finals. The contest also gave us some pretty bizarre ephemera but I haven't seen this one before:

I tried to improve the focus but my AI enhancement program just made it worse! It's easy enough to pick out the highlights.  On August 12, 1975 John Stearns (that's the Catcher kids!), Bob Apodaca and Wayne Garrett took parts in the New York Mets heat. As you can see, Stearns won it in a squeaker! Bud Harrelson and Tom Seaver (road roomies did ya know?) were the judges and signed as witnesses.  How did they measure the bubbles?  Why, with this handy device:

We all know Kurt Bevaqcua of the Brewers won the title, but how did Stearns do? Well he lost in the first round:

You may note the Athletics had a pinch bubble blower as their team winner, Angel Mangual, played a mere 8 games for Oakland before being released on June 1, 1976. Why the Tigers and Pirates didn't participate will remain a mystery.